A year after the last chapter.

Thoughts

Sparkplug talking in Sam's head.

"Talking."

:Com. Link.:

It was that time of year again. Oh, come on, you know what time I'm talking about. Wait, you don't? Have you even bothered reading the previous chapters? -Sigh- It was the anniversary of the success of Mission: Screamer. The sixth anniversary to be exact. And Sideswipe had something… different planned. In truth, just painting the meager army of Autobots had gotten boring. So he was going to, well, you'll find out soon enough.

Sideswipe cackled evilly as the… questionable contents in the pot bubbled. This is going to be fun.

Sam stumbled when Sideswipe 'accidentally' bumped into his side. "Meeting at the hide-out tonight. Usual time. Tell 'Bee and Jazz." He murmured under his breath. He looked on in confusion as Sideswipe walked away. I wonder what this meeting is going to be about…

What do you think it's going to be about? Next week is the anniversary.

Sam looked at the holoform standing next to him, still confused. Sideswipe's concept for the annual prank was if you showed up, you'd help. You didn't, you'd be part of the victim list. He never actually recruited them for it. So if he was… this was going to big.

"I'll go get 'Bee, you go get Jazz." With that, the two walked away.

Prowl was far from a stupid mech. He knew Sideswipe was planning something big for this year's prank. He didn't need Sparkplug suddenly barging into his office and dragging his protesting bondmate off to tell him that. The grin on Sideswipe's face as he walked toward him pretty much clued him in.

"No."

"Oh, come on. You don't even know what I was going to say."

Prowl barely refrained from outright glaring at unmitigated prankster. "I don't need to know what you were going to say. The answer is no."

Sideswipe's response was smile. "Just hear me out. If you don't like it, I'll willingly leave." Immediate denial came to mind. "If you let me talk I promise not to prank for a week after the annual paint prank." The idea of dismissing Sideswipe flew out of his head.

"A month."

"A whole month?! Fine, but any pranks I pull the month after that, you can only give me a fourth of the usual brig-time!"

"Three fourths."

"Half."

"Deal. Now, what's your plan?"

Prowl slumped in his chair as Sideswipe finished telling him the plan. It was all Jazz's fault. If Jazz wasn't so big of a prankster and they weren't bonded, then Prowl would easily be able to suppress the urge to pull this prank, tempting as it may be. As it was…

He sighed. "What do you need me to do?"

Bumblebee sat in the rec. room, amiably talking with Ironhide. Sam walked up to the two, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and proceeded to drag him into the hallway, inadvertently garnering the attention of everyone in the room.

"Hey!"

"You. Me. Talk. Now."

"Frag, what I do this time?"

Ironhide watched the two, shaking his head. "Younglings…"

"What are you doing?!" Bumblebee demanded in an outraged stage whisper.

"Prankster meeting." Sam checked his inner chronometer. "As it is we're going to be late."

He stopped struggling. "Oh yeah, the anniversary is soon, isn't it."

"Yep."

"Can I at least walk on my own?"

"Nope."

"Why not?!"

"Because it's fun dragging you around."

"Let me go!" He desperately struggled to get out of the smaller mech's grip.

Sam ignored him.

He became increasingly worried at his bondmate's silence. "You're mad, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not mad. I'm incredibly annoyed, but not mad. And no, I'm not annoyed at you."

Bumblebee had a feeling he knew what was going on. "Let me guess, Sparkplug and Miles have been talking again."

An almost indiscernible twitch of the optics. "Yep."

He struggled not to laugh. Miles had a tendency to spout out some really weird stuff. And random, too. Ranging from conspiracy theories to what color boxers he thought people would wear in fifty years. And Sparkplug had a tendency to repeat almost everything Miles said to Sam. Which usually meant Sam would act like this because Miles knew when to shut up whereas Sparkplug didn't.

"We're here."

Sam watched as the usual people piled into the room. He glared at Sideswipe. "Okay, what's so important that we had to rush over?"

Sideswipe smirked, pulling a cloth off a table, revealing…

Sam grinned. "Sides', you're a genius."

It really was far too easy. Get Prowl to hack into the police database and create an emergency that just had to be dealt with, and BAM, everyone's gone, except for the 'injured' in the med-bay. That truly was the hardest part, getting themselves injured enough to get into the med-bay and convince Ratchet Sparkplug was too exhausted to flash-heal them. But, they couldn't get themselves so injured that Ratchet would feel he had to stay with them, instead of leave with the others. Despite the complications, they all knew it would be worth it in the end.

Sam frowned as he thought of something. "Hey, what about Red Alert's cameras?"

Sideswipe shrugged. "Red Alert's with the others, so we won't immediately get caught, and there's no point in destroying the cameras because they'll know it's us anyways."

"Yeah, but what about when Red Alert gets back? He'll check the cameras, see what we've done, warn everybody, and then there won't be any point to what we're doing."

"Good point. Alright, who wants to go into Hatchet's med-bay, steal a welder and weld the security room's door shut?"

"Ooh, sounds fun. I'll do it." Sparkplug volunteered.

"Come on people, we have to get this done before they get back."

Sam glared at the seemingly innocent energon in front of him. "Are you sure this stuff is safe?"

"Don't worry, it's fine."

"If you say so…" He handed the tainted energon to Sideswipe. The devious red twin poured it into the energon converter.

Jazz ran into the room. "They're back!"

"Frag!"

Everyone took a seat at the table closest to them, trying to look innocent. Okay, since it is them, it wasn't so much of 'innocent' but more of a 'we didn't mess with the energon while you were away, so please don't kill us'.

Ratchet glared at them as soon as he walked in. "What the frag are you doing walking around?! I told you to not leave the med-bay!"

Bumblebee looked up at him, using the cutest face he could muster. It always got him out of trouble when he was younger, so why not now? "We're sorry Ratchet. We were bored."

Ratchet visibly softened. "Fine. But get your sorry afts back to the med-bay now or I'll weld them to the berths."

It's almost funny how one sentence from Ratchet can nearly empty a room. Sideswipe 'accidentally' bumped into Prowl on his way out. "Remember, don't drink the energon."

They were nearly out of the base when Red Alert yelled. "Who welded my door shut?!"

"So… where we going this time?" Sparkplug asked. "Please not Canada. Not after what happened last time." He shuddered.

"Hey, it's your fault for provoking that moose." Sam said.

"I did not provoke it! Anyways, no Canada. It's evil."

Sam's optics flickered, the closest thing he could get to rolling his eyes. "You say that about every place we go to. And I'm telling you, if you stop making the wildlife mad, they'll stop attacking you and we could have a pleasant vacation."

"I don't always make the wildlife mad."

"Oh, so that's why you were attacked by coyotes in Mexico? Or alligators in Louisiana? Or by that pack of alley cats in Texas?"

"That just means all those places are evil."

"No it doesn- Oh, never mind."

Red Alert stormed into the rec. room, furious. "Someone welded the security room's door shut."

Ironhide snorted. "Three guesses who did that and the first two don't count."

Prowl stood up. "I'll go get them. You just stay here and have some energon."

Ratchet walked over to the energon converter, getting several energon cubes, handing one to each mech before making his way back to his table. Several minutes passed in contented silence. Then…

"Um, Ratch?"

He looked up at his long-time friend. "Yes Wheeljack?"

"Look down."

He obligingly looked down… and found out he was a lazy yellow. "WHAT THE FRAG?!" His whole body suddenly turned red. He stared at it, confused. "What's going on?" He turned an odd shade of purple-ish red.

"Hmm, interesting. Ratchet, try calming down." Wheeljack said.

He was tempted to tell his friend to frag off, but decidedly forced himself to calm down. He turned a frosty blue color.

"Just as I thought. It changes with your mood. Since you were happy, you we're yellow. When you got mad, red. And when you got confused, yet still mad, you turned a purple red. And when you calmed down, blue. Uh-oh, you're turning red again."

"Why the frag am I changing colors?"

Wheeljack glared at his energon cube disdainfully. "Ten to one, are resident pranksters messed with the energon converter." He looked down at his own body. "That's the only thing I can think of that would turn us all weird colors."

Ironhide's optics narrowed. "Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that Prowl decided to leave, even though he was the lowest on energy?"

Any other time, and they would have blamed it on Prowl being, well, Prowl. But after last year's incident… "I'm going to weld those fraggers' mouth to their slaggin' skidplates' then laugh as they try to move." Ratchet stalked out of the room to go find -and possibly kill- his wayward bondmate.

Wheeljack sighed. "I'll go start working on an antidote."

Prowl pulled into the abandoned warehouse they agreed to meet at. The whole pranking group -The twins, Jazz, Sam, Sparkplug, and Bumblebee- looked at him as he transformed. Jazz grinned. "So, how'd it go?"

Prowl tossed him a data pad. "I do believe you have destroyed my reputation. As soon as they started changing colors, they came looking for me. By the way, your concoction didn't exactly worked as plan."

Sideswipe frowned. "How so?"

"It changes their armor according to their mood. Last time I saw him, Ratchet was red, so you might want to avoid the base longer than usual."

"Wait a sec. You're saying he, of all people, created mood ring energon?" Sam asked.

Prowl's head tilted to the side ever so slightly as he looked up the term 'mood ring'. "Yes."

"That's actually kinda cool."

"Even if you think that it is… 'cool', Ratchet obviously did not-"

"YOU SORRY FRAGGERS!"

They looked up in unison, optics wide, as a furious Ratchet stormed into the warehouse.

"Holy shit! How'd he find us?"

"I'm bonded to these two idiots. It wasn't hard to track their energy signatures here."

The aforementioned idiots looked at each other in horror. With all the excitement, they forgot to block Ratchet out.

Sunstreaker sighed. "I must sincerely apologize Ratchet. It seems that we have caused you unneeded stress. But, before you kill us, I feel you must know… It was Sideswipe's idea! Run!" He pushed his brother into the medic, both of them falling down. Everyone else ran like hell (Yes, even Prowl. As I said before, he's not stupid), leaving Sideswipe to deal with the terrifying bot.

Ratchet pushed the larger mech off of him. "You're dead. And as soon as I catch them, they're dead."

Sideswipe glared at him. "You find it amusing that they left me behind, don't you?!"

"Of course not."

He pointed at his chassis. "Your colors tell me otherwise." He suddenly sighed. "I guess I can't blame them. I mean, all they did was follow the first and most important rule?"

Despite himself, Ratchet was curious. "What rule?"

"In case of Ratchet-sighting, run like hell."

Alright, I'm leaving it here. I'm pretty sure it's actually done this time. I mean, there's not much else I can do with it. Though, I did say that the last two times… Anyways, I might do another chapter where the Autobots deal with the aftermath of this prank. A.K.A. Write a chapter solely focusing on everyone getting frustrated because they can't hide they're feelings. That would be less humor, more drama, though. Don't worry, I'm going to avoid angst for this story, so you people who don't like angst can safely read. Tell me how you like it. And, as usual, tell me if you see any mistakes.