Ice Skating in the Medbay Hall!

Christmas Night Only!

"Hold still slaggit!" Cliffjumper yelped and clung to Trailbreaker's helm as the big black mech wobbled.

"Sorry."

The red minibot just huffed from where he stood on Breaker's shoulders, "I can't hang these if you're moving!"

Bluestreak rushed into the rec room and whistled in appreciation. Trailbreaker and Cliff were haphazardly hanging paper snowflakes to the ceiling while Beachcomber and Hound slowly wound a string of glittering lights around a massive evergreen in the corner. Wheeljack stood nearby coordinating. Coming over to watch, the gray and red bot frowned briefly. Where the lights supposed to be lit while they were stringing them? Weren't they supposed to put them up and then plug them in?

"Hello Bluestreak." A friendly female voice drew the Praxian's attention downward.

Two humans and a minibot sat on the Cybertronian sized couch cutting out the snowflakes to be hung while Christmas music caroled from the TV. "Hey Shay, Spike. Bee, those look awesome!"

"Thanks." Bumblebee smiled as his friend awed over the complex cutouts. They weren't paper, instead some sort of thin semi-flexible material that Grapple had produced for everyone to work with. Spike huffed in exasperation.

"How do you do that?! I've been making these for years and mine are never that good looking."

Laughing, the yellow minibot leaned forward to show the young man a different way to fold their cutouts while Shay snickered and held up her own for Bluestreak to study. Door wings wiggled happily as he leaned over the back of the couch, "These are nice. I like the ones that look like they have fish on them."

A snort. "I'm not sure how that keeps happening. Oh hey... I like this song." The woman turned toward the TV as 'The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies' started up. She hummed along merrily until an exclamation from the bot startled her.

"Oh!" Blue jerked up a little in startlement, a serious expression on his face. "I forgot for a minute why I came in here, but the Twins want you to come to the training rooms. They said to hurry! It sounded kinda important but I don't know why..."

Getting up and sliding off the couch, Shay gestured at the mess of scissors, scraps, and piled snowflakes. "Can you take over my snowflake duty? I better go make sure they're not in trouble." Bluestreak straightened with a beaming smile and saluted. He plopped down on her vacated spot and cheerfully started to fold the stacked sheets as the woman left the noisy room at a jog. Speeding up into a run, she dashed through the halls and toward the training room all the while wondering if something was wrong. Christmas was tomorrow morning! They didn't have time for things to go wrong. All the preparations had people scurrying to be ready and the supply list for decorations alone had sent Prowl into a tizzy. It really didn't matter that they were from Cybertron. The bots liked to celebrate being together with family and had easily taken to the holiday with festive cheer.

Panting, Shay trotted into the training room to find it dark and seemingly empty. "Guys? What the hell..." She trailed off until something moving on her left had her jumping and landing on her butt.

"Ssshhhhh! It's us!" A voice whispered as two set of darker blue optics lit up to a low setting in the near pitch black. Sideswipe stepped forward and crouched until they were face to face, "Okay, we need your help."

"What?" The woman stared in surprise but kept her voice at a whisper like his, "Why in the name of Primus are you hiding in here?"

Sunstreaker crept closer and shifted to set down a rather large bag, "Because we can't let the others see us moving the presents." Her jaw dropped open as the contents of the bulging bag became apparent. Slowly, Shay questioned.

"Whose idea was it to let you guys keep an optic on the gifts?"

"We lost a bet." The gold lambo grumbled, "And they know we won't damage the presents." Even the Terror Twins wouldn't risk messing with the tradition of Christmas gift giving. A few extra prank presents might make their way into the pile but nothing would be damaged or go missing. And if they did then everyone knew who to blame, which was precisely why no one wanted to take on that job.

"Okay, so we need help sneaking the presents into the rec room when no one is looking because we made a bet with Jazz that we could get them in without being seen because you know Santa is never seen," Sideswipe winked in the dark while Sunny scoffed, "But there are too many people in there right now and every time we get close to the rec room Jazz shows up to smirk at us, the annoying slagger. So can you help?"

"Um...yes. How exactly would I do this?" Shay's face scrunched up in thought.

The twins looked at each other with a grimace and shrugged. She sighed. Alright then. How to get a number of decorating bots out of the rec room for a few moments. Obviously a distraction was needed. "How much time do you need?"

"Five minutes at least. This is a lot of presents." Sunstreaker muttered, glancing at the lumpy bag that came all the way up to his hip plates. Mind moving a thousand miles a minute, Shay tapped her lips with a finger and scowled. A distraction. Not something going wrong because they couldn't mess things up so close to Christmas, but still eventful to gain attention. A niggling though bloomed inside and her eyes narrowed.

"Where's Optimus?"

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker frowned in confusion, still kneeling on the floor. Slowly, the red lambo answered with a suspicious tone, "Helping Carly string up those glass icicles on the front door. Why?"

"I have an idea. If it works then the rec room should be clear in about half an hour. If not then I don't have a clue and we'll have to try something else." With no explanation, she bolted from the room and ignored Sideswipe yelling 'Wait!' behind her. In moments, Shay found Optimus at the front entrance of the Ark. A blonde woman was pulling strands of glass ornaments from their wrappings and feeding the line up to the huge bot. Standing on the tips of his feet, the Prime pinned them up with care. Only another foot and the entire door frame would be finished.

"Optimus. I need to talk to you!" Shay gasped, hands on her knees as she tried to steady her breathing.

At that moment, the door opened to allow Hound and Mirage to enter. Carly shrieked at the sudden freezing wind and snow that blew in. The door quickly closed behind the frosted bots and Shay gasped at the chill, wrapping her arms around her thicker jacket. With cries of sorry, the mechs ran off, Carly's sharp words trailing after.

The Prime laughed before hanging the last bit and then bending down to speak with Shay, "Is something a matter?"

With a 'come here' gesture, the woman had him lean down so she could whisper in his audio. After a moment, the cargo bot straightened and gave her a look. Shay clasped her arms behind her back and let her face slide into an innocent expression. The corners of Prime's optics crinkled in merriment, "I do believe that will be just fine. Although you may have trouble moving it by yourself. And Sideswipe needs to stop teaching you the innocent face."

"He didn't teach me that, Bluestreak did." She laughed. "Sideswipe taught me how to cackle evilly." The semi chuckled before looking at the other human.

"Carly?" Optimus called at the still fuming blonde, "Do you need any more help with these or are we done?"

Giving the two a suspicious look, especially at Shay's expression that was a barely controlled smile, Carly shook her head, "No. We're good. I have to go check on the cookies though. They should be done soon."

"I can't wait to try them." Shay admitted.

"Ah huh. Go do whatever it is you're up to." The other woman smirked and went off to the kitchen. Optimus and Shay looked at each other with laughing eyes before they headed for Wheeljack's lab. This was going to be good.

"It's been thirty minutes. Whatever she did isn't working." Sideswipe moaned, peering around the corner to see that yes, there were still bots in the rec room and no, they weren't sneaking in anytime soon. And then a bellow down the hall caught everyone's attention. It was used in a battle tone, meaning: impossible to ignore.

"Ice skating in the medbay hall! Christmas night only!" Optimus yelled.

Movement and chatter stopped as everyone started to move out of the rec room. A few people muttered in disbelief as the Prime strolled over and chuckled, "You won't get thrown in the brig and Ratchet promised not to berate anyone for it. You'd better hurry. The aerialbots already started sliding around."

"Woohooo!" Several mechs ran down the corridor towards the impromptu skating rink. Within seconds there was a mad and crazy dash and the rec room was suddenly deathly silent and empty. Sunstreaker smirked at his twin's jaw hanging open.

"Close your mouth bro. She did it."

The shrank back as Optimus, the sole occupant of the now empty hall walked by and gave them a wink before heading back towards the sounds of happy shouts and crashes. For a split second the lamborghinis looked at his retreating form, each other and then the unguarded doors that led to the decorated pine. They dashed into the room with a large bag of presents.

Sitting in safety on Ratchet's shoulder pads, Shay surveyed the organized chaos in front of her.

Some time ago Wheeljack had built a blaster that was supposed to freeze a bot's internal circuits so they were paralyzed. Unfortunately it's radius was just too big and instead left five foot wide spots of ice around wherever it was shot. It had taken Optimus hardly any time at all to cover the entire section of floor with a two inch layer of ice.

The aerialbots had been the first to discover it, walking past only a moment after they were finished. By now they had been joined by several minibots jumping over fallen friends and tugging each other along in a line. Inferno yelped as he slipped and landed on his aft with a chuckle. Jazz whipped by laughing and blaring some Christmas tune, exhilaration on his face. The ice couldn't really damage them besides a few scratches which meant they could all participate without worrying. Ratchet guffawed when Ironhide bumped into Streetwise and landed on his faceplates. Blaster started to play 'Jingle Bell Rock' at the other end of the hallway, much to everyone's pleasure.

Optimus carefully slid over to where the ambulance and human stood, "It seems everyone is enjoying themselves." With a wink, Shay smiled and watched the mayhem.

Turning his helm back and forth and not finding what he was looking for, Ratchet gave a hum in thought, "I don't see the Twins. They better not be getting in trouble."

A war whoop startled them as the lambos in question surged into the crowd. Easily gliding around Smokescreen and Perceptor, Sideswipe poked at Spike on Bumblebee's shoulders in passing and skidded to a stop right in front of the medic and Shay. Sunstreaker slipped by and started to show off with some fancy spins and jumps.

"When did you learn to ice skate?" Shay laughed.

Sideswipe shrugged, "Maybe we're just good at everything?"

"You are terrible at staying out of trouble." Prowl remarked, gliding by in a slow turn. Doorwings held proud, the slippery floor didn't seem to bother him in the least. The red hellion cackled and picked up Shay with two hands.

"Lets skate!"

"Careful!" Ratchet yelled, worried as several bots crashed into each other and the wall. Rolling his optics at the dog pile, the medic slowly made his way out onto the ice. Ignoring Ratchet's warning, Sideswipe slid towards where Sunstreaker and Jazz were trying to one-up each other in showing off.

"Thank you." He whispered, "we got them all in." A few yards away, Sunstreaker glanced at them and gave a nod in her direction. The Twins must have been talking over their bond.

Shay smiled up at him, "Merry Christmas guys."

"Merry Christmas." He repeated as they skated around in the hall, laughter and joy echoing through the base as everyone had fun the night before Christmas.