Wow, finally got this done. Whew! It took a lot longer then I expected, especially after those last two just flew onto the page. n_n; It turned out to be longer then I anticipated, but that's okay because I wanted to introduce Red Alert before I really focus on him later (much later ;3) and I had to make sure to polish off what happened to the younglings' new tree. ;) I was trying to draw a picture of it the other day when I was feeling bad. It looks really funny. xP I'll put it up sometimes when it's done if you want to see it. :3
Anyway, I would really like to thank all of my reviewers for their lovely words! Pyroth Tenka, Trapezoidal, Autobotgirl2234, and Lynn Jones, you are all awesome! :3 And I'm really glad you liked our new lyrics for O Christmas Tree. xP Such fun!
Also, announcement! Since tomorrow's Christmas and I have a bunch of chapters planned out but not written, I'm giving myself til the end of the year to get this finish, so watch out for more updates over the next week! Oh, and if you see any typos and such, I'm sorry. I finished it just last night and I really wanted to get it up as soon as I could. So here we are. n_n;
Wow...I just heard that we have a tornado alert on Christmas tomorrow! :O What the heck? First it's warm enough to wear skirts and then we might get a tornado?! I'm telling you Houston has the weirdest weather ever. I mean seriously.
:) Well hopefully it'll be okay. And I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! ::Hearts!:: :D
...
Feels Like Christmas
3 – My Very Own White Christmas – 3
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the tree tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow"
The Autobot's Christmas tree appeared quite suddenly and mysteriously one afternoon shortly after Aria had stalked out of the twins' room in sheer embarrassment. It caused quite a stir, given that none of the bots had ever seen one before.
"What's it supposed to even be?" Cliffjumper asked as he stared at the strange sculpture that had appeared in the rec room sometime in the past hour.
Hound answered before Aria could. "It's a tree…at least," he cocked his head to the side as he looked the strange concoction up and down, "I think it's a tree."
On the other side of the possible tree-thing, Trailbreaker was giving the strange object a similar inspection. "It…kinda looks like a tree." He said slowly.
Kinda was an apt description. The tree-monster was actually a rough conglomeration of strange metallic objects that had been assembled in a roughly conical structure. There were distinct layers of objects, with the biggest, widest layer at the bottom and the skinniest one at the top. The bottommost layer was constructed of wide sheets of torn metal that vaguely resembled the spiny branches Aria had told them about, but other than that none of the other layers had branch-looking objects. Instead they had old wrenches, various pipes, and even some stiff plugs with multi-connections fanned out to cover more surface area, all of varying lengths and sizes. The topmost layers were actually made up of old cogs, each getting smaller with the topmost one being so small that would have fit on Aria's finger like a ring. On the very top, sprouting like some kind of mechanical vegetable, appeared to be the inner workings of a very unfortunate datapad.
Cliffjumper's muttered, "What the heck?" Seemed to express everyone's thoughts quite nicely.
Red Alert was having a particularly bad reaction to the tree-like object.
"Alright," he said sternly after taking a fully cycle to peer unblinkingly at one of the mini-welders that, like everything else, were welded to the pole that ran up the center of the 'tree'. "Who did this? Someone must have seen who put this thing in here."
If anybody did, they decided not to volunteer the information.
The overprotective security director scowled at the room's occupants briefly before pinning his optics back on the suspicious tree, as if he was afraid of what it might do if he took his optics off of it.
Off to the side, Cliffjumper rolled his own optics at him. This was ridiculous, and it hadn't exactly been 'sane' to start with.
Red Alert's scowl deepened, but it was hard to tell if he was becoming more irritated with the tree or the other mechs' indifference since he was still glaring at the tree.
"This is a direct offense against my security protocols!" He hissed, still glaring at the tree-thing. "Who knows where this...contraband came from! Who knows what's even in it!" He insisted, subtly leaning away from the tree as if the 'contraband' would suddenly reach out of the tree and bite him. "This could all be a clever camouflage for a Decepticon trick! They could be listening to us right now."
Half the mechs in the room ran a sensors sweep almost unconsciously before realizing the same thing Cliffjumper had a moment ago; this was insane.
Near the back of the room, Prowl stood frowning at the so called 'tree'. Unlike Red he felt certain that the only thing the tree was hiding were the plans of the two brightly colored big-mouths standing against the wall and trying not to look too smug. Any contraband the tree-monster had within it belonged solely to them. Or at least, it had been before they had tried to foist it off as some kind of Earth foliage.
"Well that's going to change right now," Prowl thought as he straightened up and began to march sternly over to where the twins were loitering.
A blur of colors not even half his sized suddenly tumbling past him made him stop mid-march.
"It's here!"
"Yay! Lemme see! Lemme see!"
"Hey! Quit pushing Skids I wanna see too!"
"Stop it! You're gonna knock it over!"
"Ooo...it's all shiny like Jie Mei said."
"Jie Mei! Jie Mei! Look at it!"
"Isn't it pretty Aria?"
Aria followed the eager younglings at a slower pace, but from the smile on her face Prowl thought she was just as excited as them about the...'tree'.
"It's very pretty Cloud'." She agreed as she looked the thing up and down approvingly, hands propped on her hips as she did. "I guess we made a good choice after all."
As the grown-ups watched the little bots with varying grins on their faces (except for Red Alert, who was still eyeing the tree, and Prowl, who was still eyeing the twins) Arcee reached out a tentative hand and gently touched one of the lowest branches on the tree. She had barely brushed it when it shifted, rubbing against its neighboring branches and sending a musical jangle through the room.
The only femmeling jumped back in surprise, but quickly laughed, twittering happily in the younglings'' baby language.
The rest of the young bots all stepped closer, talking to each other in squeaks and chirps as they discovered what other parts of the tree made musical sounds. Behind them the adults laughed quietly to themselves as the little ones wandered around the tree with bright, curious optics. Well, all except Red Alert, who was standing stiffly nearby, hands partially outstretched as if he was ready to snatch away the younglings from the tree-monster at any moment.
Then one of the little bots found a switch at the tree's base and gave it an experimental flick to see what it did.
With a soft, chorused thwoom! each of the mini-welders connected to the tree suddenly came to life, startling more than just the younglings. To Aria, the gently flickering flames looked like so many Christmas lights spread around the tree. To everyone else, it looked like the thing was one step closer to spontaneously combusting.
This time Red Alert really did snatch up the closest youngling as little fires suddenly appeared around the tree-monster. Bumblebee gave a startled squeak as he was suddenly snatched up by the panicky Red Alert and then awkwardly held in the air away from the security director's body.
Aria felt her mouth drop open as she watched the grown mech sweep up her little brother. She wasn't even sure how to react when Bumblebee curled up on himself anxiously since there was no stable frame for him to hold on to like he was used to. Aria gaped at the bot, but didn't say anything, afraid she would startle Red into suddenly dropping her di di.
Red Alert hardly noticed Bumblebee's nervous posture since he was now staring madly at the flaming Christmas tree, tensely waiting for it to attack.
No one moved for a long moment to keep from unnerving Red Alert further. But then Bumblebee started to whine distressingly, not liking how it felt to be held in thin air without anything safe to hold onto like he was used to.
Red Alert finally dragged his attention away from the impending doom of the Christmas tree and stared at Bumblebee with uncertain optics.
"Why's he doing that?" He asked quickly. "It's that thing scaring him isn't it? Don't worry small mech I won't let the tree-monster eat you." Red Alert didn't sound very comforting as he shifted Bee a little farther from the tree.
Bumblebee stopped whining...but only because he started to cry instead.
From off to the side, Hound sighed. "Alright there Red," he said coming forward and calmly taking the little mech from Red Alert, "quit scaring the poor kid. It ain't any kind of monster and it's not going to eat anybody." He told them, sounding very sure of himself, like he was trying to talk someone down. Although, no one there was one hundred percent certain that he was talking to Bumblebee either...
The dark green tracker whirred soothingly to the little yellow mechling as he pulled Bumblebee close and let him wrap his small arms around his neck for comfort. The six other small bots quickly crowded around Hound's feet, all chirping their own questions to see if Bee had escaped the Trauma-Bot (as they had so affectionately dubbed Red Alert) unscathed.
Seeing that her littlest mech was well taken care of, Aria turned her undivided attention to Red Alert.
"Red," she snapped as she scowled up at him, "what are you doing?"
Red Alert kept his optics fixated firmly on the so-called tree. "I'm investigating a threat. What's it look like I'm doing?" He snapped back.
Aria raised one eyebrow at him. "It's a tree." She told him point blank.
"It appeared here quite mysteriously and with no apparent purpose other than to shake our nerve and burn the base down."
"It's a tree." She said again.
Red slanted a look at her. "You don't know that for sure."
Aria scowled at him and then flung an arm out at the tree-monster. "It's. A. Tree." She said again.
Before Red Alert could do more than scowl, Skids piped up, "It's our tree."
That gave Red Alert pause.
The security director's gaze immediately found the little green mechling, who immediately wished he hadn't said anything at all.
"You're tree?" Red Alert inquired suspiciously, although Aria would be the first to admit it could have just been his normal tone of voice by now. "And just what makes this...thing," he jerked an incriminating digit at the offending tree, "yours?"
Skids toed the ground with one uncomfortable foot and held his hands behind his back nervously. "Well," he said carefully, "we ordered it."
"To do what?" Sideswipe quickly asked, earning an elbow jab from his brother and a suspicious look from Prowl. From the corner of her eyes, Aria noticed that Sideswipe only gave a lopsided smile and absentmindedly rubbed at his side as he went back to watching Red and the younglings, who were back to ignoring him after a cursory glance in his direction.
"What do you mean," Red Alert asked Skids slowly, "that you ordered it?"
Skids blinked at him, and then looked over at his brother who was now standing next to him. "Well," Mudflap spoke up this time, "he means we wanted a tree-"
Red Alert's optics narrowed. "Uh-huh..."
"-so we asked someone to make one for us."
"And they did!" Skids added, feeling the need to say something since he'd been the one asked in the first place.
Mudflap nodded. "And we like it even if you don't."
Both mechlings then stuck out their tongues at Red Alert with simultaneous, "Nah!"s.
Red Alert blinked at the sudden display, for an instant losing his trademark suspicious look, but then it returned in full force.
"And just who," he put so much stress on the word that Aria thought he sounded like an owl, "did you ask to make you this tree?"
"Finally, we're getting somewhere." Aria thought, noticing that Red Alert had dropped the 'so called' from the word 'tree'.
Mudflap opened his mouth wide to answer, but was cut off when Skids suddenly elbowed him in the side. Instead of a name, a startled yelp jumped out of the mechling's mouth instead.
He shot his twin the sharp look that usually preceded a throw down, but stopped when he saw Skids shaking his head meaningfully at him.
Suddenly remembering that they weren't allowed to tell anyone who had made them their tree, Mudflap gave a long, "Oh...right."
And then instantly clammed up.
Meanwhile, Red Alert was still waiting for an answer.
"Well?" He prompted when the twins only stared at him with deceptively wide optics.
The twins shared a look before turning back to Red.
"We forgot!" They chirped together.
They weren't fooling anyone, least of all Red. But unlike everyone else, he did not find the display in any way cute or funny and he gave every bot that laughed at the mechlings' an evil optic so potent that it nearly rivaled Prowl's.
Meanwhile the real Prowl was still standing in the background, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand.
"Oh Primus," he muttered to himself, "all this over a so-called tree-monster..."
He shot a sharp look at the offending object, sitting quietly in its spot against the wall. The younglings, now quite recovered from their scare with Red, were all clustered around it once again, admiring it from their limited height. The mini-twins escaped from Red to join them and then quickly started fussing over the bottommost layer of the 'tree'.
"We gotta make it higher so that the Santa-man can fit all of our presents under it!" Skids insisted as he shoved with all of his little might on the torn up pieces of metal that ringed the tree.
Prowl's optics immediately focused in on the struggling younglings. "Santa-man? What's a Santa-man? Aria!" He spun on the girl who was now arguing fiercely with the Autobot's security direction. "What's a Santa-man and why is he leaving us things?!" He demanded, rather loudly for, well...him.
Aria started to turn around, mouth open to tell whoever was yelling at her now to just shut up for a minute, but stopped when she saw it was Prowl.
She blinked at him in confusion.
Prowl didn't back down. He had learned after the very first organic-holiday event - what was now widely known as the Easter Fiasco - that Aria's so called 'festivities' were nothing but a thinly concealed organic nightmare. If there was a file out there big enough to hold all of the paperwork that had come from Aria's celebrations, Prowl would have labeled it in big, red letters, 'AVOID AT ALL COSTS'.
Aria was still staring up in concern up at Prowl. "Huh? Oh, you mean Santa Claus? He's nothing to worry about Prowl. He doesn't really ex-"
Aria suddenly stopped talking, and slid an anxious look over at her younglings standing nearby. They were still admiring their tree. Now that they were finally excited about Santa Claus she couldn't exactly tell them that she was really the one who'd be delivering them presents now could she?
Above her, Prowl just narrowed his optics at her.
"I mean, uh-" Aria stammered quickly, "that he isn't dangerous. He comes once a year on Earth to give presents to good little kids. And I've managed to convince him to come here too for once." She beamed up at him, proud of her verbal recovery.
If Prowl had been anyone less than himself, he would have made a face at Aria. As it was, his narrowed optics continued to bore into her.
Standing next to him, grinning in his usual way, Jazz appeared to be having the exact opposite reaction as Prowl's.
"This Santa-man sounds like one cool cat." He observed in his unusual mix of Earth words. "You should have asked him to come 'round sooner Aria."
Aria grinned nervously. "Yeah I know. I can't believe I didn't think of this before."
Other mechs in the room were chuckling now. Prowl wasn't one of them. Actually he had no idea what they found so funny in the first place. An organic was going to sneak into their base and just leave them things? What did he want? What was the point of this? And how did this constitute a holiday?
Prowl mentally shook himself. If he kept asking himself questions like that, he'd end up in a twitching heap on the floor. And he wasn't about to give Sunny and Sides that kind of satisfaction.
"Jie Mei! Jie Mei!" Fastlane suddenly cried, running up to his sister. "Do you think that if I'm extra special good that the Santa-man will get me a sonic flight engine like Smokerunner's?" He asked, nearly jumping out of his armor with excitement.
"Or maybe some heel struts like Chromia's?" Arcee asked in a more uncertain voice. She tried to avoid asking for 'girly' things in front of the other younglings. Skids and Mudflap in particular would never let her forget about it.
Aria made a face. "Er...I think you might be a little young for heel struts 'Cee. And you know well and good that Smokerunner said you weren't allowed to have a sonic engine until you knew how to fly with this engine Fastlane. Santa listens to guardians too."
Fastlane made a face. "Fine," he grumbled.
Cloudraker looked more curious. "If the Santa-man doesn't give things like that," he asked slowly, "then what does he give?"
Aria smiled. "Toys." She told them. "Games. Fun things like that."
Cloudraker shuttered one optic in thought. "So..." he drew the word out, "if I asked for a new virtual reality game, I'd get it?" He asked loudly, optics bright.
Aria grinned almost secretively and threw a wink at Jazz, who chuckled. "I think that could be arranged Cloud."
Cloudraker's optics were almost white with excitement. Aria's yes sent an excited round of clicks through the youngling ranks as they discussed the possibilities of this, making the adults laugh quietly to themselves.
Understanding suddenly dawned on Prowl. "This is for the younglings!" He said with more emotion then he had meant.
Off to the side, Sunny and Sides snickered. "Now he gets it."
Prowl scowled at them, but Jazz just laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "You got it Prowler. Santa-man's only here for the kiddies. Try not to look too disappointed."
Prowl slanted his friend a sour look. "As long as this doesn't turn out like Halloween." He muttered pointedly. If he ever heard Michael Jackson's Thriller again he was going to take a flying leap off the tallest building in the city.
Jazz loudly laughed. "Oo boy!" He crowed, holding his sides as he laughed so hard it made them hurt. "That was the best one yet!"
Prowl did the best thing he could; he ignored his friend. He still hadn't forgiven him for 'haunting' him.
Aria meanwhile was watching her brood with a grin. "Wow, they took to that quick enough."
The younglings didn't hear her though and went on chattering excitedly to each other in the chirps, squeaks, and whistles that made up Cybertronian baby-language.
Unable to understand them, Aria stopped bothering to try and decipher their chatter. Instead she turned toward their new Christmas tree and propped her hands up on her hips as she inspected it. She grinned soon enough.
"I really like those welding torches as candles." She said to no one in particular. Then with a happy sigh she added, "Now all we need is some snow and it'd be the most perfect, Christmas-y scene!" She exclaimed proudly.
That Prowl heard.
"It doesn't snow here Aria." He told her matter-of-factly. "You should know that by now."
Aria frowned up at him, annoyed that he was ruining her Christmas joy with logic.
Prowl didn't even notice as he looked inward, wondering how he could survive this human holiday without glitching...
But Aria wasn't done with him yet. "But it could snow." She told him stubbornly. "It's not very likely, but it could."
Her insistence managed to drag Prowl's attention away from his impending survival-er...Christmas plans.
He frowned down at her, confused by her strange insistence. "No it couldn't. It's not possible."
Aria returned Prowl's scowl with interest. "But I want it to snow." She told him.
Prowl wondered how that was supposed to solve anything. "Want it or not you're not getting any snow."
"As far as you know." Aria returned.
Prowl blinked. "I'm not sure if that makes sense Aria."
Aria blinked up at him. Inwardly she wondered how his pointing out her possible mistakes made anything better.
Seeing that he wasn't really getting anywhere, Prowl groaned quietly. He had no idea about any other humans since he didn't know any, but based on Aria's example, he felt fairly safe in thinking that as a race they were generally overly stubborn and, therefore, more than a little annoying.
"Aria," Prowl said slowly as if that would help her see just how unreasonable she was being, "have you ever seen clouds on Cybertron?" He asked her carefully.
Aria thought about it, looking up and putting a finger to her chin. "Nope." She finally answered lightly.
Prowl nodded like a teacher when a student recited back the right answer. "And have you ever seen it rain here?"
Aria didn't take as long to think this time. "Not really, no." She told him.
Prowl nodded again. "Have you ever even seen water outside of the city?"
Aria blinked. "Nuh-uh. Don't think I have." And then frowned. "Come to think of it your definition of 'water' doesn't exactly match up with mine..." She'd figured that out after that near disastrous swimming incident...
Prowl nodded rather decisively a third and final time. "Exactly. And without clouds, without rain, without water, how could it possibly snow here?" This last question was purely rhetorical.
Aria answered him anyway with a very large smile. "Christmas magic of course."
Prowl nearly glitched on the spot. He could practically feel his logic processor dropping out of his head. The only thing that kept him from going into stasis-lock altogether was the fact that he could hear the twins' snickering on the other side of the room.
"Twenty creds he keels over in the next ten kliks." Sunny whispered.
There was a slap as the two sealed the bet. "You're on." Sides whispered back.
For Prowl there was more than twenty credits on the line. Needing to get the argument back on track so he wouldn't end up twitching on the floor with the entire rec room audience laughing at him, Prowl forcibly turned his attention back to Aria.
"Aria," he said, kneeling down to be closer to the human's eye level, "as much as I know you don't want to hear it, I feel perfectly safe in telling you that it will. Not. Snow."
Aria blinked sweetly up at him. "But I want snow." She said again.
"But it won't snow."
"But I like snow."
"Like it or not it's not going to snow!" Prowl barked.
Aria blinked up at him. "As far as you know."
Steam just about sizzled off of the mech.
Aria just giggled.
Prowl's optics locked onto her at the sound. He suddenly had the very strong feeling that she was doing this just to annoy him...
Needing to get out of here before the human's wishful thinking really got in him trouble, Prowl did the only thing that would let him get out of here without anymore embarrassment and frustration then he'd already suffered.
He got up and left.
Aria waited until the door had shut behind the stiff black and white mech before she giggled.
"Well that was fun." She laughed before the younglings ended up grabbing hold of her attention once again. She didn't give a second thought to her snow argument for the rest of the day.
...
Seeing as she had only been trying to drive Prowl crazy earlier, Aria hadn't really expected it to snow, no matter how hard she wished for it, but then...
"Prowl! Prowl! You've got to come see this!"
The black and white mech looked up from his work just in time to see Aria slide into view. The little human was smiling from ear to ear with joy, like a kid at, well, Christmas.
Prowl followed the excited human with his eyes as she darted across the room, nearly ran into the front of his desk, spun round in an odd circle, and then ran up to Prowl's ankle. From there she beamed up at him with bright eyes.
Prowl waited for the inevitable.
"Prowl! Prowl!" She called up breathlessly. "Prowl it's snowing outside!"
If anything, Prowl's face grew even sterner. "Aria please-" he started to say.
But she was already shaking her head. "No, no I mean it Prowl. It's snowing outside!"
Prowl vented a sigh. "Yes Aria, I get it. You want snow. But no matter how much you want it to snow it's-"
"Snowing outside right now!" Aria finished for him.
Prowl raised an optic ridge at her, but before he could get the words out, Aria rolled her eyes at him.
"And I can prove it! Just come on, come on!" She wrapped her hands around the edges in his boot and began to pull at him to get him to hurry up. It was a futile gesture of course, but the message was clear enough, even to Prowl.
Venting a deep sigh, Prowl put his stylus down. "Alright fine." He said as he stood up from his desk. "Show me this proof."
Aria grinned and giggled, obviously giddy about this assumed 'snow'. With a resigned sigh, Prowl let her pull him forward.
She got tired of pulling at him by the time they reached the office door and darted ahead instead. There was a window at the end of the hall, reinforced to withstand barrages of Seeker fire. The panes were covered in so much grime that Prowl could hardly see through them from this distance. About halfway down the hall though he caught sight of movement coming from the other side of the window.
Prowl's gait stuttered and he squinted at the window. This couldn't be right. The movement was coming from peculiar, little white things. They were drifting down from up above and piling up on the window shelf outside.
By the time they reached the window, Prowl's mouth was actually hanging open. There was no denying it. It was, without a doubt-
"Snow," Aria giggled, "It's really snow."
Girl and mech stared another at the softly drifting specks as they floated past the dirty window. And then Aria gave a squeak and started hopping up and down in thrilled excitement.
"It's actually snowing!" She abruptly hollered as she hopped. "Aha!" She laughed in giddy joy.
Prowl managed to tear his attention away from the impossible snowstorm long enough to look down at his human companion. For a moment he thought this was only some elaborate 'I told you so'.
But then he saw the look on her face. Her eyes were bright, like the younglings when they had first learned how to transform. It had been new and exciting and even he had cracked a smile when he'd seen them slowly fumbling through each step in their different transformations before zipping around on newly discovered wheels. She was watching the dirty window as if it was the greatest thing on the planet and each little white puff of snow was a miracle in and of itself.
Prowl watched his human friend as her eyes followed a snowflake gently drifting past the dirty pane, and then when that disappeared, her eyes darted up and found another flake to follow. She giggled again and bit her lip in anticipation.
This wasn't an 'I told you so', Prowl realized. Aria was just happy. Happy and eager to share this miracle with him.
Prowl felt himself smile, just a little. He wasn't used to others just wanting to share something like this with him. That was usually reserved for friends, and even Prowl knew he didn't have all that many. Even before the war had started he'd been a loner. He had either had no time or inclination to listen to other bots' personal problems. Still wasn't really. Only now he had friends despite that, no matter how much he tended to protest...
Aria was one of those strange friends, Prowl knew, despite her stubbornness and organic strangeness and his equal tenacity and overly logical thinking.
Right now everything beyond the window was shouting at Prowl that this couldn't really be happening. It did not snow on Cybertron. It was not even physically possible. And yet, here it was, covering the landscape before in a white blanket that was quite pretty in its simplicity. The snow covered the tops of towering buildings, occasionally slipping off of the more precarious rooftops to fall in white clumps to the far off ground.
Maybe his central processor had simply suffered a kind of mental break from the impossibility playing out in front of him, maybe this was Prowl's way of getting into the Christmas spirit, but for once, Prowl decided not to question the logic (or lack thereof). Instead he found he just wanted to stand there in the snow-muffled silence and watch the falling snow with Aria.
The strange pair looked past the dirty window at the new falling snow in a kind of awe neither had felt for a long time.
Eventually, Prowl spoke.
"I hope you have a good Christmas Aria." He told her quietly, not wanting to ruin the moment.
Aria looked away from the Christmas miracle beyond the window and smiled up at the stiff and stern former officer.
"Thanks Prowl." She murmured back with a cheerful grin. "And generally we say 'Merry Christmas' instead."
Prowl nodded at her in understanding. "I'll keep that in mind. And Aria?"
Aria looked up at him.
"Try not to drive everyone too crazy with your Christmas joy." And then added a split second later, "Please, that is."
Aria didn't appear to offended as she smiled up at Prowl. "I'll try," she told him, eyes shining with forthcoming mischief, "but I can't make any promises."
The answering grin felt a little strange on Prowl's face. "For once," he told her slowly, "I think I can live with that."
Aria just giggled again as they turned back to watch the snow falling softly in front of them.
...
"Well would ya look at that?" Jazz murmured in no small amount of wonder as he watched his best bud and favorite organic alien watch the falling 'snow'. "I guess there's such a thing as Christmas miracles after all!"
"Prow's not glitching?" Hound asked from where he stood a few feet away. The green tracker had a giant tube held over one arm, a constant flurry of soft white powder blowing out of the far end before drifting down more slowly to cover the area directly beneath them.
Jazz snuck another look from behind their cover and grinned. "Nope," he said as he ducked back behind the decorative sculpture they'd set up shop behind, "he's just standing there, enjoyin' the view."
A soft whistle came from somewhere below them. "That's a first," Mirage said from...well wherever it was he was standing as he projected the illusion of snow covered rooftops for their miniature audience.
Jazz just chuckled. "Like I said, Christmas miracles."
The snow ran out a few minutes later, the source material apparently depleted. Prowl and Aria watched the unexpected landscape for a little while longer, but soon Prowl had to get back to work, and Aria joined him as he made his way back to his office, only sparing one last giddy look out the window as she left.
"Just what is this stuff anyway?" Mirage's voice drifted up from below his co-conspirators. One of the miniature snow drifts that had piled up from their mech-made storm suddenly exploded to one side as an invisible foot kicked it.
Hound laughed as he put the hose down. "Oh, just some old building materials Grapple had lying around. It's that cement mixture that expired, oh, about forty orns ago."
Jazz could practically hear Mirage's optic ridge go up. "You mean the stuff he's been moaning about for the past orn because it's gone bad?"
Hound chuckled good naturedly again. "That's the stuff." He affirmed. "Turns out when this stuff expires it becomes all white and powdery." He picked up a handful of the snow replacement and let it sift through his fingers. If he'd been more familiar with human confections he would have thought it looked like sugar dusting the ground.
There was a soft fzzt as Mirage deactivated his cloak a moment later. He reappeared next to the window Prowl and Aria had been staring out of, one hand propped up on his hip as he took in the sight of the snow replacement covering the three foot square patch of ground at his feet. Another moment later, the hologram snow that had appeared to be covering the surrounding rooftops faded away as well.
"Sooo..." the blue and white mech said slowly, toeing the 'snow' again, "what do we do with it now? We can't just leave it here can we?"
Jazz bent down and gathered up a large handful of the stuff in question, presumably to inspect it further. Mirage watched him a moment, waiting for an answer, as the special ops bot began to pat the stuff down, occasionally moving it around in his hands as the compacted powder took on a rough, spheroid shape.
When it became clear that Jazz was not going to answer him, Mirage sighed and turned towards Hound instead. Clever or not, Jazz could still be odd at times. There was just no telling sometimes what was going through that processor of his.
"So do we just leave it? I don't really see the point of cleaning it up. The wind will blow it away soon enough." Mirage addressed Hound now.
Hound shrugged, moving towards the edge of the roof and sending a cascade of snow down on top of Mirage. "I guess so. At this rate the only thing that'll happen if we clean it up is Prowl will think he's lost his marbles."
Mirage huffed a dry laugh. "Sounds like something the twins would do."
Spaf!
A white burst of snow suddenly exploded against Mirage's face, taking the blue and white spy by surprise. He jerked back, weapon half transforming out before he recognized the sound of laughter above his head.
Unamused, Mirage's optics slowly traveled upward. Jazz was leaning over the edge of the roof, laughing his head off at his uptight friend.
With quiet dignity, Mirage wiped the snow off of his face with slow, precise movements.
"I fail to see how that is so humorous." He grumbled up at Jazz.
"Don't be so uptight Raj," Jazz told him when his laughter had died down to chuckles. "Yer goin' give me a headache."
Mirage scowled up at Jazz. "It's Mirage, not Raj, and you well know it." He grumbled. "And I've already got a headache thanks to that," he patted the remaining snow dust off of his pristine chassis, "spheroid projectile you threw at me. Now are you going to help us figure out what to do with this snow or what?" He demanded.
Jazz didn't appear to be phased by his friend's fussiness.
"Oh don't worry" he drawled with a crooked grin, "I'm sure we'll think of somethin'."