*Cackles gleefully* I have now finished my tormenting torture of Sunny. Mwuhahaha! And now the Valentine's Madness spreads to the adults! *cackles some more* If you couldn't tell by all the maniacal laughter I had lots of fun with this one. I think you'll love this next installment of what should be called in subtext 'Rose's attempt to torture bots with love, confetti, and Valentine's cards' or something like that anyway. :3 A BIG thank you goes out to my reviewers Vivian Hale, littledhampir 13, Suzumehime, and supergirlprime. You guys rock! Uh, and roll. xoxo ;P

...

Attack of the Valentines!

(aka: Valentine's Madness)

~^..^~

Sunny's Sorta Secret Admirer

~^..^~

"You ever get the feeling we're being watched?" Sideswipe carelessly asked Sunstreaker as they meandered down a hallway on their way out on patrols one orbit.

Sunstreaker rolled his optics at his brother. "That's because we are being watched you idiot. Those kids have been following us ever since we left Prowl's office." He grumbled, carefully keeping an optic on the two brats following them. They just ducked behind another corner, like they'd done the past twenty cycles whenever one of the twins had gone to get a better look at the little bots tailing them. This time though, the gold painted mech caught sight of a pair of bright red speed lines painted on the set of small grey wings.

"It's those two seeker runts." Sunstreaker all but growled. He wasn't exactly what one would call 'good with children'.

Sideswipe laughed, more at his brother's discomfort then the two kids trailing along behind them. "Ah relax Sunny, they're just a couple of younglings. They haven't even done anything."

Sunny slanted a glare at his brother, as much for the bright and shiny nickname as anything else. "Yet." He added.

Sideswipe grinned crookedly in agreement as he turned the corner.

Sunny rolled his optics again as he followed his brother around the bend in the hallway. Then he let out a yelp as Sideswipe grabbed his arm and yanked him against the wall.

"What the fra-" Sunstreaker started to shout.

"Shut up!" Sideswipe hissed, grinning downright manically as he leaned over to try and sneak a peek around the corner. Sunstreaker realized there was nothing he could do now but roll his optics again and vent a sigh. There was just no talking to Sides' when he had the look on his face. It was a clear sign of trouble.

There was an anticipatory silence, and then a little whisper came from around the corner.

"Where'd they go?" Asked one of the younglings. Sunstreaker thought it was the quieter one, Cloud-something-or-other, but he wasn't sure. He had never really bothered with this kind of information before. He barely knew his direct superior officer's name, much less the seven little gremlins that hung around that organic annoyance of Prime's.

"I dunno." The other one – Speedlane Sunstreaker thought certainly – answered his brother.

Next to him, Sideswipe started shaking with laughter. Sunstreaker thought he was getting far too much enjoyment out of this.

The first youngling groaned in disappointed frustration. "Man, we'll never get to give it to him now. They're probably already out of the city." He mumbled. A little thump echoed around the corner when he scuffed his foot angrily against the floor.

Sideswipe's head snapped up and Sunstreaker met his brother's optics. He knew the same thing was running through their minds.

"Something for us?"

"Cool," Sideswipe said, using one of the organic's words that had become popular around base as he stepped around his brother to see what the younglings wanted to give him. Sunstreaker gave a resigned sigh and briefly hung his head. Sideswipe could be so predictable sometimes, he thought.

But even though he wouldn't have admitted it, Sunstreaker was the slightest bit curious too, so he stepped around the corner and leaned one shoulder against the wall. Now he had a good view without actively showing he wanted to know what was going on. Win-win in his book.

"Hey there gremlins," Sideswipe greeted the younglings easily, "What's this I hear about something for me?"

The two smaller bots jumped a little when the older mech appeared out of nowhere, but they relaxed when they saw who it was.

The predominantly red boy, the one with the speed lines on his wings, grinned outright when he saw Sideswipe step in front of them. From his spot by the corner, Sunstreaker saw that the kid was holding some piece of paper in one hand. It looked like a card of some sort.

"We found you!" The kid cried, "I wanted to give this to you so-" he stopped in mid sentence, optics going wide as he realized something, and Sunstreaker realized that all hopes of finding out what the card was were about to fly out the window. "Hey! We're not gremlins!" The youngling yelled.

Sideswipe cocked his head and looked the two younglings up and down. "Well you're small and you pop up out of nowhere to cause trouble so…"

The one Sunstreaker had dubbed Speedlines (although the rest of the world called him Fastlane) crossed his arms over his chest and glared up at Sideswipe. But this time Cloudboy, (Cloudraker's label was infinitely worse) was the one who answered. "Well we were going to give you a present because you can sometimes be cool, but if you're going to be mean…" he let the rest hang.

Sunstreaker raised one optic ridge at the kid. "Outright manipulation in a small package. Great. That bodes so well for the future."

Sideswipe just grinned at the kid, encouraging him, and held his hands up as if in surrender. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry I accurately compared you to an imp that shouldn't exist. Now what'd you get me?" He asked excitedly.

Sunstreaker snorted. "He's worse then they are." He grumbled in his head.

Fastlane and Cloudraker glanced at each other, trying to decide if they still wanted to give it to him after that.

Fastlane held the card out to Sideswipe with a grin. "Here ya go!" He said happily. "I made it just for you."

Sideswipe crouched down and took the card. He shot the kids a questioning glance before opening it.

"'Dear Sideswipe,'" he read the thing out loud, "'you do cool things. I like how you printed-'"

"Painted," Fastlane corrected him.

"'-painted the brig green.'" He glanced up at the waiting boys briefly and grinned, "Yeah I liked that one too. Prowl went through the roof." He snickered before looking back down at the card. "'Happy Valentine's Day – Fastlane.' Gee guys this is-" he looked up at the little bots' hopeful expressions and faltered, "I actually have no idea what this is." He confessed.

"It's a Valentine," Cloudraker told him.

Sideswipe quirked an optic ridge at the younglings. "What's a…Valentine?" He asked carefully.

"Jie Mei told us about them." Fastlane said.

"Yeah, she says that you give them to bots you think are cool." Cloudraker clarified.

"Ah," Sideswipe nodded once in understanding, "it's an organic thing."

"Yep," Cloudraker said just as Fastlane muttered, "Uh-huh."

"Wow," Sideswipe said as he gave the brightly colored card another look, "cool guys. Thanks. You made a good choice in who here deserves Valentines." He told them with what passed for a wink.

The younger brothers smiled at the praise and then of all things, turned to leave.

"Hey!" Sunstreaker hollered, pushing away from the wall. The other three stopped and turned to stare at him. "What about me? Where's mine?" He asked irritably.

The younglings looked at each other. "We didn't make you one." Cloudraker finally answered.

"What?" Sunstreaker cried, louder then he meant.

"Yeah," Fastlane said snottily, "you don't get one 'cuz you're mean."

"I-" Sunstreaker actually stuttered, "I am not!"

Cloudraker gave the taller bot a flat look. "You call us gremlins."

"And sparklings." Fastlane crossed his arms over his small chest. This was the worst insult by far.

Sunstreaker was actually stunned speechless. He didn't even notice when Sideswipe coughed to try and hide his laughter.

After a cycle of wordlessly moving his mouth, Sunstreaker glared at the younger bots. "He called you gremlins too!" He protested, pointing at Sideswipe.

"Yeah, but he apologized." Fastlane pointed out.

"You didn't." Cloudraker returned Sunstreaker's glare.

"They've got a point bro." Sideswipe told him with a poorly hidden grin.

Sunstreaker narrowed his optics at Sideswipe. "Shut up." He growled. "And you two," he turned back to the younglings, "are worse then sparklings. At least they can't talk." He snapped.

Cloudraker jerked back as if Sunstreaker's words had actually hurt him, but Fastlane clapped a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Don't take it personally Cloud. Sunshine here is just mad because we noticed he's a mean ol' twit."

Sunstreaker glared at the talkative one harder, even if he didn't know what a twit was.

"Sunshine?" Sideswipe asked with a laugh, shooting down Sunstreaker's hopes for some assistance here. "He's more like a thundercloud that goes around zapping all the other rain clouds with lightning bolts."

Fastlane and Cloudraker laughed. Sunny just sunk deeper into his thundercloud mood.

The younglings turned to leave, but then as one final parting gift, Fastlane looked over at Sunstreaker and said smugly, "This is why he gets a Valentine and you don't. Bye Sides'!"

And then the two younglings scampered away, they're mischievous laughter echoing down the halls even after they'd disappeared.

Sunstreaker glared after them even when they were gone. "Gremlins." He grumbled darkly under his breath.

Sideswipe, true to his annoying self, just grinned as he straightened up. "Ah don't be like that Sunny, they're just kids. Truthfully that older one sorta reminded me of you way back when."

Sunstreaker's optics slowly swiveled over to pin his soon to be deceased brother with a chilling glare. "You every say that again; you die." He growled.

But even then Sideswipe refused to be intimidated. It was an infuriating character flaw he had. "You're just jealous because I got one and you didn't." He gloated as he walked back around the corner and shoved open the door at the other end of the hall with his shoulder. He gave Sunstreaker an intolerable grin, waved the card at him again, and then disappeared through the door with a mocking laugh.

Sunstreaker glared at the spot where Sideswipe had been. "Stupid head. We'll just see how long that lasts." He muttered darkly before following his brother outside.

~^..^~

All of the younglings must have been busy because Valentine Madness quickly spread throughout the city like a red and pink plague. By the next morning, drawings with almost every mech in the city on at least one of them littered the walls, but only about three feet off the ground since that was as high as the young bots could reach.

Things got worse later in the orbit when Aria made the mistake of telling them about confetti. You could practically track the younglings from their playroom to everywhere else they had been in the building by following the thick trail of pink, red, and white shreds of paper they had left behind.

But the breaking point, the instant when finally Prowl himself had been brought in to find out what was going on, was the next orbit when the younglings' Valentines finally made their way into the intercity communications system.

Or as Aria liked to call it; the mail room.

The second level communications center was surrounded by a crowd of gawkers by the time Prowl got there. He had to shove at some of the more distracted mechs milling around just to be able to get into the room, an unusual occurrence since most of the time when mechs saw him coming they practically leapt out of the immediate area.

"Coming through, watch yourself," Prowl tried to squeeze into the communications center, but with little success. "Move!" He finally yelled.

"Finally," the second in command thought as the mechs suddenly noticed him and stepped aside to make room. He also noticed that a good quarter of them left outright.

Prowl found Jazz and Warpath at the center of things. Down at their feet stood the little organic femme. Aria was looking up, staring with wide optics, but not at the mechs above her.

Prowl froze when he saw what she was gaping at. High on the back wall a long banner had been tacked up, the clumsily written words, 'Happy Valentine's Day!' sprawled across its length. Sitting below it on the desk that separated the sorting area from the walk-in space where the bots searching for their correspondence could wait until it was found, was a giant mass of brightly colored paper.

The black and white mech felt his optic twitch. "It's all made up of these Valentines." He thought in shock. His mouth nearly dropped open when he saw there was another bin filled solely with Valentines sitting behind the counter.

"What in the name of Primus is going on here?" Prowl finally demanded.

Jazz gestured to the stacks of decorated paper in front of them. "The younglings made cards for everybody. What's it look like?" He asked as if this made perfect sense.

Prowl shot him a mild glare. "Well how did they get in here? And where in the world did they hear about these things anyway?"

"From me," Aria said somewhat sheepishly at their feet, "It's an Earth holiday I told them about called Valentine's Day," Aria explained, "it's where you give friends and loved one cards or gifts to show how much they mean to you. They, uh, might have taken it a little far though." She mumbled with another glance at the mountain of cards.

"Ya think?" Jazz asked.

"Well how did they get in here?" Prowl asked, rubbing at the bridge of his nose to prevent the headache he knew was coming.

"They didn't," Warpath spoke up for the first time, "they just shoved them all through the slot in the door. When I came in for my shift at sorting they were just piled up on the floor. I nearly slipped and fell in them."

Prowl gave the mech a flat look. "And the banner?" He asked.

Warpath's optics flickering too it uneasily. "They, uh, slipped that through the slot too. I didn't see the harm in it, so I put it up." He admitted, looking guiltily at the floor.

Jazz inspected the banner hanging on the wall. "It looks good. Their handwriting's getting better." He observed.

Prowl slanted a look at his long time friend. "That is not helpful." He told the other mech, sounding a bit put upon now. He gave the banner and the Valentines another long look.

He sighed. "Fine, keep the thing up for now. But as soon as the orbit is out I want it taken down."

Aria looked up at him with wide eyes. "But they worked so hard on it." She pointed out.

Prowl glared mildly down at her. Then he saw that everyone else in the room was giving him the same doe-eyed look.

He looked over at Jazz again. The lieutenant just shrugged. "It's not like it's hurtin' anything." He muttered.

Prowl vented another sigh. "Alright take it down in an orn. As long as it comes down sooner rather then later." He snapped slightly.

"And the cards?" Warpath dared to ask.

"Deliver them!" Prowl told him. He was slightly mortified to hear his voice was louder then normal.

Warpath nodded rather quickly and darted behind the desk to hurriedly start sorting out who each card belonged too. Prowl was just about to leave when a too-smug Sunstreaker sauntered into the room.

"Oh, this can't be good." Prowl thought, almost resigned to the fact that today was going to be far more interesting then he had hoped.

Warpath didn't notice when the gold mech came up to the counter. He was too busy picking Valentines out of the pile and shoving them into the boxes that each bot had been assigned.

"Uh, Cliffjumper," shove, "Brawn," shove, "Ironhide," shove, "Moonracer," shove, "Jazz."

"Oo." The mech said and quickly grabbed the card.

Warpath kept going. "Prime, Wheeljack, Su-"

"That one's mine." Sunstreaker said before Warpath could finish speaking, snatching the bright yellow card right out of the other mech's hand. Prowl did not like the way the older twin held the thing, like it was worth his weight in credits.

"'Dear Sunstreaker,'" he said, making a big show of reading it out loud, "'you're an awesome mech and your paint is shiny.' There," he crowed, holding the card up for all to see, "at least one of the little ankle biters knows a good role model when he sees one."

Then, with a smug little grin on his face that had Prowl itching to just slap him with a conduct misdemeanor, the vain mech sauntered right back out of the room.

Aria glared after him angrily. "I'll show him who's an ankle biter if he ever calls them that again." She grumbled.

Jazz chuckled. "Don't worry girly, I'm sure you'll get your chance to show 'im who's boss one of these orbits."

Prowl just stared after the mech, optics narrowed. "I think we're missing something here." He said, keeping his voice low enough so that only Jazz and Aria heard him.

"And what's that?" Jazz asked.

"Who would give Sunstreaker a Valentine?"

~^..^~

The question nagged at Prowl for the rest of the orbit. It just didn't make any sense. Sunstreaker was vain, irritable, annoying, not to mention one of the biggest thorns in Prowl's side in the history of all time.

Who in their right processor would ever give Sunstreaker a Valentine?

"Maybe they're not in their right mind." Prowl mused later that orbit as he sat at his desk filling out a report. "Maybe they're just crazy. Or they mislabeled it…"

There had to be a reason. There just had to. Mechs like Sunstreaker didn't get cards that were meant to show appreciation. At least on some deep, deep, level, Prowl could understand why the seeker younglings had given Sideswipe one. He was roughly on level with them for maturity and troublesome nature, but not even they had given a card to Sunstreaker. And that spoke volumes of the mech's antisocial character when not even younglings were willing to give him a chance.

Now Sunstreaker was saying the card was from his 'secret admirer'. Prowl frowned down at the report in front of him. "Secret admirer," he grumbled to himself, "secret admirer my battle processor. Someone out there has lost his mind, and I know for a fact it wasn't one of the younglings. I should find this head case before their instability actually causes some real damage."

So with justification firmly in mind, Prowl stood, abandoning his report for the time being, and left his office.

Jazz was standing just outside his office, hand raised to knock on the door when it flew open. The silver bot quickly got out of the way when Prowl stormed through the door.

"Whoa, watch it there Prowl. What's got you all worked up now?" Jazz asked as he quickly fell into step behind the former black and white.

"Sunstreaker," the second in command said simply.

Jazz looked up at the ceiling as if praying for patience. "Alright, so what'd he do now?"

"Nothing," Prowl snapped, "it's that Pit-spawned Valentine."

Prowl felt Jazz's incredulous look on his back. "Are you serious man? It's just a card. Let it go."

"No," Prowl said resolutely and Jazz realized there would be no arguing with him now.

"Alright well why? Why does it even matter? Ok, so somebody sent him a card. Who cares? Some bots are just crazy I guess…" he trailed off.

"That's the point." Prowl told him. "There's a lunatic running around out there and I'm going to find out who it is."

Jazz was quiet a moment.

"You just want to by nosy, don't you?" He eventually asked.

"Mute it." Prowl shot back. "I'm going to make sense of this if it's the last thing I do."

Jazz just vented a sigh and followed him.

~^..^~

They found Sunstreaker on the main floor of the building along with his brother and, surprisingly enough, Aria.

"He got another one." The little human said by way of explanation when Jazz and Prowl walked up to them.

Prowl looked up at Sunstreaker with temporarily wide optics. "What?" He asked, his voice slightly higher than usual.

Sunstreaker's smug grin was almost more then the SIC could take. "Yep. You want me to read you this one too?" He asked in obvious self satisfaction.

Next to him Sideswipe groaned. "Oh Primus, not again." He muttered, clearly sick of it.

Prowl stared at the letter in Sunstreaker's hand and quickly shook himself. He glared at the gold mech and jabbed a finger at the card in question. "Who sent you that Sunstreaker?" He demanded.

"Why do you want to know?" The mech asked haughtily.

Prowl lowered his optic ridges at the shorter mech. "It's a matter of base security. Just tell me who it is so I can talk to them." "And demand what the heck they were thinking." He mentally added.

Sunstreaker lifted his chin defiantly, crossed his arms over his chest and simply said, "No."

Prowl practically felt like he was smoking. But before he could throttle the idiot mech, Sideswipe stepped in.

"Ah come on bro, let us in on the secret." He said coaxingly as he leaned an arm on his brother's shoulder, "Who is it?"

But Sunstreaker just grinned victoriously. "Nope, I don't want to expose them to the bashful embarrassment that comes with their spark deep devotion to me-"

He would have gone on to sing his own praises but something finally clicked in Prowl's mind.

"Wait a minute," the tactician said as it finally occurred to him what had been bothering him about Sunny having an admirer of any sort, "you knew it was for you."

Sunstreaker looked over at him and shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

Prowl narrowed his optics at him. "So that stupid card was buried in that ridiculous mountain of Valentines," he jabbed a finger at the card again, but this time his own victorious grin was starting to pull at his faceplates, "and you knew it was for you before Warpath even read the name on it." He pointed out sharply.

Down near their feet, Aria turned around to face Sunstreaker and planted her hands on her hips. "You sent one to yourself?" She asked incredulously.

"Two." Jazz pointed out gleefully.

Sideswipe slanted a look at his brother. "Bro, that's just low." But everyone could tell that he was just dying to laugh.

Sunstreaker just shrugged again, trying to dislodge the flat looks everyone was now giving him. "I'm the only one worthy enough to give me one." He told them as if it made perfect sense and then simply walked away.

Behind him, the others stared at his retreating back.

"Ya know," Jazz said slowly and with a good amount of relief, "this actually makes a lotta sense."

"Yes," Prowl said with a gust of air, proud in his victory, "the world is no longer standing on its head."

Aria just smacked her palm to her forehead. "Oh for goodness sake…" she groaned.

;3 He he, another one down! Next up, the 'cons get some love too. Now if only they'd see it that way...