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Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers and all I get out of this is good mood.

And this deserves a little warning of its own: A blink-and-you-will-miss-it reference of non-con. Or dubious con. What being processor washed is.

The Wreckers were a special task force composed of the best and the toughest die-hard fighters around and they tended to scare the living daylight out of even most of the Autobots. They weren't what people thought when they thought Autobots, but generalisations were just generalisations and just because mech was a badaft didn't mean he couldn't be one of the good guys. They were happiest blowing things up and the only thing Decepticons feared more than facing the Wreckers was facing their superiors afterwards, for they only left a battle against them as spare parts or as deserters, Decepticon officers being notoriously unwilling to call retreat unless their own afts were in fire. Wreckers were happiest when wrecking and that was good, because they were called in to fight when the odds of success are nonexistent, but the job had to be done anyway.

Their lives were like millions of snapshots to download, transmissions and mission briefings, repairs and razor sharp smiles. They bore it well and loved it, even if maybe once, a long time ago, they hadn't wanted to.

Springer knew his mechs were gung-ho robots, ready and willing to roll out into the thick of any mess at the drop of a hat and he loved them to pieces for it, not that he was ever going to admit it out loud. Topspin was his medic and a true bot of all trades. Springer knew there were medics. Then there were battlefield medics, whose priorities usually differed from those in strictly civil practice, in that they were often called upon to get soldiers patched up just enough to get them back into the field. And then there was Topspin, who didn't hesitate to rip a fuel pump off a fallen Decepticon to replace his team-mate's damaged one and Springer knew he wouldn't be getting another like him.

His weapons specialist Broadside had been there and seen it. The conquest of Kaon, the fall of Senate and Prime's reign and the beginning of the Great War. He was one of the survivors who managed to evacuate before Megatron's takeover and a bot didn't get any more veteran.

Springer knew his comrades like himself. Roadbuster was powerful and charismatic as a soldier, an inspiration to other Autobots and a natural leader on any battlefield, but outside of combat his natural ease failed him, having him retreat into his own space. He spent most of his time between battles planning for the next one or fighting random unlucky Decepticons and Springer worried at times about what would become of the courageous and well-liked Roadbuster he knew if the war ever ended. Sandstorm, field scout of the group because he was little better at going unnoticed than the rest of team, got bored easily and had hard time concentrating on mundane tasks. He craved excitement and since entertainment was hard to come by in frontlines he made do with fighting the Decepticons.

Scoop, being to resident tactician, used logic to their advantage, he could outwit the enemy at every turn. Relentless and resolved, he was always willing to help others out, no matter the danger to himself. Twin Twist would sink his drills into anything that moved and a lot that didn't at the smallest excuse. He love his share of violence and fighting as much as your average Decepticon did, pit had no fury like a Twin Twist fighting and didn't cause nearly as much destruction either. Optimus Prime himself had expressed worry about the miner's less than controlled nature, but no one could argue that he wasn't a good bot have at your back. Whirl firmly believed that insanity made an extremely effective weapon. Enemies flew in terror before the crazy dance in the air he pulled on the battlefield, like someone either totally out of control or out of his CPU.

Springer knew them all like himself and some days he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that they were all certifiable.

The newest form of insanity was a prank war between Sandstorm and Whirl. Laughter wasn't in short supply in Xantium. The special forces had a very different outlook on life than those more reluctant to embrace their new lifestyle and the best melee fighters were often the biggest troublemakers. Violent times made hardened sparks and sense of humour twisted like a drill. This particular brand of madness had started relatively small. When bored Sandstorm went to harass Whirl he got sprayed with a silly string. The next day Whirl woke up to find that he couldn't turn his optics on-line. Topspin had thought it funny, chuckling the whole time while debugging them, but Whirl had not. He had retaliated with a white noise generator hid inside Sanstorm's battlemask and had found himself pretty pink the next time he woke from recharge. Now he had set up an elaborate paint and glue and powdered plastic trap hidden in the hallway leading to Sandstorm's favourite wareroom and Springer was waiting who would trigger it first, for it would be too convenient to be the intended target.

He hadn't even considered ordering Whirl to take the trap down. Maybe he couldn't undermine his authority by doing something that silly, but he still had a sense of humour. He could even swear that he had heard Xantium herself, despite the fact she would get stained too, whisper: screw it the other way.

"Won't you need the trick bag with that?" Whirl oh so innocently goaded Sanstorm, who was upgrading his mathematics player, making a reference to his favourite tool box that just happened to be in the wareroom. Sandstorm turned his optics up from his work to give his team-mate a suspicious glare.

"If you have done something to my tools I'm feeding them to you," he threatened. Whirl gave him a damaged look.

"I wouldn't go that far!" he swore earnestly. Barely had he had enough time to say that when they heard a loud crash and Broadside's voice thrummed through the corridor.

"Aw, frag!" Whirl moaned and proceeded to run away. Sandstorm looked after him for a while like contemplating going after him and holding him down for Broadside, but just laughed in the end and waited for his comrade to storm the galley.

Springer hid his smirk with much practised ease.

"Sometimes leading you is like leading a sparling ed centre," he complained. Sandstorm gave him amused look to tell his moaning wasn't taken seriously for a second.

"Too much free time. We need some action," he told and thee door slid open to reveal a green and violet Broadside, covered in white and brownish red plastic powder. Their gameface hold a whole astrosecond.

"He went that way," Sandstorm eventually managed to blurt to the fuming wrecker in front of him between laughing fits, pointing to the wrong door.

"Merciful," Springer said after he had stopped snickering and Sandstorm shrugged, looking first the other way and then to the player.

"He made me laugh. How long are we going to be on probation anyway?" As far as the Wreckers were concerned vacation was something that only happened to other people, unless they really pissed someone important off.

"When things go to the Pit next time, of course. Prime is still less than pleased about our means to an end in Vertiga." He gave his head troublemaker a meaningful glare and Sandstorm looked less than pleased about that.

"They are pickybots. It was just property damage, after all," he complained.

"And who did most of the damage? Our own captain bitterness there, pro-wrestling with bad old Lockdown!" Scoop's voice boomed from the ship-wide comm. system, "And Broadside, it's your shift now so get your aft to the bridge!" Springer could imagine Whirl's relieved bearing.

"If this is what little free time does to us I fear to think what we would be like if this war ever ended." To him it seemed like a very unlikely course, after the countless vorns of animosity and sparkbreaks and killing after killing.

"You think it's going to end?" Sandstorm could remember a time before war, he just couldn't recall what it had felt like.

"Hey, Springer, Sanstorm!" Scoop's voice called out again, now only in their personal comm. system as he presumably left the bridge. "Really, have you thought what you are going to do after the war is over?" His words were oddly hesitant and even mystified. Sandstorm looked at Springer blankly and he looked right back, then shrugged.

"No idea," he answered. He knew the infantry mech felt little disturbed by the lack of data. Springer was the leader of the group because he was the cautious and level-headed one and that he didn't have a back-up plan and second emergency plan for everything, hadn't thought about something that basic and…

"It's not like you know either," he made a guess and his comrade's silence confirmed it.

"It's not like we really expect to survive this war." Because it didn't matter how good you were and how many times you cheated death, the enemy just needed to get lucky once.

"It's not like the Mega-creep is going to survive either. He's a walking cliché, too evil to win," Sandstorm said confidently. Never leave an enemy behind, he knew all of that.

That was when a strange ship appeared in their sensors. Broadside, wishing madly and deeply he wouldn't have to go anywhere looking like he did and cursing Whirl to the Pit, sounded alarm.

Happily ever after can be stuff for nightmares.

Taser was happy, he could only remember being happy, he was sure he would always be happy and he was happy about being happy. It wasn't very typical of a Decepticon, but his creator had come to the conclusion that happy subordinates wouldn't backstab you or cut corners in their work out of boredom or fear. Endgame wasn't good at making people happy the old-fashioned way, but he was a mighty good coder and so he had the most loyal, if ridiculously grinning, staff in all Decepticorps. He could make people any way he wanted them to be and it made Taser happy. At times it was hard to decide what to do, because every option was as good as any other, but luckily people above him would usually make the decisions for him. He was pleased to work for Endgame and he was pleased to be cost-effective.

Endgame owned that part of space, answering only to Starscream now that Megatron had been misplaced, dealing in stims and pumps and parts and death. His forces were happy to oblige. The warrior builts among them got send against the Wreckers a whole lot for they never turned tail. They were only too happy to die for their cause and Taser even had downloaded one black box record where a fatally damaged seeker giggled happily and two Wreckers stared him optics wide and most likely gaping behind their battle masks. It was a funny record.

A proverb may state that the butler did it, but this time it was a spy: Taser met a black-striped minicon, a spy on loan. The minicon was different from Endgame's mechs, he was bad tempered and paranoid and he made Taser very happy. Soon Taser noticed that the minicon, Silicon, was slightly more relaxed in his presence, but he also had the oddest expression in his optics at times. He soon stopped asking Taser to do anything for him. He asked him questions about what he thought about his life and the war in general. From some reason Taser's answers seemed to offend him.
"Have you thought what not being happy would be like," the con asked him before he left on mission again. And Taser began to wonder what was it like to not be happy or even be unhappy? The thought was as abstract to him as wondering what being dead was like and it made him happy, just like everything else.

Being happy all the time didn't make thinking outright impossible, it only removed most of the motivations to bother with it. And though he had no real reference frame because pity was beyond his capability range, when he thought hard about it all, he thought through that Silicon maybe pitied him because he was like he was. That made him happy too and when Silicon came back from his mission he initiated interfacing with the blue and black mech. It was the first time he had initiated interfacing and even though his pleasure centers were overstimulated all the time it made him even more happy than usual. They interfaced four times before the infiltrator had to go to yet another mission. He never returned.

And it made Taser happy.

He didn't want to be happy. It was different kind of happiness now, it made him a little scared. Being scared made him happy too and that scared him even more and so he really begun to think through the haziness of overwhelming happy. Eventually he came to the conclusion that because he would be happy anyway he could also be happy betraying Endgame. This private vertigo made him happy and he was beginning to entertain happy thought about how happy committing suicide would make him for it was the same, too.

But in the end he was more than that, better survivor. Instead he managed to find a neutral mercenary that also made dubious business deals. He kept trying to disturb Taser with violent innuendoes, but he would probably have been beyond caring even without his programming. Embezzlement proved to be a very easy crime to commit; Taser was a communications officer and comfortable with his happy glockenspiel soldiers Endgame wasn't the most vigilant commander there was.

"I can get a hacker program that'll get past your firewalls and encryption like an anti-gestalt missile," he promised Taser. And Taser was glad. He was happy when the mech didn't come back soon, too. The mercenary didn't return for a long time and eventually Taser started to think that maybe he was dead too. He laughed when the thought crossed his mind and the remembering the probably broken promise made him happy. But when the mech came back again it felt even better, almost like interfacing with Silicon had felt, it flared up and danced like millions wavelenghts inside him.
"Here," the mech said, and drew him aside, into a warehouse that was waiting to be deconstructed, "and here is the program." He waved a fairly unimpressive looking case in his gigantic hand.

Changing his programming wasn't as difficult as Taser had thought it might be once they got inside his defenses. He wasn't sure the mercenary could be trusted, he had a feeling that his non-stop delighted laughing was starting to irritate the big, rusty red mech and that made him laugh even more. This went on until the mech gave up and off-lined him.

When Taser on-lined again he wasn't happy.

He wasn't lost in bright golden haze anymore, there were other things he'd never felt before, and he was furious like pit.

He was furious, brokensparked, violated, annoyed, bitter, paranoid and multitude of other negative responses. People had been taking advantage of him for vorns, starting from his dearest commander, and now he cared. The thoroughly fragged, pit-spawn, junkbuilt, slag sucking – he shouted swearwords until he ran out of them, which was terribly irritating, Silicon was never coming back and it hurt so much there weren't words for it. His vocal processors were starting to send error reports. It was starting to rain outside and he would get muddy. He wanted to die, but even more he wanted to kill. The mercenary was watching him with worry and it sparked a new series of emotion spikes through Taser's processor like hot needles through spark chamber.

Taser glowered at him and the mech glowered back, his right arm transformed into a missile launcher.
"All right now?" the mech asked warily the launcher whirring almost affectionally. That little question was the last maneuver that blew the gasket.
"No, not really" Taser said in all honesty, "but I think it'll get better at some point." He didn't need to raise his hand to kill the mech. Now that Taser could think easily he was pretty sure that he was a dangerous mech in a dangerous set of programming. It didn't make him happy, no, but it did give him previously unknown sardonic kind of contentment.

When he returned to Antimony's keep Taser killed Endgame. He made himself available during the next deca-cycle until the heavily overloaded commander commanded him to interface with him like so many times before. Taser smiled and complied, robbed Endgame of every bit of data he had and then slit his main energon cable open with an electric shock and watched him die, licking the energon from his fingers teasingly.

"Getting to kill part of the entertainment down, now on to the getting killed," he concluded as he wandered towards the shuttle bay. A fellow happy, this one a technician, smiled to him and he smiled back.

"Would you mind if I took one of these?" he asked, his handwave including the whole bay.

"Not at all," the technician answered happily. Taser outranked him and he couldn't come up with any curiousness. So Taser stole a shuttle and went through the intel logs before his passwords could be deleted. He was in search of Xantium.

And whether or not he killed the technician and whether or not it was mercy didn't matter, Endgame was dead as the piece of rock the keep had been built on, dead as Silicon.

He found the ship after nine deca-cycles. A shudder passed through his transformation cogs, as out of every possible moment he started to have second analyses then. For a short, treacherous moment a small voice, undoubtly a glitch that originated from the recent heavy reprogramming, started whispering if he really knew what he was doing, walking into the enemy's arms. He hadn't actually been unhappy… Yeah, he really hadn't been. He remembered and played the record where the two unknown Wreckers stared the giggling of the Decepticon about to die dumbfounded and he found he could relate to them. And about becoming a traitor? That was a joke and a half. You didn't have to be traitorous to be a Decepticon, but it certainly helped surviving.

Taser played idly with his joints and pulled up the needed files in his processor, waiting for the ship to reach the sensor range, then moved from the asteroid he had masked his presence with. He still had a significant distance to Xantium as he pulled up a list of classified communications frequencies. Endgame had sworn he'd never use them and keeping that promise had been criminal waste. He knew he would better start transmitting before the now speeding Autobot ship got to shooting range or he would be blasted for scrap in an astrosecond, so he pulled up the right frequency and activated it.

Decepticon Taser hailing the Xantium, he sent. For exactly seventeen astroseconds the subspace was silent. The he received a reply.

Any reason we shouldn't just blast you off the altitude?

I come bearing gifts. You can shoot me if you want, but let me transmit this first. The exchange was over fast as sound, but it took time from the Wreckers to realise what he had given them.

Taser played the record again, knowing his probably-enemies would look at her like that too if they ever got a chance. Silicon could have laughed for him, as his laughter was misplaced perhaps forever. He didn't like thinking about Silicon, he had learned both to hurt and avoid hurting, but he could bear this one last time.

Why you gave this to us. You have one breem to convince us this is a real thing, different signature demanded.

It's because I have been happy and I have had it with the gig. This comment was taken with the stunned silence it deserved. Taser found himself wondering if they were going to shoot him or not. If they were he would be dead and it would be over. If not he would have a new life. He really wasn't into protecting anybody in distress, but nobody would make him happy about it and wherever he was stationed he would get to kill people a lot. The thought didn't make him happy, exactly, but it did make him kind of content.

He was very surprised. Give it to me, fraggers, he thought amicably without a clue what it was he wanted.

Two stellar cycles later…

A slightly breathless voice called her name and Judy swung around, unsurprised as Ron Witwicky jogged to her. Ron had the coltish looks of someone whose arms and legs had decided to grow overnight and hadn't bothered telling the rest of the body first, but he still had an odd… well, grace was wrong word. Ease was perhaps the word.

"Nice to see you, Ron," she said, smiling. She'd told her friend about million times, or so it felt, that the jokes would never stop as long as he was best friends with a girl, but Ron continued to bound up to her and she couldn't help but be glad that he never listened to her telling him to go away.

He was the typical awkward boy, too skinny and un-cool to become a jock and too, well, interested in taking things apart and uninterested in school to pass as a nerd. She was the odd girl of the school, but the popular girls were too scared of her to be actually mean to her other than occasionally giggle when somebody said her whole name. No popular guy would ever made her his own Cinderella, like a girl had to appeal to a male chauvinist with ego the size of New York city to have self worth, if they knew what was good for them and the popular girls would keep their coming to their senses and manicured fingers off her friend if she had anything to say about the matter.

"Are you shopping too? Mom sent me out to get foodstuff for supper," Ron asked her. Judy made a face.

"No, mom's having another natural food gig and I'm not enlightened enough to be trusted to buy the right kind of sprouts and carrot juice. So I'm looking for some snacks." She supposed that eventually she would stop at MacDonald's.

She turned again and Ron fell into step beside her. Judy glanced at him and then turned and stared. The squint-eyed rat-sized cat that belonged to Ron looked peeked at Judy from his well-worn backpack.

"Why are you carrying VCR around? Don't you have harness for her?" she asked. Ron blinked at her.

"She likes being carried around better," he answered like it was obvious. She had thought it was ferrets that liked it, though maybe it was just more of her mother's propaganda, and said as much.

"VCR's special like that," Ron claimed proudly. He petted the little furball fondly and she wrenched her eyes away from the cute picture they presented, unwilling to argue the point.

"Can you hang tomorrow? There's this horror movie, I Was a Teenage Werewolf," she proposed. Ron shook his head regretfully.

"Sorry, I can't. My great-grandfather died in an asylum and we are going to the funeral tomorrow. He was about a hundred years old." Great-grandfather in an asylum. That was wicked cool, second only to a crazy aunt in an attic and Judy told Ron that much, making him give her a disbelieving look.

"How did he become crazy? Are you from a long line of deranged men or was it some trauma?" she asked.

"No insulting my lineage," Ron faked offence, "he went to the National Arctic Circle Expedition and his ship became frozen in the water. As the crew chipped the ship free he wandered off and became snowblind and insane. Then he spent the rest of his life in psychiatric hospitals, drawing strange symbols and ranting about some kind of Ice man."

"Wicked cool," Judy defended her opinion. Then she saw an ice cream vendor's stand and decided she would like ice cream better than hamburger, dragging Ron with her.

Something told her that something was coming to an end. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this, never this specific summer again. Better make most of it, then. And maybe there was an alternative way to stop the jokes.

It was all a matter of being something easily categorized and socially acceptable.

The vendor looked up and smiled affably as they came near.

"Hello," the pudgy man said. "What can I get you?" Ron tried to decide between strawberry and chocolate and nodded to his friend.

"Why don't you go first?" he asked.

"Fudge Chocolate Strawberry Swirl with those crunchy bits. Oh, and those little chocolate chip things," she ordered and the vendor's eyes widened in a way that reminded Ron of comics. He half expected his jaw to drop too.

"You actually like that?" he teased, well used to Judy's oddities. She just nodded and practically inhaled her treat. The fact was that Ron always got a brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast and fact also was that he somehow tended to forget it whenever he started eating one, trying to keep up pace with whoever he was with. And he always wondered how he managed to forget the chillin g ache. Lucky Judy had never suffered from it, of course.

"What is it?" she looked at his face once and snickered.

"Arrrgh," grunted Ron mouth full of ice cream and as he waved his hand trying to make a point his cone fell slowly over, hitting half his other hand, half ground.

He still had little own money with him, but he wasn't sure he wanted to spend it on something he had been stupid enough to drop in the first place.

"And this is just my luck," Ron sighed and stared gloomily the empty cone in his hand.

"A brain freeze. And now you have ice cream all over your hand," stated Judy, the oracle of the obvious. But her voice sounded a little funny somehow. Judy was staring at his hand when Ron looked up. She gave him an admonishing look.

"This is all your fault for being such a klutz," she stated, swallowed the last of her own ice cream, reached out, and very calmly, naturally, raised his hand to her lips and licked the ice cream off with long swipes.

She had a very red tongue.

Ron's higher brain functions made nonsensical sounds and ran straight into a wall, trying to make some sense out of it. His best friend whom he had protected from big dogs when they were in kindergarten and who in turn had kicked Marc Jacques in the nuts in Junior High when he had tried to hit him. His partner-in-crime when they had played hooky and trespassed private property, their neighbour's pool to be exact, when the family was out of town. His practically-sister who dressed in funny, hippy clothes and had even funnier name than him, not that Garland was that funny in itself, but if you were also Judy you were bound to hear about red shoes and flying monkeys. The same Judy who had liberated the frogs from their biology classroom with him burning with righteous anger and had watched Kukla, Fran and Ollie with him. Judy's red, red tongue on his skin.

"I gotta go now," Judy said and waved to him, "but let's see the day after tomorrow. Bring me something from your crazy grandpa!" She walked off without looking back, though not particularly quickly. Ron just gaped after her. He thought he should probably say something to her or run after her, but now his brain was frozen in an entirely new way. Judy's tongue. His skin. System failure, Captain Kirk.

Time measurements. Some of them vary in different continuities. I took Wreckers from IDW and I decided to be consistent with my continuities.

astrosecond 0.498 seconds

breem 8.3 minutes

cycle (IDW continuity) 1 hour 15 minutes (1.25 hours)

mega-cycle (IDW) 93 hours

deca-cycle (IDW) about 3 weeks

stellar cycle (IDW) 7.5 months

vorn 83 years

AN: The happy programming was originally Tiamat's Child's invention. Be credited, it is simply devious.

I'm well aware that in the movie verse Judy was Taylor before marrying. Any Dorothy references I make are a prelude to a joke. At times I scare myself.

The year is 1967, by the way.