The Gossip Game
The dawn had been ominously red, but it was a beautiful day, sunny and with enough breeze that his wings flicked with it even in his robot mode. He wanted to fly. Hands on his hips and a smile on his face, Terrorsaur looked up at all the wonderful open air above the Predacon base and laughed for no reason at all. "I'm going to skip the rest of my shift and go flying after I finish this," he chortled, returning to work on the malfunctioning autogun. Next to him, he knew that the camera had picked up his apparently random comment.
The camera fed into a screen inside the base, where Waspinator sat on monitor duty. He shook his head in exasperation at his fellow flyer. He liked flying, too, but sometimes he just didn't understand the pterodactyl's obsession with it. "Terror-bot get caught," he warned lightly, but another bray of laughter was all that answered him.
Unknown to him, just then Tarantulas had passed overhead in a ventilation duct on a search for edible vermin. The spider paused thoughtfully before continuing on his way. Coming to an intersection in the ducts, he found Blackarachnia already inspecting his web. "Finders keepers," she snapped at him, and he hissed in disgust as she spun a sticky cocoon around the rat.
One of the cardinal rules of the Predacon base was 'Thou Shalt Not Attack Blackarachnia Without Backup And A Really Large Gun.' Disobedience was paramount to suicide, or at least a painful day spent stuffed in creatively-hidden, uncomfortable dark holes around the area. "One of these days, I'll catch you like Megatron does Terrorsaur," he snarled, retreating. "Perhaps today you should take his lesson to heart, tehehehehe!"
"Oh, what's that birdbrain done NOW?" she muttered to herself as she hauled her stolen catch through the halls of the base toward her room. Scorpinok stepped aside without looking up from the damaged console he'd been poking at all week. He'd ALMOST gotten the screen working. "One of these days, Megatron's gonna scrap him, and then who will I blackmail into taking repair duty? Stupid flyer needs to get his head out of his skidplate. Never thinks up anything workable, anyway…mumble mutter grumble…"
The scorpion heaved a sigh when Blackarachnia was out of hearing range. "Slaggit, Terrorsaur, and it's been such a nice day," he complained. "Why couldn't you be a traitor tomorrow, or something?"
'Traitor' was all Inferno needed to hear, and somehow he managed to hear it from three rooms down. "The traitor to the colony shall burn!" he shouted, banging out of his quarters and charging down the hall.
Scorpinok swore horribly as the surprise made his pincer slip, and the computer shorted out. "Leave Terrorsaur alone!" he yelled after the ant. "Megatron will handle him!"
Belatedly, Inferno remembered that the Queen preferred to deal with this traitor personally. "My Queen!" He about-faced and marched toward the Royalty's quarters. He found her relaxing in the hottub, but that soon changed as he told her that the traitor plotted. Megatron rose from the energon in a liquid fount of fury, optics narrow with anger.
Happily closing up the last open panel on the autogun, Terrorsaur eyed the approaching rainclouds and cheerfully anticipated outflying them. Staying ahead of the storm front would be an enjoyable challenge. "This is going to be FUN," he mused, and turned around.
And came face-to-teeth with a growling tyrannosaur. "Fun? Not for you, nooo," Megatron said coldly.
The rain closed the sky, cold and leaden. It had been such a beautiful day…
.
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Ever played "Telephone"? Office gossip does the same thing, until the original news doesn't even vaguely resemble what's being told to everyone. Poor Terrorsaur. He's so much fun to victimize.