Beep beep beep beep beep beep...
"Sunny."
Beep beep beep...
"Sunstreaker!"
Beep beep... A red arm reached down and grabbed the offending noise maker from the table. Beep... CRASH!
"OW! Fraggit Sideswipe!"
THUD!
"Hey, don't kick my bed!"
"I've told you before, if you don't like it then you should've taken the lower bunk."
Sideswipe groaned and slithered off his bunk, landing on his feet next to his brother, who had rolled over and was trying to get back into recharge. "Why did we ever get that stupid alarm clock? It's obnoxious."
"You're the one who bought it off of eBay," Sunstreaker grumbled from underneath his arm.
"Oh," Sideswipe said. "Ugh, what time is it?"
"It's 7:30."
"How do you know that, genius? I just broke the clock over your head!"
"Because that's the time you set the alarm to ring, genius. And you could've just checked your chronometer."
"Oh." Sideswipe rubbed his optics, stumbling to the light switch. He smashed his fist over the touch pad and the lights came on. Sunstreaker groaned and buried his face further into his arm, but Sideswipe didn't move for a long while. He was frowning in confusion and looking around the room as if he wasn't sure that what he was seeing was real. The walls and floor and everything looked... different; it seemed the entire room was now covered in some kind of multi-colored material. Come to think of it, something about his body felt weird too, so he looked down and discovered that he was covered with the very same stuff! He touched his arm and discovered that the material were like itty bitty squares of paper, stuck to his armor by one side. Wait, Sideswipe knew what these were, they were a human thing... sticky notes. Everything in the room, including its occupants, had been absolutely covered in sticky notes overnight.
"Dude, get up."
"No."
"Seriously, get up."
"Seriously, no."
Sideswipe growled and marched over to his twin. He grabbed a handful of the sticky notes that were stuck to Sunstreaker's upper arm and ripped them off. Sunstreaker sat up suddenly with a bewildered and outraged look on his face. "What was that?!"
Sideswipe held up his fistful of the paper for the now multi-colored mech to see. Sunstreaker stared at it for a moment before he reached up, took one of the pieces of paper and looked at it closely. "Jazz was here," he slowly read.
"Huh?" Sideswipe responded before looking at the sticky notes more closely. "That sneaky glitch," he then said, because sure enough, every single note had the words 'Jazz was here' printed on it.
Sideswipe and Sunstreaker looked at each other knowingly. "Prowl," Sideswipe spoke their thoughts. Suddenly forgetting that he was absolutely covered in sticky pieces of paper, the mech turned and sprinted towards the door. The door swooshed open when he drew near, but he never made it past the doorframe. Instead Sideswipe ran smack dab into some kind of clear material that had been stretched across the doorway. In a rather cartoon-like action, the stuff bulged out from Sideswipe's momentum with a loud stretching sound, before rebounding the mech back into the room. Sideswipe stumbled back, confused. "The frag?" he said before walking up and poking the stuff. He concluded that the doorway had been covered with layers upon layers of cellophane. Growling, he sank his fingers into the wall of clear wrap and tore it away in one violent yank. He proceeded to run out of the room and down the hallway.
Sunstreaker watched his brother go, still sitting up on his bunk. A moment after the sounds of his brother's running disappeared, he looked down at himself and peeled a sticky note off of his armor. He looked at it in disgust before trying to let it go, shaking his hand vigorously when it stuck to his finger. Next he looked around the room, and was met with the same scene Sideswipe had discovered: their room transformed into a sticky note mosaic that proclaimed Jazz's omnipresence from last night. If Sunstreaker wasn't still half awake he'd be disturbed and very angry about the prank, although he could appreciate the amount of detail that had been put into it.
Sideswipe ran through the Ark, little sticky notes flying off of his armor and fluttering to the floor behind him. He passed many mechs who gave him queer looks as he ran by, but he didn't pay any attention to them. He finally found the saboteur he was looking for in the main communications room, sitting in front of Teletraan 1 with his feet up on the console, laughing and watching something on the monitor. Sideswipe skidded to a halt and saw with astonishment what Jazz was watching: it was an animated GIF of Sideswipe's recent run in with the cellophane wall. Over and over again he watched, from the hallway outside his and Sunstreaker's room, his sticky note covered self smush up against the clear surface and bounce back... smush up against the clear surface and bounce back... smush up against the clear surface and bounce back. It was horrifying to watch himself like that but he couldn't tear his optics away from the screen until Jazz finally noticed his presence and turned around. Upon seeing the unfortunate frontliner, Jazz's merriment intensified and he actually pointed and laughed at the mech.
"Real mature Jazz." Sideswipe dead panned. "Prowl put you up to this, didn't he?" he continued when Jazz didn't stop laughing.
In a moment the black and white was able to contain himself long enough to shake his head and respond. "Dude, ya messed with th' wrong officers!"
Sideswipe scowled at the saboteur. "Don't think for a second that you've got us beat," he said as he pointed at the other mech. "This isn't over!" And with that Sideswipe turned and left the room in a flourish of little squares of paper. Jazz didn't seem worried by the threat in the slightest as he attached the GIF to a mass Ark-wide email.
As he marched through the hallways back to his room, Sideswipe grumbled about the situation. "Prowl thinks he can beat us because he's got Jazz on his side now?! Well he's got another thing coming. We'll show him, Sunny and I are the masters at pranking! Prowl will rue the day he thought to challenge us on our own turf!"
Still grumbling when he reached his door, Sideswipe was surprised to find the Ark's third resident Lamborghini in his path. Red Alert was standing on a little stool and fiddling with the camera that was installed in front of the twins' room. It had been moved from its original position and refocused to point directly at the door. He had a scowl on his face and was grumbling darkly to himself as he worked.
"'Sup Red," Sideswipe grunted as he approached.
Red Alert glanced at the frontliner and promptly hopped off his stool and pointed at the mech accusingly. "YOU!" he snarled. "How many times have I told you not to mess with my cameras! What were you thinking? No, shut up, I don't even want to know. Don't do it again!"
"Whoa whoa there, high and mighty," Sideswipe said, holding up his hands. "I didn't do it, Jazz did."
"Jazz?" Red Alert snorted. "That egotistical mech thinks he can do whatever he wants..." the security officer grumbled as he got back on his stool and continued to work on his camera.
Sideswipe ignored the red and white's ranting as he moved towards his door. "Oh," he said as an afterthought. "Did you get that camera in front of the Ark fixed?" Normally he wouldn't have cared about one of Red Alert's projects, but dangit he spent four humiliating hours guarding that stupid camera, he had the right to know how it turned out.
Red Alert spun around on his stool and stared at Sideswipe with a crazed look in his optics. "WHAT? One of my cameras is broken? In front of the Ark!? When was I going to be informed about this? Surely Prowl knows, why hasn't he told me?! This is a major security threat!"
"Well actually," Sideswipe said. "The other day Prowl told me and Sunstreaker that it was broken and made us stand guard until it was fixed."
Red Alert's crazed look intensified and sparks began to fly around his sensory horns. "That's why you were standing there all day! And Prowl! I've told him a hundred times, security is my jurisdiction! He can't just stick his olfactory sensors in my territory, I'll have to tell him again not to mess with my business, but will he listen to me? NO, of course not!"
Suddenly Sideswipe realized just how duped he and his brother had been by Prowl when they had been made to "stand guard" over the Ark entrance. This just made him even angrier at the tactician. And as he listened to Red Alert's ranting, a sudden idea popped into his head; a risky, daring, unheard of idea. "Hey Red, if you really want to get back at Prowl..."
o~o~o
Prowl approached his office, studying a data pad closely. He was busy trying to figure out whether some recent activity in Greenland was due to the Decepticons and if so whether he could predict where and when their next move would be. It was quite taxing on his processor functions, and so when he reached his door he didn't even look up as he punched in his security password and stepped towards the door, expecting it to open up for him immediately. But when it didn't, he had to stop short to avoid colliding with the solid metal. Prowl stared at the door that was mere inches from his nose in confusion. He was sure he hadn't entered the wrong password, he'd never done that before. Nevertheless, he reached over and re-entered the code, but was rewarded with a negative rejection tone. Maybe Red Alert had changed all the security passwords in the Ark... this wouldn't be the first time.
"Who is iiiiit?" came a sudden high pitched voice from inside Prowl's office.
The frown of confusion on the tactician's face deepened. It took him a minute before Prowl was able to identify the voice. "Sideswipe? What are you doing in my office?" he asked, although he knew perfectly well what this was about.
"Sideswipe-what-are-you-doing-in-my-office? That's a weird name, and I've never heard of it. Sorry, access denied!" Sideswipe shouted back through the wall.
Now Prowl was frowning in fury. "How did you gain access to my office, again?" he demanded.
"Still not a valid name, access denied!"
Prowl growled and angrily activated his comm. "Red Alert!" he snarled as soon as the other mech accepted the hail. "Did you change the security codes again?"
"Yes, why?" said Red Alert from the other end.
"Because I can't access my office and Sideswipe is in there!"
"Oh I'm sorry, do you have a problem with others messing with your business?" Red Alert said in a condescending tone.
"Excuse me?" Prowl asked incredulously.
"I don't know what Sideswipe is doing in your office and I can't help you," the director of security responded matter-of-factly.
"You can give me my new security code for my office," Prowl growled.
On the other end of the line Prowl could hear tsking. "Prowl, you know that before I release new security codes, you have to complete my fifty part questionnaire so that I know you're you and not a Decepticon impersonator."
"Red Alert, give me my security codes. That is an order."
"Excuse me! In case you've forgotten, I am a high ranking officer too, and I have the power to refuse an order from you if it impedes on my jurisdiction. I'll see you when you finish the questionnaire." And with that Red Alert cut the link and left Prowl alone in the hallway.
Prowl just stood and stared at his door, with that kind of feeling that one gets when one is incredibly frustrated with a situation, but can't do anything about it and knows that yelling would be equivalent to throwing a fit like a newly sparked. His silent rant was interrupted when he was hailed by Jazz.
"Yo Prowl, I've been locked out of th' Ark! Did Red change th' passcodes again?" came the saboteur's voice.
"Yes," Prowl responded.
"Maaaan! How long's th' questionnaire this time?"
"Fifty parts."
"Fifty! Tha's twice as long as last time! Dude, it's startin' ta rain out here, can ya let m' in?"
Prowl was about to respond when Sideswipe's voice came suddenly from his office again: "Oooh, didn't see these data pads that were hidden under the desk! I wonder what's on these!"
"I have bigger problems here Jazz," Prowl responded. "Can't you use one of your secret entrances that you surely have?"
"Th' Ark's in a freakin' mountain, there are no other entrances!" came Jazz's frustrated voice. "Come ta think of it though, tha's kinda a safety hazard ain't it? Ya think we should get on tha'?"
"Perhaps at a later date, right now we must deal with the situation at hand," Prowl responded.
"Right," Jazz affirmed. "So how much ya wanna bet th' twins are behind this?"
Prowl listened to the multitude of thuds and clatters that were now coming from his office, no doubt of Sideswipe throwing his things around carelessly. "I'd be willing to bet every single data pad I own," he said.
"So, those two wanna get others involved huh?" Jazz said. "Well, they forget tha' I've got an entire spec ops team on my side!"
"You, Bumblebee, and Mirage. That makes... all three of you," Prowl responded dryly.
"Yeah well, three of us is plenty," Jazz said in defense. "Don't ya worry Prowler, those Lamborghinis are no match for us!"