Time Wars

Summary: In celebration of St Patrick's day, three Autobots get very very drunk

Security Room

''This room is dominated by the west wall which consists of a multitude of security monitors, viewing each and every room within Autobot City. A desk in the middle of the room is bare, except for the terminal standard for every office here. A forcefield to the east makes sure that those in the Brig stay there. A window on the northern wall gives a good view of the forest beyond.''

Raindance is floating in the corner of the Security Office, which now has 'Nightbeat's Detective Agency' stapled to the wall. He is painted green and wearing a bowler hat, a pint of Guinness balanced on top of his canopy. He also has a little cable hanging down, onto which is attached a broken bottle, that he is swinging at little figurines on Red Alert's desk

"The real mystery, you space-sucking slack-masters," Nightbeat says, addressing whoever is in the room, swinging a huge 40 gallon bottle of Nucleon Lite as he talks, spilling the fizzy chemical onto Red Alert's desk and photos of his family (Red Alert's family is Inferno) "Is who spraypainted half of my face green? I will get to the bottom of this case no matter how much I have to drink," Nightbeat drinks.

A mischevious pair of Teenage Kremzeeks peek out from behind Nightbeat's Columbo poster, high-fiving each other. "KREEEMZEEEEK MOTHERFU--"

"I heard that! I hear everything!" Night barks, spinning around. "Oh, bless Unicron but I am dizzy..."

Cliffjumper is face-down on Red Alert's desk, a display of figurines set up on the back of his head. A bottle of Wild Space Turkey sits, mostly drained, nearby.

"Oh no Nightbeat what are you doing?" Raindance bleeps. "You are drinking Nucleon, you are not supposed to do that. It will give you hairy palms and make you lactate and stuff. Don't bow to the pressure!" He swings his broken bottle around again at Cliffjumper's head. "The next thing you know, you'll be seeing - "

"Top o' the mornin' to ye!" comes a small voice, as a cheeky, green-clad Leprachaun pops up under the desk. "And how are ye today?"

The Kremzeek's jump on Larry the Leprechaun's shoulders. "We're f'in' awesome, you Irish waste of carbon! Hi-Five!" The ?Kremzeeks jump up and high-five one another. "Man that's like the time we did that bridge over the Paradon hooker... you know, before Paradon was destroyed by the Autobots... on SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!"

Nightbeat, looking like that one Star Trek episode where people have half of a white face and half of a black face, except his is half green and half yellow, stomps around, drinking Nucelon. "I will get to the bottom of this, Raindance! I was trolling the Pern-Quest forums and found a hot lead... before they banned my IP!" He drinks. "Raindance, I order you to assign a new IP to my computer so I can toll some more."

Cliffjumper wakes up and lifts his head just in time for the bottle to collide with it, breaking further. "What th--" With a metallic SKREEEEEE he wipes broken glass from his face. "Awright, who'sz th' wiszeguy, huh? Huh? Yyou. You think you can mess wi' me?" He waves a fist at the leprechaun.

Slowly but surely, Raindance hovers upwards, wobbling, knocking over the Leprachaun and the Kreemzeeks, as he shoots a missile off at Nightbeat's computer. "No Nightbeat, if your computer transmits an IP the internet police will get you!" The shamrock-green triangle rocks agan, and then suddenly pitches forward, a little bifurcated nozzle extending from his nosecone, driving after Nightbeat's drink.

The Leprechaun cleans the Kreemzeek's off itself and grins at Cliffjumper. "Aye, on every Saint Patty's day, I visit the most Irish (drunk and violent) people and offer them their greatest wish! And all I ask for is... The MATRIX!"

"I AM THE INTERNET POLICE, YOU TRIANGULOUS CRETIN! YOU ARE THREE SIDES OF PURE STUPID! THREE POINTS OF UNREFINED MENTAL GENOCIDE, YOU ARE---" Nightbeat pauses to drink. Wiping his mouth, he reaches for the Leprechaun's hat and puts it on his own head. "Oh god, I'm a robot wearing a hat... what have I become?" Nightbeat chokes, "But at least I'm still the internet police..."

The Kremzeeks climb onto Cliffjumper. "All the bars on Kremzeek-Prime are closed, so we had to punch reality until we zhowed up here! YEAH!"

"The MATRIX? I don't have no MATR--OH NO GET OFF ME" Cliffjumper howls, attempting to strike a Kremzeek. "GET OFF ME MAN, I GO TO METAL CHURCH EVERY PRIMUS DAMN LUNAR SUNDAY, YOU WANNA BRING THE DEMONS OUT IN ME"

"YOU'RE the internet police..." Raindance slowly backs away from Nightbeat. "Uuuh look dude, I let a friend into my room to download stuff. It was Foxfire, I can't be responsible for what he downloads, his sick little fantasies. And those other files? Look, its just /geometery/. Triangles and squares and stuff. Nothing illegal there, nothing OH GOD BEHIND YOU" At this, Raindance attempts to shoot Nightbeat in the face

Nightbeat evades your special attack.

Aptly dodging, because he saw it coming a mile away, Nightbeat unholsters his robob-revolver. "Look, /Raindance/," takes a drink, "I know it wasn't Foxfire because I set up a primitive snare trap to /capture/ Foxfire in case he ever decided to illegally download anything in your quarters. And so far, my primitive snare trap is /empty/. Primus-eating-Unicron! Why won't you tapes just go to jail?!"

The Kremzeeks frown a Kremzeeky frown and climb off of Cliffjumper, "You don't have to be such a d-bag, red Bubmblebee. God, this is getting wicked retahded."

Cliffjumper is not done with the Kremzeeks. "YOU WANNA CLIMB ON MY SHOULDERS, HUH? YOU WANNA SNEAK UP ON A MAN WHO FOUGHT IN THE TIME WARS?! YOU WANNA PLAY THAT CARD? THE TIME WARS CARD?! YEAH I'M A TIME WARS VETERAN SO WHAT YOU LITTLE KREMZEEK PIECES OF TURBOSTEER MEGADUNG! SO WHAT!"

"He can fly" Raindance emits, matter of fact. "He is a flying fox. He's not even a fox, he's some sort of fake fox with a million tails. And he can walk though walls. Don't let him trick you Nightbeat. Bring me down, and you'll wake up in the middle of the night with Foxfire standing over you, knife in his little paws, ready to gouge your eyes out. Thats what he /does/. Remember Hubcap, Nightbeat? Remember HUBCAP?" He floats back down, landing on top of Cliffjumper's head, like a hat

"I told you that we don't mention Hubcap in this /house/!!" Nightbeat throws his bottle of Nucleon Lite against the wall, and it shatters. "He fought in the Unicron Blessed /Time Wars/! To save you and all of your little tape friends. You know how he died? Huh? A huge deer-head with a zombie body /raped/ him to death! Go,d it was like it thought it was a yeti and Hubcap was a Decepticon jet..."

The Kremzeeks are frowning pretty hard. "The Time Wars burned down our whole village, Baby-Killer!"

Cliffjumper gets right up in their frowning faces. "YEAH, AND THE TIME WARS KILLED MY FRIEND! WE WERE BROTHERS! WE WEREN'T LOSERS ABOUT IT LIKE SUNSTREAKER AND SIDESWIPE AND WE DIDN'T MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT OH HEY DUDE WHAT'S UP BRAH AND THAT KIND OF GARBAGE BUT WE WERE BROTHERS WHERE IT /COUNTED/ AND NOW HE'S /DEAD/ AND HE WAS MY FRIEND AND MY BROTHER! WE WERE IN TRI-OMEGA TOGETHER! THE FRAT WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, THE HOME OF 8-BIT NIHILIST THIRSTY THURSDAYS! BUT WE GAVE EACH OTHER SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR! WE FOUND A WAY TO GET BY EVEN IN THE TIME WARS!"

"Primus, the Time Wars..." Raindance muses. "I was in those, that was when Megatron had that little blue Griffin, wasn't it? And then he found Vector Sigma, and it turned out the Technobots came from some sort of magical underground kingdom, and then Unicron's head exploded and the Militants came out of another dimension and unleashed space radiation everywhere. Isn't it?"

"Listen, Raindance. We lost a lot of good men in those Time Wars. I escaped my duties as a luxurty hotel detective, just to put an end to hotpants wearing robots and my friends died. /Died/. Do you remember Cloudburst? Doubleheader? No, you don't, because the Time Wars erased them from /existence/! They were never born! AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH" Nightbeat falls to his knees.

The Kremzeeks manage to frown harder. "Bro, you are totally harshing our mellow. Who's up for beer pong?"

"YEAH I GUESS I'M UP FOR BEER PONG" Cliffjumper angrily yells.

"Wait a minute..." Raindance muses. "...weren't you like, locked up in a small room with Quickswitch for three and a half million years Nightbeat? When did you have the time to go have a Time War?"

"Look, SLAMDANCE'S LEGS, I don't have to answer to you, I, oh god..." Nighrbeat crawls on the floor, the green side of his face dripping into a toxic pool in front of him, "Did someone say beer pong?"

The Kremzeeks high five.

"You /don't/ have time," Cliffjumper says grimly. "In the Time Wars. For all we know, they're still going on. And we'd have no way of knowin'. Because they're fought through time."

"You don't even know what Beer Pong is, Nightbeat" Raindance retorts. "And I'm more than Slamdance's legs. I get to be his chestplate too. All awesome and stuff. Anyway, you can speak. Remember when you were drunk on that bar on Nespa, and you kept trying to shove that poor little human into a hole on your head, screaming something about muzzles?"

Nightbeat disappears in a flash of Leprechaun.

"Aw, you done it now, Raindance," Cliffjumper says. "You finally hurt someone's feelings so hard they chose not to exist rather than suffer your abuse."

The Kremzeeks seem pretty upset, too. The Leprechaun has died of hate-cancer.

"What, no?" Raindance bleeps, firing tiny lasers off at where Nightbeat was. "It was Foxfire. it was the Time War. Oh Primus no!"

"The only way to undo this," says a Teenage Kremzeek, "is to wish that you'd never been born. Wish so hard that the galaxy implodes in a time war paradox music video."

"Dammit, if he got sucked into the Time Wars, we gotta go back in time to find him." Cliffjumper scratches his head. "Unfortunately, Rodimus caved to the UN's demand to wipe all of our files on time travel technology, and then actually /did/ it."

"Primus, the UN, they mess up everything." Raindance emotes "Doesn't Nightbeat have any sort of time travel stuff? Because I kinda like being born. I'd rather everyone be dead than me not born. Not that I'm selfish or anything. Just I'm great."

The Kremzeeks shake their head, "He'd never be able to kill Time-Nazis with a flare gun. He's worthless. This... Triangle-Bot."

Just then, Future Nightbeat busts through the heating vent. "Cliffjumper! Make sure PAst Nightbeat gets this key! And tell him that whatever he does, don't stop drinking!"

"I got two hands, so I can flare-gun for the both of us," Cliffjumper says. "He just needs to keep a health pack on his h-- WHOA FUTURE NIGHTBEAT!" Cliffjumper takes the key and nods. "You have my word."

"HE'S GOT A KEY, STOP HIM!" cries Raindance, firing off a missile at Cliffjumper's hands as he grabs the key. "Its a trick Cliffjumper, its really Foxfire in disguise or something!"

You strike Cliffjumper with missile.

Cliffjumper's hands EXPLODE. His stumps belch smoke as he falls to the ground, the key lost forever. "WHHHHHYYYYYYYYY"

"Because, dear Cliffjumper" Raindance emits. "There is no such /thing/ as the future, so therefore this can't be Future Nightbeat. Watch as I unmask him." He starts to bash against Future Nightbeat's head, to try to make it come off

Future Nightbeat is already gone, Silly Raindance.

Just then, past Nightbeat bursts through the door, carrying a test tube. "I've found the cure for hate-cancer by reverse-engineering hate plague spores! If I can just heal this Leprechaun and get that key, I can unlock Prime's quarters, get the Matrix... and REVIVE HUBCAP!"

Cliffjumper weeps on the floor.

"Did you ever think" Raindance admonishes as Nightbeat arrives "that the hate-plague didn't /want/ to be cured? Perhaps the world is better with the hate cancer plague killing everything in its path, and annihilating worlds. Did you ever think that, Nightbeat?"

Levelling his Revolver at Raindance, Nightbeat pulls the trigger. Because of the Time Wars, seven laser bullets spew forth from six chambers. "That's what a Time-Sympathizer would say... and we're out of Time!" He throws the test tube at the Kremzeeks, "Feed it to Larry the Leprechaun! Become a /man/!"

Nightbeat strikes you with RaindanceMustDie for 19 points of damage.

"Madre de diodes... Raindance is one of the Time Antagonists all along!" Cliffjumper says, hands still gone. "I KNEW IT!"

Raindance spins in the air as he is shot. "Curse you Nightbeat, curse you, you have uncovered my true identity, that of Alternate Universe Raindance!" And of course, if you look closely, you can see that he does indeed have a little goatee drawn onto his canopy. Raindance transforms... into Slamdance's legs, and runs at Nightbeat, trying to kick him in the robonads

You successfully strike Nightbeat, who is now temporarily incapacitated.

The Kremzeeks just get wasted on the miracle hate cancer cure, and turn into Bugly and Iguanus. "It is our duty, as men, to enlist and fight in the Time Wars. We see that now. Autobot, Decepticon, Whig, Tory, it doesn't matter... Time hates all of us. I hope you learn that one day, Raindance," Iguanus and Bugly say in unison. They disappear into the time stream, leaving a single four leaf cloverr a sproof of their existence.

"Oh my sweet lord!" Nightbeat says as he's kicked, right in the Vector Sigmas. He falls to the ground, the green side of his face just a hazy, toxic memory.

Evil alternate universe Slamdance's legs (with a little goatee on the crotch) starts to dance over Nightbeat's body. "Nya ha ha ha!"

"NOT TODAY, SLAMDANCE," Future Cliffjumper bellows, hefting his killzooka and pressing the R2 trigger button to blast Slamdance with it!

You are temporarily incapacitated by Cliffjumper's Glass Gas attack.

Slamdance's legs are frozen in a mid-goosestep

Future Cliffjumper helps Nightbeat to his feet. "Here, give these to me when you see me," he says, handing the detective a pair of replacement hands. "I'll need 'em."

Through a Time Portal, Hubcap appears! "Your time is through, AF-Raindance! Oh, hey Cliffjumper! MEet me in Siberia, and bring your baseball bat!" Hubcap pulls AF-Raindance through the portal. AF-Raindance is now but a pawn in... THE TIME WARS

"Sure thing! Give 'em hell, buddy!" says Nightbeat.

"Nooooo!" cries AF-Raindance as he is sucked into the most dreadful and eternal war that the universe will ever know, by Hubcap, perhaps our greatest hero.

In a column of blue light, Future Cliffjumper is transported away.