By: SBert

HASBRO owns the little snicker doodle steal beasties. Andrea owns herself and her cinnamon pastries. I own myself, the shovel handle, my bike, my bed, and anything else that is mine. My Dad owns the dogs, even though he’s not in the story. I don’t want to claim my sister’s room though. It’s too scary to even go in there.

“SBERT!”

My head shot up from what I was reading, and I rolled my eyes.

What’s happened now? Why is Andrea calling my name acrossed the house and at the top of her lungs. *SIGH* With everything that the Transformers do around here, I will never get this Star Trek book finished. Tossing my book to the side, I sat up on my bed. But before I could get off, Andrea popped in.

Now I have never seen her mad, so you know. It wasn’t a question if she was mad this time though. I’m not sure if I knew that because of the rolling pin that she held over her head like a sword. Or if it was the fact that she had flour on her face, like a bunch of camouflage grease paint.

I immediately dove under my butterfly covered, blanket and, silently, hollered from my protective covering. “No one is suppose to attack an unarmed person!”

Andrea glanced at the rolling pin and lowered it slightly. “You have to help me, Brit!”

I peeked out from under my protective covers. “So, you’re not out to kill me?”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “No, but I need you to help me figure out who I do need to.”

Poking my head out further, I raised one of my eyebrows. “Why? What have they done now?”

Sighing, Andrea sat down beside me. “Do you remember that batch of snicker doodles that I made?”

“Ya, sure I... ??? Wait did you say ‘remember‘?”

She nodded her head with a glare and a frown. “Someone took them while I biked home for some more cinnamon.”

I wrinkled my brow in deep thought. “Who would take a bunch of piecrusts with cinnamon on it? AnJ, I don’t know of anyone that would like them enough to take them.”

“Are you saying that my cookies are bad or something?”

I raised my arms in defeat. “I’m just saying that no metal monster will probably like snicker doodles. You wouldn’t be here if you thought that I did it.”

She smiled and nodded. “Ya, I guess you’re right, but then who took them?”

“I don’t know, but we will figure out.” Standing, I grabbed my sandals. “Who do you want to interrogate first?”

“I don’t care, but maybe we should split up and do more at a time.”

“’K, but we need to get a weapon.”

Andrea gave me a funny look. “Why? They know that they are not allowed to hurt us.”

I smiled. “But they are allowed to hurt each other and some of them might be in a fight. I don’t want to put my rear into any crossfire, if I can help it.”

We first went to the kitchen, to look for any hidden clues, but the situation turned up pretty much clueless, except for some crumbs and one (HOT) Snicker Doodle. After not finding a weapon that could actually cause some sort of pain , we then adventured outside to begin our search for the missing pastries. Splitting up at the steps, we headed in opposite directions. I headed toward the lane, and Andrea went to the kennel.

* * *

I ambled up the lane at a slow and sluggish pace.

CRACK!

My head sprung up swiftly. My eyes darted around in all directions, looking for the cause of the sound. Even though I was looking, I wasn’t ready for what happened next.

“AAAHHH!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!”

“WHAA?? AAAHHHH!!!”

“SORRY! AAAHHHH!!!! TRREEEE!!!!”

BAM!

I looked up from my safe spot on the ground at the wrecked rat. He was imbedded in a tree, and one of his wheels slowly spun, crookedly.

From my spot, I could just barely hear a moan. “Oh, my aching processors.”

I picked myself up and jogged over to him. “Are you O.K., Rattrap? What do you think that you were doing? You almost ran me over!” Grabbing the spinning wheel, I tipped him back up right. “Are you listening to me?”

“Ya, I am listening to ya. I’m just having a hard time making out what you are saying when de entire woods are still spinning out of control.”

I snorted. “You’re the only one spinning out of control. Now answer me. What were you doing?”

Sighing, he answered me with slight hesitation. “Oh, all right. I was out in da woods exploring and ran into Inferno. Well, after a few minutes of being with ol‘ nut case, I kinda needed to get out of dere really fast. If you know what I mean?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t know. What happened?”

“Well, you know how dose Predicons are, especially Inferno, but dis time he was just sitting dere, real quiet, staring at the ground. So I went over to him and said ‘Hi, how you doin on dis fine day.’ Well, he den gets a look of shock on his face and starts going balistic. He then started yelling at me ‘You destroyed the colony, Rodent. For dat you will buurrn!’ Well, I guess I had accidentally stepped on an ant hill without realizing it. So den I went beast mode and high tailed it out of there as fast as I could, but it just so happens to be really hard to drive in the woods, as I have just recently figured out.” He nodded his head to show me the trail of destruction and mayhem that was on the road and woods beyond.

Rattrap was in his robot mode now and had his hands on his hips, looking down at me. (I, very crazy like, had started laughing so hard that I fell down.) Rattrap offered me his hand and pulled me up. I wiped a single tear from my eye.

“Now, may I ask as to why you are out here? I dought dat you were on your bed reading some sort of weird book, and if anyone disturbed you, den you was going to take a plunger to dem. I also dought dat dis was suppose to be the day where we were outside and you and your little friend were inside. Also we wouldn’t cause problems to you, and we wouldn’t get in trouble, because we were away from each other.”

Mimicking him, I put my hands on my hips, but I added a glare. “We were doing just that when someone came in and swiped something of Andrea’s.”

He raised one of his optics. “Someone took somethin’ of the Stick Lady’s?” He raised his hands to show me that they were empty. “Hey girl, I don’t know anythin’ about dat. You already heard my alibi, and if dat’s not good enough for you, den follow my path and talk to the mad fire bug. I believe he will confirm my story in no time.”

Raising an eyebrow, I crossed my arms. “I’ll take your alibi this time, because you nearly ran me over, but don’t even start thinking that I will always believe it if you try to run me over.” Turning to leave, I stopped. Something that Rattrap had said just didn’t make much sense. I turned back towards him. “Stick Lady?”

He smiled at me. “Ya, you should have seen her the other day with dat stick of hers. Ha ha! Tarantulas had gotten a hold of some of her new nail polish, you see, and wouldn’t give it back. So she grabbed dis stick and started hitting him with it, but all he did was laugh, dat is, until she smacked his webbing and made him fall. She den said dat if he didn’t leave her stuff alone, den he would get some more of her ‘Stick of Death’.”

I produced a very lovely (crazy) smiled. “‘Stick of Death’? I’m going to have to ask her about that.”

Giving him a small wave ‘bye’, I headed back up the road. He waved back and continued on his way down the lane.

‘Stick of Death’? Hee hee! At least she has found a good defense weapon. Teaches Tarantulas to try to get into her stuff without her knowing. All alone in a room...getting into her bag...in the dark...and suddenly...WHACK. There goes the mighty Stick of Death over his head. HAA HAA HA! Good for her!

* * *

“DINOBOT!”

Looking up from his newly caught meal, the raptor put his hands together in a mocking gesture. He made a look of innocence and, in a sing song voice, replied. “Yesss, Ms. Jones? How may I be of service to you and your abundantly annoying friend today?”

She stomped over to him and, with one hand on her hip, pointed at what was on his make shift plate. “Well, first of all, you can put back that dog. Second, where were you in the last hour?”

He slithered his tongue in a snake-like fashion. “As you can plainly see, Ms. Jones, I have been attempting to catch and eat this vermin. I had quite a hard time doing so with that fool Waspinator around here and I would really like to finish my supper after all the effort I put into it. So if you would kindly leave me alone and go give some other poor creature heartburn, I would be quite pleased.”

After a brief “discussion” with Dinobot, Andrea left him and his bothersome attitude behind. She had to locate the evil culprit who would dare to steal her cookies. She slowly made her way through the woods towards the back fence. When she got up against it, she followed it along the back end of the timber, until she started hearing noises. That’s when she stopped to listened.

It’s probably just one of the bots. They’re always back here teasing the neighbor cows. It’ll just be my luck that I will have to stop them from eating a cow, too. I hope Brittany is having better luck than I am.

“Oww! Be careful! We don’t want Big-bot catching us or something.”

“Zzorry, Wazzpinator didn’t mean to hit Kitty-bot with wrench.”

“Well, be more careful next time, bug breath.”

“Ooo, Kitty-bot insult Wazzpinator. Wazzpinator not like it when Wazzpinator izz inzzulted. Wazzpnator might choozze to not help Kitty-bot with hizz plan.”

“Okay. Whatever, but if you want any sweets, then you will help me.”

Andrea could hear Waspinator buzzing it over. Edging closer to their position, she spotted a nice hiding spot. She didn’t really want to look, but it was her job to keep them from doing stupid and idiotic things (Which, she has figured out, they are quite capable of doing completely on their own and without outside help whatsoever); and she also had to question them. For some reason there were two of them up to something right now, and (even though she would very much prefer to ignore them) she had an obligation to stop them. Creeping over to a nearby tree, she crouched behind it.

“Okay. I’ll help Kitty-bot with hizz job, but no tell Megatron that Wazzpinator helped. All right?”

“Agreed. You help me, I’ll then give you some of my candy stash, and neither one of us will tell Optimus, Megatron, and Ms. SBert about this.”

Peeking out from behind her pleasant piece of foliage, Andrea scanned the surrounding. Both bot’s stood about twenty yards away, and laying at their feet, in pieces, (Of course) was SBert’s blue and silver bike. They shook hands on it and began to “fix” it.

“Kitty-bot, where doezz this piece go?”

“Umm... I’m not sure.”

Lowering her head and sighing, she stepped out from behind the tree. Walking up behind them, she gazed in awe at their attempt to fix it. From where she could see, it was a lost cause. She had never quite seen a handlebar touch the back reflector light like that before. But they couldn’t have been the first ones to ever do that, could they? It took several seconds before either of them noticed her and that was only because she told them what the kickstand was called.

“Ms Jones!!!” CRUNCH! “What are you doing here? Hee hee.”

“Wazzpinator want to know what izz Mzz. Zztick Lady doing here too?”

“I’m here to see what you guys have been doing for the last hour.” She crossed her arms and gave them a look, which said that they had better tell her right now. They looked at each other with a scared look.

Cheetor was the first to dare break the silence. The bot, looking at her, squirmed slightly. “Well, we were kicked outside for the day, as you know, and I was just minding my own business, when all of a sudden, that cat of SBert’s came running out and tripped me. I grabbed the stairs to stop myself, but I still hit her bike that was leaning beside it. I didn’t mean to hurt it, but then I picked it up and brought it out here to fix. Only then did I realize, that I would need some help. So I got Waspinator to help me out in exchange for some sweet tarts.”

Nodding her head slowly, Andrea turned towards Waspinator. “And what is your story?”

“Wazzpinator wazz petting baby puppiezz. Then Kitty-bot grabzz Wazzpinator and dragzz Wazzpinator out here. Kitty-bot zzayzz that if Wazzpinator helpzz, then Wazzpinator getzz zzome candy.”

*SIGH* She had to agree that both of their excuses checked out fine. But she would have preferred that Cheetor’s didn’t though. SBert wasn’t going to be happy when she heard about her bike. Turned to leave the woods, she ambling back up to the house. She didn’t meet another living soul along the way.

(Actual Fact I: Ya, right. The woods are really thick this time of the year, and many bugs creep in them. She will later claim that she hit at least fifty spider webs along the way. I can just see her hitting them. She will squeal slightly and wave her arms around trying to get them off. She will also claim that it was the spiders fault and that they were just ‘being rude’ for sitting on THEIR web, when she hit them.)

* * *

My head bobbed up slightly at an almost silent sound. Was that a scream? Oh, well. If it was, I bet AnJ is doing a great job at taking care of it. She does really well with this group. Considering everything that has happened, of course.

BAM!! “Get back here, you eight-legged freak!”

“Eight-legged freak!!! You make me sound as if I’m a spider or something. I’m but a humble crab, which likes to strike fear and pain into people’s hearts. HAA HAA!!”

I heaved a sigh. I very well knew who that was coming from. Why am I going to be the one stuck with the extra crazy ones? Oh well, I guess it won’t be so bad. ??? Drat! I forgot to bring my shovel handle. I could really use that right now too. I guess I will just have to find something else to get their attention with.

My eyes glimpsed at the ground real quick, for a weapon, but nothing was to be seen, not even a rock, (Which grew in abundance around my place.) so I went on towards the sounds of fighting.

“You could barely cage me the last time. How do you expect to do it to me again? I know all your tricks now.”

“I don’t plan to cage you, Carapace Back!”

“Carapace Back! Now you are making me sound like a flesh covered crab. If you are going to compare me to an earth crab, then I shall grab you up with my claws and eat you, just like the earth crabs do.”

“Earth crabs don’t eat manta rays, Antenna Head.”

“Ah, now you are making it sound like antennas are bad. Well, so you know not all antennas are bad, but mine are. Ha ha!”

I didn’t really care to get there in a hurry, or I would have been there when Rampage was talking about eating Depth Charge. With great deliberation I went slowly to them, not wanting to disturb them yet or give them any reason to shoot or attack me, because that might hurt a little. Pain was never one of my strong points in life.

Walking out in the open very carefully, I waited for them to notice me. It took a few moments for them to stop their squabbling I then walked in between them and looked at each of them a couple of times. They just gave me a look of annoyance and, in Depth Charge’s case, frustration. I guess that they didn’t like me interrupting their verbal fighting.

Depth Charge stomped over to me and poked me on the head. “What do you want, Runt?”

I gave him a heinous glare, as my lips slowly moved and spoke. “For one thing, I want you to get your finger off my head. Second, I want you to NEVER call me ‘runt’ again. Got it?”

He took his finger off and nodded. He still gave me his evil glare, though.

“FURTHER MORE, I want to know where you have been for the last hour.”

Rolling up beside Depth Charge and me, Rampage chuckled gleefully. “I’ve been doing just what you saw me doing, and I have been having fun with it all day.”

Depth Charge just did his robotic sneer/murderous gaze.

*Sigh* I should have guessed that was what they were doing. Turning around slowly, I headed back down the lane. All the while hearing stuff like “Smelly crustaceans”, “I might be a crustaceans, but I‘m not that bad smelling.”, “Ugly zoea”, “Oh, now I might have my feelings hurt.”, “Wimpy megalops”, “Gesundheit.”, “Gross covered chitin”, “Gross covered what? Now that just sounds disgusting.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little at their antics, but I still hadn’t found the missing pastries yet. I walked back down the lane and into the yard. The only Transformers that I passed coming back down was Rattrap and Inferno. (Rattrap waved at me, but Inferno ignored me and kept on screaming and shooting at Rattrap.)

After I walked around the bend in the lane, the yard slowly came into view. In the distance, I could see that Andrea was already standing in the yard, picking something invisible out from her hair. She looked at me with a question in her eyes I shook my head in response.

Disappointment swept over her face. “I wonder where they could be? I didn’t leave them alone for too long, and you were in the house then. So how did someone get in and steal them?”

I shrugged my shoulder. “I don’t know. I zone out pretty good while I’m reading. So one of them could still have gotten in and I wouldn’t notice, but have we even talked to everybody yet? Who did you run into?”

Lifting up three fingers, she replied. “Dinobot, Cheetor, and Waspinator. And you?”

I showed her four fingers. “Rattrap, Inferno, Depth Charge, and Rampage.” Reaching up, I scratched the side of my face. “Wait? That means that we are still missing three of them.”

Andrea’s face got a look of slight hope. “Let’s think...there is still Megatron.”

“Don’t forget about Optimus.”

She nodded her head. “Aaannnnddddd...Who else is there?”

Thinking on it, both of our face suddenly got a downcast look. *Sigh* We then chorused together. “Tarantulas.”

“It has to be. Who else would have stolen my cookies? I think he does stuff like this to me just to see me get mad.” Huffed Andrea, while she crossed her arms.

Propping my elbow on my hand, I rubbed my chin. “I know he likes to bug you, but he only takes things like that for his experiments or he will touch things just because he doesn’t know what they are, but he gives those back.”

“Most of the time.“ Andrea muttered under her breath, then shrugged. “I still think that he probably did it. He has always hated me.”

“And he probably did, but we haven’t caught him yet. So lets go find him, then we will know for sure.”

She smiled at me with a nodded. Tilting her head towards the edge of the house, she said. “When I first got in the yard, I thought I heard some voices in the corner of the orchard. That was where I was about to go before you showed up.”

“Okay! Let’s get over there then.”

We walked through the yard and turned the corner at the end of the house. Even from there we could see and hear a couple of the Beast Warriors over there.

“NO! NO! THAT WAS AN IDIOTIC MOVE MEGATRON! NOT THAT ONE, BANANA EATER! PUT THAT ONE DOWN! NO, I SAID THAT ONE! AAAHHH! YOU GUYS CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT!!!”

“BE QUIET, TARANTULAS, BEFORE I TURN YOU INTO SPIDER FLAMBÉ, YESSS!!”

Looking at each other, with worry in our eyes, we ran as fast as we could into the corner of the orchard. We were slightly stunned at what we saw over there. (Which we shouldn’t have been, after everything that we have seen them do.)

Optimus and Megatron had my Dad’s little white shed tipped over on its side and were using it like a table. On the table was a poker game in progress, and in the middle of the ‘table’ was a stack of snicker doodles.

Tarantulas was the obvious referee, but he also OBVIOUSLY didn’t care that he was cheating by ‘helping them’. He pointed at one of Optimus’s cards and yelled, “THAT ONE! DISCARD THAT PIECE OF WASTE!!”

Optimus shifted slightly, so Tarantulas couldn’t see his cards. My guess is that he had done that a lot, because there were many “shifting” marks on the ground.

Andrea and I strolled up to them (in a casual sort of way) and gazed at their game in progress. Andrea touched my arm lightly; she gave me a slight head-nod towards the table. I gave her a nod back, to show that I had noticed the cookies.

Walking up closer to Optimus, I tapped him on the leg. He stared down at me, and with a look of pure innocence asked, “Yes, is there something that I can do for you?”

I smiled in a slightly friendly and slightly evil sort of way, kind of like the cheshire cat out of “Alice in Wonderland”. “Were you aware that you had Andrea’s cookies in the middle of your card game? Because if you are, then I will have to throw you in my sister’s room.”

He gave me a look of pure shock. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that.” He reached over, scooped up all the cookies and handed them to me. He then turned to give Tarantulas an evil glower. “You were suppose to get the poker chips. Why on earth did you grab up a bunch of cookies instead?”

Tarantulas shifted slightly. (Well, at least he stopped yelling.) He raised his arms up as if he was being arrested. “I didn’t mean to grabbed your cookies, Ms. Sti...Er...Jones. Honestly. Rattrap said that we could use his poker chips today, but after we went out, we remembered that we forgot to grab them. So when you left on your bike, I slipped back in to get them.”

“Then why did you grab my cookies?” Andrea questioned him.

He shifted again. “I had never seen Rattrap’s poker chips before, and, knowing him, he probably had the good smelling, edible ones. So I grabbed them, but I didn’t mean to cause you any alarm, Ms Jones. I really thought that they were the chips used in the game.” He tried very hard to give us a look of a harmed, pitiful spider.

“Do you want to announce a punishment, or will he get off this time, AnJ?”

Andrea gave me a look that said ‘Are you cracked?’ Grabbing my arm, she led me off to the side. “What do you mean ‘Do I want to announce a punishment’? You want me to do something to him just because he mixed up my cookies for poker chips?”

I shrugged and tugged my arm away. “Well, I didn’t know if you were mad enough to want him to pay for them. If you want, I could have him help you make a new batch of cookies with anything you want.”

A look of shock spread on her face. “You think that I could trust a twelve-foot spider, in the kitchen, to help me make some cookies.” She shook her head. “No way are you doing that to me! I thought that we were friends.”

I smiled at her and nudged her lightly. “Okay. Bad idea. Is there something that you want him NOT to do then?”

Looking at the ground, while she thought it over, she replied slowly. “Well,...it would be nice...to have him stop going through my things...and not giving them back.” She looked up at me with poignant eyes.

I smiled and patted her on the back. Then turning in the direction of Tarantulas, I walked back over to him. He stood there, un-moving and timorous. Megatron and Optimus were having fun making mocking gestures at him. They were also saying that he was in deep trouble and would pay for irritating them.

“TARANTULAS!”

He jumped at least three-feet in the air at the sound of his name. He gained back his poseur and cleared his robotic throat. “Yes, Ms. SBert? Am I going to get in trouble for doing something that I didn’t even realize was wrong? May I ask what my punishment will be? Are you going to hit me with your shovel handle, or maybe something slightly more dangerous?”

I raised my hand for complete silence, not just from Tarantulas, but also from Optimus and Megatron.

(Actual Fact II: Running over to the edge of the house, I grab my shovel handle. Coming back, I swung it at Megatron and Optimus, who wasn’t even trying to be quiet with their taunting now. It now consisted of a song and a jig. I won’t describe the jig, because it was too disturbing even to put on paper. But the song went something like this:

I ‘Bammed’ and ‘Squished’ them as hard as I could. Drat, now I will have to find a good piece of tape to put on my handle. They became the fugitives for my wrath.)

Turning towards Tarantulas, who was amazed at how I hit Megaton with a stick, I lifted my fingers. “One: you did know what you were doing when you did it. Two: I will leave your punishment to AnJ. Three: It will not be my cracked shovel handle, but maybe AnJ’s Stick of Death that will hurt you. (She gave me a strange look and muttered something about ‘how did you know about that?’)

Tarantulas sputtered, “But...I didn’t know about it! And why are you leaving me in the hands of a...a lunatic?”

I smiled evilly at him. “Do you really think that she’s more of a lunatic then I would be? But also you were the one who got into her stuff. And she told me that she wouldn’t hurt you if you promise to stay out of her things and will start giving her stuff back nicely.”

He raised the metal part above his eye slightly. “Are you implying to my actions the other day with the horn sparkles?”

“It’s called nail polish, not horn sparkles,” huffed Andrea at him, as she stomped over.

He looked at her sideways while he thought her proposal over. Get hurt by Ms. Jones and SBert or leave her stuff alone. It seemed like he was having a large battle within his head. Finally, with a sigh, he nodded. “All right, I will take you up on your offer, but on one condition of my own.”

I raise my eyebrow. “What is it?”

He rubbed his hands in an evil way. “I want everyone to play some poker tonight, but with me as the referee. Is it a deal?” He stuck his hand out towards my nose.

Me and AnJ flashed a smile at each other. It would be kind of funny to watch him go at it with everybody around. Then Andrea would get to try out a new batch of cookies on all of them.

Shaking his metal hand made it official. “It’s a deal, but we will do it later at dusk. I don’t want to disturb anyone right now.”

He did his evil cackle while he transformed and sped away. ( Probably to tell everybody his good news.)

Smiling once more at each other, Andrea and I slowly walked back towards the house.

“Where’s my bike?”