Fic: Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Thunderstreak's Adventures Ch 10)
Never let it be said that Optimus didn’t know how to dish out cruel punishments when he was truly pissed.
Even being the second human to know Optimus the longest, Mikaela still had only seen him furious a few times in her life and nearly all of them had been due to perceived harm to herself and Sam, or to Alex and Mirari.
What he started out as an impromptu shopping excursion on Black Friday to safely remove Mirari from hearing anything she shouldn’t while Sam and Bee gave Alex ‘the talk’ had quickly become a full fledged Autobot mission, complete with the twins and Sideswipe due to certain events that had taken place that morning.
The twins had chosen to spend the morning chasing and harassing Ravage who was for once minding his own business and keeping watchful optics on the seven year old Mirari. Ignoring the indignant cries from the little girl to stop, the two mechs had chased the feline down the hallway, only to crash into Ironhide while rounding the corner.
Now the way things would have gone normally after that would be Ironhide shooting his plasma cannons at the twins and then letting them go, after swearing a blue streak in Cybertronian about fragging glitches and needing their afts welded to the ceiling.
However, there were several circumstances that had made the encounter not follow the normal routine. Ironhide was currently housing a sparkling’s spark in his own, and the twins, during their tumble to the floor, had nearly crushed Mirari who had been chasing them and yelling for them to stop scaring her ‘kitty’.
The former offense had Ratchet ready to dismantle Mudflap and Skidds, while the later had the entire entourage of Autobots ready to offline them, Optimus most of all.
It was due to that incident that both Mudflap and Skidds found themselves assigned to driving and accompanying Mikaela, Mirari, Lily, and Judy to the mall for their evening of shopping.
Due to Optimus’ orders that when off base Mirari was to always have a senior Autobot member as a chaperone, Sideswipe was also accompanying the group, with Annabelle, who was home on leave, ‘driving’ him.
Mikaela honestly wasn’t that obsessed with shopping, but who wouldn’t turn down the chance to be chauffeured by three sentient cars?
The twins parked incredibly close to the mall’s main entrance while Sideswipe went ahead and parked as far from the entrance as possible. The twins then settled down to wait for the girls while snickering at the fact that Sideswipe had to activate his holoform to guard the girls and carry their purchases for them.
The twins didn’t see the matching smirks on Mikaela, Judy, and Sideswipe’s faces as they entered the building. While thinking that they’d gotten off easy, the twins were about to learn how cruel their punishment really was going to be.
For the girls, the time spent shopping flew by. Mikaela found the perfect pair of boots that she’d been looking for, and at seventy percent off as well. At the candle store, Judy went crazy buying anything on sale that was labeled as being ‘pumpkin’ since it was her favorite scent and usually only stocked seasonally.
Some uncharacteristic squeals erupted from Annabelle at the sight of the large sale sign over a spread out display of power tools. With the way the young woman went dashing about and snagging up certain ones, you’d have thought they were candy.
Lily spent over two hours in DEB, most of which was spent trying on hoards of jeans in an effort to find ‘that perfect pair’. She ended up actually finding six, plus two pairs of shoes, four shirts, a sweater, and three pairs of earrings. Luckily, most of the stuff was on sale and Mikaela knew her daughter well enough to have brought their discount card for the store.
The all time high of the excursion though was the hour spent at Build-A-Bear, a stop that happened because Mirari had been so well behaved while the other women had done their own shopping. It also didn’t hurt that the little girl had been holding hands with Sideswipe at the moment of passing the store and looked up at him with bright blue doe eyes.
After four and a half hours of trekking through the mall, the group finished up the outing with ice cream from Dairy Queen. The girls made a big deal out of thanking Sideswipe for his help with carrying their purchases and Annabelle even promised to give him a wash and wax the next afternoon, a statement that put bounce back in the Corvette’s holoform’s step as they exited the building.
And then they were able to see the completed punishment of the twins.
Mikaela couldn’t help but let out a few snickers as the twins’ holoforms, a set of identical twin African Americans at 5’10”, came racing over to the group before coming to a halt, quaking as if they were about to have an check-up by Ratchet.
The next few minutes were filled with horrified babbling from the twins about crazy old ladies who were blind as bats and couldn’t park to save their lives, ‘mini metal monsters’ also known as shopping carts whose sole purpose was to make dents and dings on cars while scratching paint at the same time, and drooling kids who at seeing something brightly colored couldn’t keep their sticky hands to themselves.
Smirks on the faces of everyone in the shopping group except for Mirari, who was too young to understand true cruel punishment, they waited until the twins had finished lamenting their torture session.
Eyes glittering with mischief, Mikaela asked if the twins had learned their lesson.
The answer was a meekly sincere ‘yes’.
And impressively, the twins made it four months afterwards before pulling another prank, a record for their stay on Earth, and further proof that cruel and unusual punishment can truly work wonders.
A/N: Not really much Sam/Bee in this one, but I really wanted to do a chapter from Mikaela’s POV and once again, this is what mutated out when I started typing. And I wanted to try sneaking in Sides as well. I need to put Jazz, Arcee, and Jolt in more stuff as well.