Ground Rules

"Primus, give me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the strength to change the things that I can...and the wisdom to hide the dead bodies of the people I had to kill because they annoyed me."

"You really don't like PopPop's coworkers, do you?"

"…do you even know what 'coworkers' means, sweetspark?"

"…I plead the Fifth?"

"Heh. Atta girl."

Callahan snickered as Marie contentedly walked down the stairs, putting her hair up in a ponytail as she did so. At the top of the stairs, intimidated, wide-opticed bots tentatively peeked their helms out, watching the crazy squishy go.

"Stop laughing and gimme m'coffee, geezer," Marie idly swatted his shoulder on her way to the fridge.

"Only if you pull out the camera~" he hummed in mischievous glee as he wandered over to the coffeepot.

A grin slid over the woman's face as she pulled out some eggs and bacon. "The asset has already been obtained."

"Excellent…" he chuckled darkly, turning to give his niece her coffee. Their eyes met…and they both burst into truly maniacal evil laughter.

Then, just as suddenly as they had started, they stopped. It was time for breakfast, after all. And after going through so much trouble over the years to enforce the 'no-evil-plots-at-meals' rule with Fixer, it had become a habit to abide by it themselves.

(Not that it made the bots feel any better about their hosts' sanity. Or lack thereof.)

After they finished breakfast, the two redheads relocated to the living room with their unexpected guests.

"Right, if ya lot are going to stay here till you figure out how to get home, we have to go over some ground rules," Callahan declared, looking at Optimus and Megatron in particular.

"And why should we follow your rules?" Megatron sneered warily, posed to retreat should Marie make a move towards him.

She snorted. "Safety. Your safety, to be precise."

"Is that a threat!?" he snarled, charging his cannon and aiming at her. The Decepticons followed suit as the Autobots took up positions opposite.

"No, it's a side effect of living in the former residence of a mad scientist," Cal remarked dryly, propped his elbow on the couch and his chin in his hand.

"Mad scientist?" Wheeljack perked up.

Ratchet immediately brought out the wrench. "NO."

Wheeljack wilted as the rest of the bots and Marie snickered, although her laughter was slightly sad at the reminder of her beloved aunt.

Callahan chuckled softly before sobering in remembrance. "Yeah. Fixer was a heavily traumatized, paranoid, and sadistic genius with little else to do but tinker all day after she became a ward of my brother. Even three years after her death, there are places we just don't go on the property because her traps are still active."

"Most of them are non-lethal until you get close to the Lair," Marie added, "but at your current size, they could easily kill you by accident. So in the interest of safety, it's best if you just avoid those areas altogether."

"Gremlin, why don't you go get the map? Showing them where to avoid will be easier than telling them."

Marie acquiesced easily, skipping lightly up the steps to the attic.

Whilst she was fetching said map, Cal quickly went over the rest of the rules:

1. Stay out of the indicated areas on the map.

2. Don't damage the house, furniture, or the equipment needed to work the scrapyard.

3. Home bases (aka Cal and Marie's bedrooms, and the areas the Autobots and Decepticons claimed as temporary residences) were off-limits to outsiders unless invited.

4. No fighting at night. Humans need sleep.

5. No attacking the resident humans between the hours of 12am-8am, or before caffeine has been consumed.

6. More rules can be added at any time, but cannot be enforced retroactively.

"…wait, that's it?!" Sideswipe burst out incredulously, an emotion shared by all the cybertronians in the room. "You're not going to, I dunno, make a rule against attacking you two during the rest of the day!?"

"It's been really boring around here without Auntie's inventions constantly running amuck," Marie confessed, walking back into the room with a giant cardboard tube under her arm. "Honestly, it'll be just like old times."

"Plus, we're more than capable of defending ourselves," her uncle grinned, standing up to help his niece get the map out of the tube. "Fixer made sure of that."

Marie shuddered in remembrance. "So many clashing colors…"

"And glitter. You can't forget the glitter."

"Why would you bring that back up, I was doing so well at suppressing the memories of it!"

"Muahaha, now you must suffer with me!"

The young woman cursed her uncle out creatively as he continued to laugh manaically.

"These squishies are all glitched," Skywarp hissed, edging behind Thundercracker. Bots from both factions nodded in unnerved agreement.

"Anyways," Marie scowled, ignoring her uncle in favor of spreading out the giant map on the floor. "The Blue and Grey areas are the safest, with no active traps. None were ever set in Blue, and Grey are what we've managed to clear over the past three years. Green has minimal, minor non-lethal traps. Yellow has middling levels of non-lethal and Orange has high levels. Red is a mix of non-lethal and lethal traps, and Pink is the greatest hazard, with heavy levels of extremely lethal traps."

"What the frag?" Scavenger muttered, Mixmaster peering over his shoulder.

"But there's hardly any Blue, Green, or Grey!" Hound exclaimed in alarm, Mirage looking over the map with raised brows beside him.

Sure enough, the house and the driveway were the only Blue areas. A thick stripe of Green outlined them, and covered the majority of the scrapyard itself. The Grey areas were only in the scrapyard, and in a thin stripe leading towards a building labeled 'Lair' that petered out halfway.

The rest of the map showed the property was banded in layers of increasing severity, going from the outside in. It was all primarily non-lethal, though, except for the 'Lair,' which was a solid Pink wrapped in Red. The entrance was the only other color in the vicinity- a small splash of Orange marked it, and the path leading to it, until it ran into the thin stripe of Grey.

"What necessitated this level of security?!" Prowl asked in alarm, glancing up at their human hosts.

Marie shrugged. "I dunno why Auntie was so paranoid. Someone refuses to tell me," she added with a pointed glare at her uncle.

Callahan just shook his head slowly, lips pressed into a grim line. "I…suppose you're old enough, now. And I think Fixer would prefer that I be the one to tell you, rather than you finding out through the news coverage of the trial…"

"…trial?"

A/N: I FINALLY GOT A NEW CHAPTER OUT! WHOOHOO!

Ahem. So yes, my first new post in a long time…and I end it with a minor cliffhanger.

MUAHAHAHA!

Anyways, I'm still working on other chapters. Hopefully my update rates will pick up now that I don't have to worry about my mom's condition so much. Her prognosis still isn't a whole lot better, but at least she's been stable for a while, and is likely going to stay that way for the holidays.

As for Mischief Managed- I've got, like, half of the last chapter for Despicable Fixit. I JUST CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO END IT! *Huff, huff* Maybe I'll just skip straight to the aftermath…

…aaaand this is getting too long, so ta-ta for now!

P.S. The next chapter is going to have some major trigger warnings, since I will be explaining why Fixit is so messed up.