I've done this before. Beast Wars/Cheetor belong to Hasbro, concept's Ivy's and Tigerhawk's, and despite Flash's denial, *he* belongs to *me*. I don't know who else would want him...
This is based upon a true story. Sorta. The fish thing's true.
Oh yes, and Clare's not really so evil. She's scary, but not evil. Here's three cheers for Clare! ^_^
"And you have to feed them every single day, just a pinch because they tend to overeat, and then if it gets too dirty then the bowl HAS to be cleaned, just pouring in more water doesn't count do you understand?"
I nodded, feigning understanding. My friend Clare, of the scary teeth and the scary eyebrows, was going on holiday and leaving me to take care of the fish. I don't think she trusted me all that much.
"There are six fish there and if I come back and there are ANY LESS THAN SIX...!" Clare's eyes glowed red. She is very short and is very scary, and so innocent people like me have no choice but to nod hurridly and glance toward the door. A few seconds later, Clare departed, satisfied she had brainwashed me into submission. I was left alone. With the fish. I looked down.
"I guess we'll be spending alot more time together, guys."
Is it possible for a fish to look worried?
"Oh good, she's left, right?" The voice came from my closet. I wandered over to the window to check, and noted Clare's car driving off into the sunset. I winced as it slammed into a garbage bin, then watched as it reversed and continued on its way- into a light post. Permanent damage was suffered by neither, and it was no time at all before Clare had turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
"Yep, she's gone. You're safe."
"Thank Primus!" Cheetor leapt out of the closet. "What do you keep in there?! I swear, there was something squishy in there and- Primus." Cheetor repeated. "I don't even think I want to know what it is!"
Soft and squishy? Things in my closet were either soft or squishy, I didn't think they could be both. My closet is practically bottomless and I swear it's got a black hole tucked away somewhere inside, because things go in there and disappear until a few months later when they reappear looking very sheepish and ashamed of themselves. Things breed in all closets, but in my closet they evolve. "It could be Bessie." I said slowly.
"Bessie?" Cheetor looked bemused, but not at all concerned.
"One of Frank's." I explained shortly. Frank is the invisible friend who lives in my closet. He has a few 'strange' habits which are really best not to be mentioed. He's almost as scary as Clare is... just in a very different way.
"One of Frank's." Cheetor's look switched instantaneously from bemused to disturbed, and I must say I cannot blame him. "Oohkay..."
I and Cheetor had been talking meaninglessly for quite some time before the Evil-Incarnate-Clare had come to drop off the fish. He and Flash hadn't been doing anything particularly interesting or amusing lately. They were just busy fitting themselves into the mainstream of human life. I'd dare say that they'd gotten over the whole 'she dragged me out of my time/space position to another place a billion miles from home' thing long ago. They'd grown up. Gotten used to the idea. Oh, Flash was still trying to kill me but hey, that's old. The only thing that was really worrying me was the way that Cheetor had suddenly realised he was a semi-attractive teenager. There were a billion girls out there out to grab his tail and although he wasn't exactly 'promoting' that behaviour, he wasn't doscouraging it either! Although Cheetor can (somehow) take care of himself, there were some females (like my wonderful friend Clare) that even he couldn't fend off.
So, needless to say, I have been busy.
"Hey!" Cheetor cried. He'd caught sight of the fish.
"Nonono!" I yelled, leaping in front of him with my arms outstretched. "You can't touch those! They're Clare's and if anything happens to them, she's going to eat me!"
Cheetor pushed past me to look down into the bowl.
"Fishyfishyfishy." he crooned, tapping the side of the bowl. The fish milled around inside it, unaware of the big fool who was about to send them hurtling off the side of the desk.
"Cheetor, stop!" I cried in panic. The fishbowl tipped and I snatched it up, holding it away from him in case he got any ideas. "And I mean it. You can't let anything happen to these fish."
"Oh, I can't eat them just a little bit?" he said hopefully.
I glared at him. "Not even a little."
"Aww, then what's the point of having fish?"
I had been wondering that myself, actually. "It's just... there is no point to it. They're just pets, that's all. If you do anything to them, I'll tell Clare and after she eats me, she's going to go after you." I turned the glare-o-meter up a notch. Cheetor thought about that and shuddered.
"Alright, I'll leave the fish alone then."
"You can't leave them too alone, though." I corrected him. He gave me a questioning look.
"But you just said-"
"I know what I just said," I said patiently. "But we're going on holiday in a week and if they aren't taken care of, then they'll die."
"Oh, no." Cheetor stepped away from me. "I'm not taking care of those for you."
"You're not taking care of them for *me*, you're taking care of them for *Clare*. And why not?"
"Because!" He cried. "You know what I'm like around fish! And if Flash hears that I'm taking care of them for Clare-"
"You won't *tell* him they're for Clare." I said firmly, putting the fishbowl back on the desk. "Tell him they're for Mrs J or something. Make up some stupid excuse."
"But..." Cheetor began, but his resolve was weakening. His resolve continued to weaken as the week moved on, until finally on the last day, I had tortured him into agreeing. Cheetor was not happy about caring for the fish, but I was not exactly happy to be leaving them with him either. I sat in the car with a sense of foreboding, all the way to our destination.
Three weeks later I flicked the light back on in my room. We were finally home after yet another thrilling holiday down south. I hadn't been allowed to go bungee-jumping, scuba diving or selling my sister at the markets, so it hadn't been a great holiday. But it was an alright one.
I noted that everything was as it should be in my room. It looked a bit chaotic and there was muffled growling beneath the desk. No doubt there had been a fair bit of evolving going on in my absence, but I was confidant I could eradicate any mutants. My bed was a worry though. It was hovering about a foot from the ceiling, balancing on the back of a something. Quite scary stuff indeed. But I had other things on my mind.
LIKE IF THAT IDIOT CHEETOR HAD KILLED CLARE'S FISH!
My scream could be heard for miles around. "You WHAT!??!"
"We sorta..." Cheetor gulped and ducked behind the table that he had tipped over as a barricade. I rampaged over to him and pulled him back to his feet.
"You sorta what?" I said in a dangerously quiet tone.
"Well... they just started growing, you know?" He squeaked. "They just grew until that little bowl wasn't good enough anymore, so we put them in a bigger one, and then that wasn't good enough so we used a bathtub. And that didn't work, they kept growing and we put them in a pool and then they just grew bigger and bigger until finally Flash decided to turn a profit and-"
"They're now the main attraction at Underwater World." Said my yellow-eyed nemesis. "And, I hear, are doing just swimmingly."
I stared at him blankly, not quite registering that. "They're a main attraction?" I said faintly.
"So I hear."
"At Underwater World?" My voice was even more faint.
"Uh huh."
I threw back my head and wailed. "CLARE'S GOING TO KILL ME!" I grabbed Cheetor and began shaking him like a maniac. "FIRST SHE'S GOING TO KILL YOU, AND THEN SHE'S GOING TO KILL ME!"
Cheetor made a sort of choking sound and collapsed to the floor gasping for breath.
"She's going to kill me!" I wailed again.
In the middle of all this chaos, Flash was standing strangely tall. "Not if I have anything to do with it!" he declared, rushing over to the door. "There's no way Clare's robbing me of that privelige! To the Flashmobile!"
Flashmobile? I was actually shocked out of my hysteria. "Dafuh?"
"Eh?" Cheetor's voice wobbled its way up from the ground.
"Come on!" Flash demanded, grabbing the keys off a hook and glaring at us.
I skirted around the obvious question and blinked somewhat owlishly. "Flash, since when can you drive?"
"Since I'm eight months older than you." he replied. "That makes me legal."
"You actually have to learn to drive before you can drive." I explained slowly.
"I'm a Cybertronian." Flash informed me pompously. "How hard can it be to drive a human car?"
"How hard is your head going to be when it flys onto the side of the road and smashes into a dozen pieces of brain-covered bits?"
Flash pushed his glare into overdrive as he looked at me. "Would," he said slowly and very painfully. "Would you rather come with us and try save the fish, or would you face up to Clare when she comes back from holiday to find out all her fish are missing?"
Well, I still had all my clothes in a suitcase and I was in the mood for a long car-drive...
It is about a billion kilometres and a fifteen hours drive to the city where Underwater World is located. It's a long time to be stuck in a car, and it's even longer when you are travelling with a homocidal maniac and a hyperactive teen on the road to discovering just how fun puberty can be.
After an hour the radio stopped working.
After another hour, we got bored.
After another three seconds, we started annoying Flash.
"Are we there yet?" Cheetor said in his very best nasal voice. "No, we're not." Flash replied vacantly. He was drumming his fingers on the wheel and looking very zoned out. Which, come to think of it, is not exactly a good thing.
"Are we there now?" Cheetor repeated, five seconds later.
"No." Came the answer. Flash showed no further signs of life.
"Now?" About seven seconds later.
"No!" A minor edge of irritation crept into the voice.
"Are we stopping at the next roadhouse?"
"No, we're not stopping at the next roadhouse."
I decided to speak up, play along, irritate Flash more. "But what if I gotta pee?!"
Cheetor looked at me incredulously and I shook my head, motioning I didn't really, then grinned to show him the game. Cheetor, being the wonderfully clever cat he is, caught on quickly.
"Yeah!" he echoed.
"You won't need to..." Flash replied, although not without a certain wariness in his voice.
"But what if I did!" I insisted.
"Then you go by the side of the road."
WELL, that was completely unacceptable! "But it's ICKY!"
"I. Don't. Care. You are not peeing in the car!!"
"But what if she really, really, really wants to?" Cheetor piped up.
"He has a point." I agreed.
There was a peculiar grating sound. I looked at Cheetor blankly. He glanced back and forth looking for the sound of the noise, then burst into laughter. "Flash's grinding his teeth!"
"Shut up Cheetor!" Flash roared, pausing his teeth-grinding momentarily.
"But Flaaaaaaaaaaash," I whined. "What if I really, really, REALLY wanna pee?!"
"Yes!" Cheetor leaned forward to he could express his point easier to Flash. "Like heaps. Lots of pee. Rivers of pee."
"Shut up Cheetor!" I wailed.
"Yes, Shut Up Cheetor!" Flash wailed.
"Flash-" I began again. There was an enraged howl, a squeal of tires, a sudden swerve to the right, and we found ourselves at the side of the road. Flash twisted around violently so he could turn his super-duper-only-for-special-occasions-glare upon us. There was practically smoke coming out of his nostrils.
"SO GO!!!"
I blinked owlishly at him. "But Flash, I don't really have to go... I was just saying 'what if?'"
Cheetor and I spent the next hour tied up in duct tape >_<