Child's Play

by Ragey

The Decepticons have invaded a baseball field under the intentions of converting it into a space bridge, and naturally none of the audience or baseball players are taking it too kindly. In their attempts to tell the Decepticons to leave, however, Thrust just shoots lightning-fast baseballs at them from his cannon, causing plenty of property damage and ruining some perfectly fine equipment in the process.

Soundwave and Skywarp play catch with one of the players while Ravage hounds another one, and Starscream abducts two members of the audience, forcing them to just hold onto his wings for dear life. Thank heavens, the Autobots arrive!
 

Just as soon as they arrive, Starscream drops his prizes down to certain doom, but Inferno saves the day by somehow turning his ladder into a very convenient safety net. Brawn grabs hold of Soundwave and swings him into Starscream, while Thrust attempts give Bumblebee a taste of baseball-related death.

He fails pretty badly, so Ironhide sorts him out by grabbing a spotlight and clobbering the Seeker with it, prompting Smokescreen to try and catch him, only to get knocked down by Ravage. Starscream and Megatron fire upon Prime and Bumblebee, but the four of them force themselves into the space bridge for some close quarters combat...
 

While Perceptor and Trailbreaker set about trying to deactivate the space bridge. Megatron blasts the console, knocking Perceptor inside the bridge and actually starting the whole thing up, warping those inside into the sky and out of sight, along with the energon cubes Megatron had left inside!

Optimus, Smokescreen, Perceptor, Inferno and Bumblebee find themselves on what they consider an alien planet, along with Starscream, Soundwave, Thrust and Ravage. Starscream sets off a giant jack-in-the-box, but his attempt to blast it just sends some bouncing balls rolling all over the place and finally landing on top of him. Perceptor examines the sphere and deems it non-mechanical, but Starscream cares not for scientific findings, he just wants it off.

Giant cat attack! Soundwave is chased by the alien creature before Thrust intervenes with some laser fire, which only gets him knocked into an orb of water and chased by a mutant fish! Ravage is commanded to try and help out, but he's all "screw that" and turns tail, only to get gripped by the vines of a living plant.

The Autobots decide to load the energon cubes into Prime's trailer, what with the Decepticons being occupied with certain doom. Meanwhile, the space bridge goes kaplowy on Earth, prompting the Autobots to evacuate from the stadium and return to base to hopefully get a tracking on where their leader and his homies have gotten to.

The alien-planet-stranded Autobots find themselves at a shoddily constructed building and leave the energon in before exploring, and come across something shocking.

A large alien hand grabs Starscream from under the sphere and drops him in a jar, along with Soundwave, Thrust and Ravage, and everyone involved soon realises they're in the room of a giant alien child! Or to be precise, they're absolutely tiny in this world, but it's more fun to say other things are big.
 

The kid's cat, Nitro, starts clawing at the building set and shaking up the Autobots inside, but he's shooed away before any real damage is made. Thrust makes his way out of the jar, blasts the kid's hand and flies for the window, only to be grabbed in a net and gets a string attached to him, preventing him from straying far.
 

Ravage escapes the jar, only to be tracked down by Nitro and shoved inside a cage with some kind of hamster elephant rat hybrid, prompting the tiny cassette robot to get fleein' on the exercise wheel. Starscream and Soundwave destroy the jar they're in and try to get their asses out of there...

Only for Soundwave to have the door slammed in his face and then dropped in a tin of toys. Starscream makes his way inside the building set, noticing the Autobots and the energon and opens fire on the latter, prompting our heroes to make their way out with the stable energon before the rest of it explodes as well.

The kid notices his building set on fire, but Inferno saves the day by putting it out with his hose, while Starscream stumbles out drenched from head to toe. Having finally been chased out, he's shoved into a box while the kid thanks the Autobots for saving his building set, before relocating them to the top of his desk.

The Autobots set about explaining everything, stating who they are and who the Decepticons are, introducing their numbers (except Smokescreen) while the kid introduces himself as Erin. Before much more can be said, Erin's parents enter and start asking if he was playing with fire, what with the smoke from his building set and all, but Erin defends himself and states that it was the Decepticons.

Thinking their kid is going nuts, he proves them wrong by showing them Ravage and Thrust, pointing out how they transform from jet to robot and such, but Erin's father believes they should be put away for the time being. However, this just lets Starscream escape and prompts a wild goose chase, but in the distraction Erin lets the Autobots hide out in one of his desk drawers.

The three Decepticons are rounded up and thrown in the box, along with Soundwave whose attempt at hiding as a tiny cassette player proved futile. Erin's parents ask if there's any more of these little buggers running around, the child lying that they've got them all, but Nitro pokes around the desk drawers and prompts the revealing of the Autobots. Despite claiming they're friendly, Erin's parents believe all of them to be dangerous and set about contacting the authorities.

Back on Earth, Chip Chase is helping the Autobots use Teletraan-1 to try and pinpoint the location of Prime and buddies, but they're not on Cybertron, nor anywhere on Earth. In fact, none of them have any idea where they all could be.

Meanwhile, the authorities examine the Decepticons, prodding them with sticks and looking at them through magnifying glasses and other such advanced techniques, but they can't out what makes them tick without having to dissect them!

Erin doesn't like this one bit and swipes the box containing the Autobots before making his exit, prompting the guards and his parents to chase after, but the convenient bush allows him to totally vanish from sight and prompt his pursuers to run on past. He's not out of the woods, however, as a space-age-lollypop licking bully named Marty runs up to him and demands to know what he has behind his back!

Optimus blasts open the lock on the box and leaps to a conveniently placed bin, allowing the Autobots to hide inside while Marty tosses around totally threatening insults. Erin finally gives in and shows the empty box, allowing the bully to give one last insult before letting him go free, while the Autobots are retrieved from the garbage after he leaves.

Erin claims he'll find a way to hide the Autobots at home and save them from all this hoopla, but they remind him that their real home is on Earth, and they're needed there. Of course, Erin has no idea what Earth or the sun is, but does mention that his dad has a telescope to look at the stars with, so if that's powerful enough then they could find out where exactly they should go to head home!

Back at the lab, Ravage removes the shackles of himself and his allies, allowing them to escape with ease.

The guards find Erin again and start up the chase once more, but he drops the Autobots down a sewer grating and tells them to meet up with him at his house. However, the Decepticons follow them down and intercept them, starting a brawl by Starscream kicking Optimus in the face with an oversized boot.

Inferno blasts Starscream down while Ravage pounces on Prime, but the feline just gets swung into a wall and then tossed against an empty bottle. Soundwave duels with Perceptor using a steel wire and a pencil, respectively, the latter weapon getting busted easily but allowing the Autobot to boot the Decepticon down the trail...

And straight into Bumblebee. A giant monster rat begins chasing Perceptor, but Optimus steps in and blasts it away, causing it to land on top of Bumblebee and Soundwave and send the three of them sailing into a whirlpool.

Inferno saves his buddy by extending his ladder, and allows Bumblebee to give Thrust a mighty boot when being brought back to dry land. However, a large water forms in the stream for whatever reason, forcing the Decepticons to escape and the Autobots to hide in a broken cup, using it to ride to the drop-off point and walk the rest of the way to Erin's house.

Erin whines to his parents about the ill treatment of the Transformers, but his parents remind him that it's getting late and he should go to bed, suggesting they talk about it in the morning. The Autobots get their way in using Nitro, and being brought up to the microscope, Perceptor talks waffling out techno babble about how he can generate a transport beam through the microscope with the energon cubes or some wacky crap like that, which Erin politely stored in the drawer for them.

They start it up and prepare to leave, but the Decepticons have arrived and taken Bumblebee hostage! The Autobots can't risk harming Bumblebee, but Nitro saves them the effort by sending the Decepticons fleeing... into the transport beam!

Bumblebee is glad that Nitro saved his life, but that transport beam used the last of their energon cubes and they let the Decepticons get home scot-free, leaving them stranded. Woe!

The Decepticons land in a lake, not exactly the entrance they were hoping for but glad they arrived on Earth safely.

But look out CROCODILE ATTACK

Prime believes that they'll never be safe as long as they remain on this alien planet, but Erin comes up with an idea: His toy rocket ship! It can already fly up to the ceiling of his room, so with Perceptor making some mighty fine modifications, it could very well get them to Earth!

The Autobots board the ship and blast off with ease, Optimus leaving Erin with the knowledge that whenever he looks at the stars, he'll know that his friends are out there among them.

There's a disturbing amount of animation errors in this episode, ranging from the background moving but the characters remaining still; the opposite; completely missing cels or the cels ordered in the wrong fashion. Which is a shame, because the actual animation isn't that bad.

Smokescreen only gets two lines in the episode and barely any screen time, even being completely absent during certain parts, namely the sewer battle. He makes up for it in the continuation, The Gambler.

Ravage runs in the air when he flies.

That's adorable.