All I have to say is this: Who knew cheesecake could inspire my finicky muses? *shrugs*

Once again, thank you all for your reviews and suggestions! They make my days that much brighter. :3

Disclaimer: "If only, if only," the caged Laserbeak sung.

Epps honestly didn't know what he had done to deserve this.

"--and then there's the question of how a train can be made entirely out of gravy! You would think that it wouldn't be able to support its weight seeing has how gravy isn't really a solid, but it isn't really a liquid, you know? It's caught in that in between phase, kinda like glass if you want to squint and look at it sideways, but it certainly wouldn't be able to stand up to the speeds that a regular steel and iron train can reach and then there's the question of how you would be able to get it moving in the first place--"

He didn't believe in past lives but if this kept up, he was ready to turn believer. He must have done something in a past life to warrant this. Perhaps he had tried to pass off some of his paperwork onto an unsuspecting subordinate? Wait, he had tried to do just that last week. Epps would have gotten away with it to if it hadn't been for some of the unsuspecting subordinate's friends raising the alarm.

"--which makes me wonder how someone can be as cool as a cucumber, since, you know, one's body temperature would have to be around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, or twenty one point one degrees Celsius, to do so, but a human's body can't be lowered to that temperature without vital processes forcefully shutting down that result in early termination! That's just plain awful, really, and then there's--"

Epps was pretty sure it was a physically impossibility for someone to talk one's ear off. Epps was also pretty sure that this mech could accomplish just that if given only half an hour and half a chance. It was therefore unfortunate that the mech had seized a chance and that he had been listening to its looping prattle for a grand total of twenty-two minutes.

"--but there's also the question of how a cookie can be smart; that seems incredibly impossible! A cookie is nothing more than some flour and sugar and some other ingredients that I don't really remember at this time but none of those things can grant a food item intelligence. Or can they? I don't really know since I don't really know much about organics; you guys are certainly a whole lot different from ourselves and the other robotic and organic species we discovered while looking for the Allspark but even still you have to cook the cookie at some pretty high heat and you still have to--"

God, didn't these things every run out of breath? Oh, no, wait, they didn't since they didn't really 'breathe' in the first place. Something about internal fans and coolant lines and some other junk Ratchet had blathered on about when some curious on base physician had asked ages ago.

"--and wouldn't it be really painful to have an apple in your eye? I mean, I've seen some pictures of those fruits and they can get really, really big, especially when the weather has been just right and even the ones on the smaller side of the scale are much larger than a human eye! Why would you even want to have an apple in your eye anyway? I would think it would block out to much of your vision and get in the way and be a general nuisance, really--"

This was worse than when his second oldest daughter, Shaniqua, had started to gab on and on about that male lead actor for that up and coming vampire movie, Moonlight or whatever. However, that decidedly one-sided conversation had only last a blessed five minutes before his wife had called everyone together for dinner. Even today he still remembered what had saved him from his daughter and her newest love interest: pot roast and potatoes.

Mmmm…pot roast and potatoes…

…Crap, now he was hungry.

"--then how would you make a cup of Joe? Would that be considered cannibalism? But you're not really eating and or drinking another human, right? I mean, there are only so many Joes in the world and seeing as so many people down this 'Joe' stuff on a very regular basis, there wouldn't be enough Joes in the world to feed the demand of a single country! So a cup of Joe can't be a Joe since there just isn't enough Joes in the first place unless the cup stated isn't really one cup but more like one fourth of a cup--"

Epps was going to kill Will. He knew that this situation was somehow the Major's fault, never mind the fact that the said Major was currently on shore leave visiting his family stateside for the next two weeks. Will always did like to screw with him when he wasn't in throttling range.

"--and what exactly can you fit in the shell of a nut? And what kind of shell are they even talking about in the first place? Is it a peanut, walnut, chestnut, coconut, hazelnut, or some other nut? They really need to be more specific because while all of those shells are really, really small, except for the coconut, and they have different shapes and sizes which limit to what one can place in them. But why would you want to place something in a nutshell, anyway? It seems terrible--"

The thirty minute mark was fast approaching. If he wanted to keep his ear on his head, and his sanity at least somewhere in the near vicinity, he had to act now or forever be an earless psychotic.

"Bluestreak-"

"--how can someone have a carrot top as the top of their head? Does it have something to do with genetics or maybe some sort of parasitic reliance that happens at birth or maybe--"

"Bluestreak-"

"--and can you literally freeze someone's buns off? That would certainly be very painful and not at all something someone should do lightly and yet I hear about it all the time, especially in areas up north where there's snow and ice and what exactly are these 'buns' anyway--"

"BLUESTREAK!"

Bluestreak, startled from his rambles, choked off his vocalizer and glanced down at the human dully staring up at him. He opened his mouth to ask what was the matter but was silenced before he spoke by a hand coming up in a slow, but forceful, 'stop' gesture. A moment of (wonderful, beautiful, God-sent) silence passed before Epps dared to speak. He regretted it even as he asked.

"What, exactly, was it that you wanted it ask me again?"

The gray mech blinked, looked upwards as if searching his mind for what, indeed, had he come by to ask about in the first place, and then nodded to himself as he remembered. Epps steeled himself as the mech looked back down at him, all smiles and confusion.

"Why is the cake a lie?"