Kiss Players (fiction)

===Kiss Players===

Following the events of [[The Transformers: The Movie|Unicron's attack]] in 2005, in which [[Galvatron (G1)|Galvatron]] was hurled into space by [[Rodimus Prime]], the [[Decepticon]] leader crash-landed on [[Earth]], his impact utterly devastating [[Tokyo]]. This horrific event shattered Transformer-human relations, and the government agency known as the [[Earth Defense Command]] was formed, led by Commander [[Hitoshizuku Amaō]], who had been driven to her fervent hatred of Transformers by the death of her daughter in the catastrophe. With its headquarters established in Galvatron's impact crater, the EDC set about its assigned task of ridding the Earth of Transformers. To accomplish this, the EDC constructed a fleet of its own man-made Transformers known as [[Autrooper]]s, reverse-engineered from the remains of Galvatron himself. With the Autroopers' added power and the establishment of an [[anti-electron]] field around the Earth, they succeeded in forcing all remaining Transformers to flee the planet. Horrified at what his defeat of Galvatron had wrought, new Autobot leader Rodimus returned the [[Matrix of Leadership|Matrix]] to [[Ultra Magnus (G1)|Ultra Magnus]], and became Hot Rod once again.

[[Image:KP002.jpg|left|250px|thumb|I... guess that's better?]]

As 2006 settled in, Earth had been rendered completely devoid of Transformers, and the rebuilding of Tokyo was underway. However, Galvatron's impact was revealed to have had a much greater effect than anyone could have predicted—the blast caused by his impact had scattered his [[Unicron]]-empowered cells throughout the planet's atmosphere. When they came into contact with other animals and objects, from marine life to cars, they fused with them, becoming one of many monstrous creatures referred to as [[Legion]]. This catastrophe also created the means to defend the world against the Legion, however—when Galvatron's cells came into contact with human beings, they also become able to fuse with other entities containing his cells by kissing them. With their Autroopers being the perfect candidates for this "[[ParasiTech]]" fusion process, the EDC began recruiting and training these "Kiss Players" as combat [[Ne squad|squads]] to battle the Legion.

Some time after the death of her parents in a Legion attack, [[Atari Hitotonari]] found herself pursued by one of the monstrous creatures. EDC operative [[Shaoshao Li]] came to her rescue, but the time-limit of her fusion with her Autrooper, [[Autrooper|Ne-04]], expired and she was ejected from her partner, unconscious. Atari discovered that she was a Kiss Player when she kissed Shaoshao's Autrooper (to the delight of squad commander [[Hitoshizuku Amaō]], who had long known of the girl's potential) and fused with it, defeating the Legion. 

Atari was subsequently drafted into EDC Tokyo Autrooper squad, where she was routinely terrorized by her sociopathic teammate, [[Ringo Chikuma]], but managed to make friends with [[Kayu Michikusa]]. Atari was clearly not suited to EDC life, getting carsick, being embarrassed by the Kiss Fusion, and accidentally swallowing a Legion and having to have her Autrooper shrink down and venture inside her body to remove it. Her most significant escapade during this time was when she was possessed by [[Starscream (G1)|Starscream]]'s ghost, who had her seek out [[Doctor Arkeville]] in order to have the scientist create him a [[Starscream (G1)#Masterpiece|new body]], only for it to be almost immediately destroyed by the EDC's Autroopers.

Following his death in 2005, the legacy of Optimus Prime became something of a rallying point for those disgruntled with the government's anti-Transformer movement. An anti-EDC commando force established itself; among its members was [[Marissa Faireborn]], the daughter of soldier [[Flint|Dashiell Faireborn]] and a childhood friend of Shaoshao Li, who was once rescued by and often played with Prime when she was a child. When the EDC decided to move Prime's body from America to Tokyo, Marissa and her commando squad staged a violent ambush on the transport vehicles in an attempt to liberate the Autobot commander's remains. The whole affair, however, turned out to be a trap when Prime's body was revealed to be a decoy concealing an Autrooper unit piloted by [[Ringo]], who gunned down the whole team, save Marissa herself. Realizing that she had been duped, Marissa turned her attention to a familiar container trailer in the convoy, which concealed the real Prime's body. As an out-of-control Autrooper attempted a ParasiTech fusion with Prime's body, Marissa discovered that she too was a Kiss Player when, in giving her childhood friend a farewell kiss, she found herself merging with an unexpectedly resurrected Prime, complete with a new body formed from the Autrooper and his own remains. Prime and Marissa went on the run from the EDC, with Prime reluctant to allow Marissa to enter any of their battles. To placate her, he would often allow her to visit beaches under the cover of night, so that she could indulge her passion for surfing. On one such trip, however, the pair were attacked by a Legion that had fused with an octopus. In the course of their adventures and battles, Marissa met Atari, and she and Prime saved her life several times.

Shaoshao, meanwhile, had disappeared from EDC service after her failure to save Atari during the earlier battle with the Legion, spirited away to a hidden facility beneath the EDC headquarters. There, she was to become part of a twisted experiment involving dismembering Legion corpses, only to be saved from a chewey fate when Hot Rod arrived on Earth as part of his mission of redemption. Crashing into the EDC Headquarters, Hot Rod was immediately attacked by the imprisoned Legions, which attempted to fuse with him. Before the anti-electron field could fully disable the Autobot, Shaoshao kissed him and, like Prime, he was reformatted into a new body complete with the Legions' Galvatron cells. Like Marissa and Optimus Prime, the pair soon found themselves on the run from the EDC's forces, but unlike that pair, Shaoshao did not get along particularly well with Hot Rod. This, it turned out, was due to her own dislike of Transformers, due to her belief that Marissa and her friendship had ended when Optimus Prime had taken Mariss away from her. She swore to use Hot Rod's power to defeat Prime and win her friend back, and trained Hot Rod in the martial arts to this end.

Plagued by destructive impulses caused by the Galvatron cells within his body, Optimus Prime took control of a swarm of Legion units and led them in an attack on the EDC headquarters. Hacking their way through the Autroopers that opposed them, Marissa and Prime found their attentions diverted by Hot Rod and Shaoshao, who engaged them in battle. As Hot Rod accused Prime of being an impostor (since the real deal was supposed to be dead), Atari fights back her inhibitions and bonds with her Autrooper, successfully managing to turn back the attacking force.

In the wake of this, frivolity became the order of the day, as Shaoshao sulked about Optimus Prime and talked up Hot Rod's skills and weapons, accompanying him on a fishing trip to Tokyo Bay Bridge, where they battled Legions. Marissa lost her underwear and Shaoshao got her hands on it (''yeeeeah''), and both girls began to reflect on their own pasts, and the histories of their Transformer partners. As Prime and Hot Rod began to suffer violent, [[Megatron (G1)|Megatron]]-filled nightmares caused by their Galvatron-cell-infused bodies, Shaoshao witnessed the ghostly figure of a young girl riding on the shoulder of a Legion.

Atari, meanwhile, continued to suffer the whimsical cruelties of Ringo, and could get no help on the matter from Kayu. Angered by her friend's apparent lack of concern, Atari broke a promise to her out of spite. Later, when she sought out her friend to apologize, Atari discovered that Kayu had suffered under Ringo the same way she now was, and that Kayu was now gone, supposedly transferred to another squad within the EDC. Some time later, however, Kayu's Autrooper ran berserk in the EDC headquarters, and Ringo mercilessly gunned it down despite Atari's pleas. Atari's mind went blank, and her own Autrooper went on a rampage, seriously injuring or perhaps even killing Ringo.

Ultimately, Marissa and Prime initiated another attack upon the EDC, clashing once more with Shaoshao and Hot Rod. This time, the foursome were able to settle their differences, and proceeded to team up with Atari to investigate the sinister goings-on beneath the public facade of the EDC which had become increasing apparent during their adventures. Venturing through the "Spiral Vagina" into the "Genital System" facility hidden deep in the basement of the EDC headquarters, they destroyed the anti-electron field, and then discovered that much of the misfortune that had befallen them was the result of a twisted plan by Commander Amaō, who had been experimenting with Galvatron's corpse, Kiss Players and Legions in an attempt to resurrect her daughter. Amaō's daughter's soul had been infused into the Legions along with their Galvatron cells, and Amaō sought to resurrect her in the body of a Kiss Player, having selected Atari for the process. Amaō's plan was foiled when all of the Legions and Autroopers fused with Galvatron, bringing all his cells together and reconstituting his body. His cells were also extracted from the Kiss Players' partners; consequently, Hot Rod and Optimus Prime reverted to their original forms, with Prime returning to his state of death. Galvatron's body was blasted back into space, where it would eventually crash-land on the planet [[Thrull]].