A/N: Standard disclaimers apply
Warriors
Feeling a servo caress his wing, Swoop looked up from the datapad he was reading.
"You look troubled," Ratchet noted.
The Dinobot cocked his helm to the side. Has he really been that obvious? He had thought he was hiding his brooding well. Not from Ratchet, it seemed. Little escaped the CMO's attention.
"Me Swoop was wondering..."
"Yes?"
"Why us Dinobots speak different than them other Autobots?"
Ratchet nodded, sitting down on a nearby chair. He had been expecting to hear this question one day. Still, expecting it didn't make answering it any easier.
"You were created as warriors," he began. "And you make us proud – your brothers on the battlefield, you in the Medbay," he smiled as his apprentice secretly preened at the unexpected praise.
"The thing is, warrior models have never been pre-programmed before the war. Even if a bot was created to be a fighter he was given at least a few centuries to properly learn how to fight and master different techniques. We did not have such luxury of time here on Earth. We needed you and we needed you to be strong. We couldn't afford to give you a proper training; chances were the Decepticons would deactivate you before you could even learn how to defend yourselves. And thus 'Jack and I came up with the crazy idea to bring you online with a full warrior programming." He paused to think the next part through.
"Me Swoop can see the logic in that," the Pterodactyl offered.
"Yes, it did seem logical to us at the time. By the time we found out that warriors had never been pre-programmed for a very good reason, it was too late. You were given standard processors but they could not cope with the massive volume of information. The first thing your CPUs did was shut off the speech centre and all higher cognitive functions in order to prevent a system crash. There's no way you could remember it but all of you booted up in the battle mode and completely trashed the deck 7 before we could stop you. If you look closely at the walls you might still find the remnants of your brothers' claw marks, and maybe even your own," Ratchet said with a small smile. The Dinobot was intently listening. "Basically we had to find a way to ease the load of your processors. We gave you an additional processing core but it didn't seem enough. Then Wheeljack came up with the idea to give you English as your primary language instead of Cybertronian because it's much simpler; fortunately it worked. But we also needed you to understand us and Teletraan, so we didn't completely delete your Cybertronian language files. What happened is that somehow English partially overwrote your Cybertronian and the other way round. When you speak English your communication centre is trying to use a grammar structure that was meant for a completely different language. It doesn't mean that you are any less intelligent. So... yeah, essentially it's our fault that you speak like that. Mine and Wheeljack's. We're both sincerely sorry for that."
The young Dinobot shook his helm. "Me Swoop not blame you Ratchet and him Wheeljack. No be sorry."
"But it bothers you," the older medic observed.
"Me Swoop bothered by it language difference before but now that you Ratchet explain, me Swoop feel better."
The CMO's blue optics dimmed in suspicion. "Did anyone give you a hard time because of it?"
A croak left the younger mech's vocalizer, distinctly pterodactyl in nature, as he looked away refusing to answer. He felt a wave of anger flash through his mentor's EM field before Ratchet regained control over his emotions.
"Swoop, Dinobots are like my creations to me. Nobody gets to insult my younglings; not without onlining to find themselves reformatted into something unpleasant and superglued to the ceiling of Wheeljack's lab when he is playing with volatile chemicals."
The mental image finally made Swoop smile. "Thank you creator/Ratchet."
Unbeknown to the Dinobots happily playing in their lair, later that evening Ratchet had all other Autobots gather in the rec room (or listen in over the comm. if they were on duty) as he delivered a memorable enraged rant, silently backed up by Optimus himself. If the Dinobots noticed that from that day on nobot was stupid enough to make fun of them, they didn't say, but mechs who angered Wheeljack or the CMO (above the usual wrench throwing level in Ratchet's case) tended to suddenly find themselves with a roomful of intimidating pre-programmed warriors.
Thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated and loved