Disclaimer: I own none of it.

The Importance of an Education

The hemisphere had turned to its fourth seasonal quarter; there was pollen in Rattrap's nose. There was pollen in his ears. There was pollen caught between his toes and in his fur, and as he trod over and upon a field of wildflowers, more dusted his stomach and tail. Primus was kind; he hadn't given his beast mode external reproductive organs.

The sunlight hurt his nocturnal eyes, and he squinted until a flicking, bobbing line of yellow and black became visible. It disappeared into a particularly thick clump of purple pollinators; Primal would have known what they were. He'd probably already named them. Brushing the pollen from his nose, and smearing his face with the pollen on his paw, Rattrap scurried up the hill, pushing aside petals and stalks.

"Oh! Heya, Rattrap!"

Cheetor flipped back into his beast mode, guiltily, and moved himself in front of what he'd been up to. Rattrap, whose eyesight was excellent even in sunlight, put a hand over his face.

"Kid, what the Tarn-made tar are ya doing?"

Cheetor turned and looked at him with his big yellows.

"I'm practicing!"

"Practicing what?"

"Dismantling…"

"Lemme get that for you. What you aren't doing, in no universe, is disarming a bomb. You're not doing that. Right?"

Cheetor gave him that look, with all the hurt in it, and held up the tangled wiring for him to see. "Rhinox made me some fakes…I thought if I installed timers on them, I could learn how to…what's you looking at me like that for?"

"So, if that's a fake, why are you disarmin' it a kilometer away from the base?"

The tail flicked through the poppies; it had also accumulated a coat of yellow dust.

"I…I didn't really want you to see…"

"Maximize!"

As his face appeared, Rattrap graced the younger Maximal with a grin. It was worth a few minutes of energon poisoning to do the humiliation right. He wondered, kind of, sometimes, what the stuff was doing to their bodies during those few hours they slipped out of beast mode; he'd seen a guy die of energon poisoning near the front lines on Vos. Hadn't been pretty. Of course, that had been back when Vos wasn't a bubbling pit.

"Kid, kid, kid, you were embarrassed to be disarmin' bombs in fronna yer uncle Rattrap?"

Cheetor glared, and said, "No! I just want Optimus to send me in next…time…"

Rattrap tried to make his face impassive.

"I mean…you won't mind, right? I mean, I know that you've been complaining about being busy all the time since the Preds started planting these things on the patrol routes, and I thought that this way, y'know, if I could do it instead, you'd be able to go back to doing your normal route and I could…be…"

"Useful," finished Rattrap, folding down to sit on the grass. "You wanna learn how to disarm bombs, kid?"

"I think I'm doing okay! Take a look!"

He shoved the fake forward between Rattrap's knees. Rattrap picked it up and examined it.

"You know, Spots," he said, "there's only one real way to learn how to do this."

Cheetor crouched low. "What's that?"

Rattrap flexed his digits and wriggled them like worms. He set the fake down on the ground. Then he flicked open a panel on his upper leg and took out one of the grenades he carried as a matter of course when away from the base. He didn't like to let people figure out that he'd also carried them as a matter of course back on Cybertron, no matter where he was.

His hands moved quickly; no reason to spend unnecessary time exposing his body to the planet's energy. Cheetor tried to follow with his eyes, but it was obvious he had no clue of what Rattrap was up to. Red wire, red wire…he pulled a black wire out from the fake and ran it up into a section of the grenade that he'd opened up. Timer, where'd the kid attached that…? Oh, there it was. He pulled it free and continued rewiring. When he was done and the grenade was placed amid the wiring like a big egg in an ugly old nest, he rerigged it, tied it in and wound it back.

"Heh," he smirked when he was done, "still got it."

Cheetor's tail was switching back and forth. "I don't understand…"

"Kid," said Rattrap, glancing back down the hill to make sure they were alone, "this is how ya learn to disarm a bomb."

He pulled the pin.

"Ya got fifty seconds."

He had never seen Cheetor's hair stand up like that; never seen him so still, neither.

"Thirty five," he said after a moment. "I ain't disarming it for ya."

Maximizing on the double, Cheetor lunged forth. Rattrap crossed his legs amd sat back.

"Oh, Cybertron…it's chemical based, so...red wire…blue? No, that'll detonate it faster...black. Where is the black?! Oh my Primus, there's no black!"

His hands were slipping, unable to keep the wires apart. Losing precious seconds. Rattrap watched impassively, dusting the pollen from his legs. A dandelion blew into his face on the warm Spring breeze.

"Blue…blue! There are two blues! Why the slag…oh Primus, twenty seconds! Rattrap, help me, I can't do it!"

Rattrap chuckled sourly, waving the dandelion at him. "Nah, kid. Not gonna happen. C'mon, you've been doing this for a week with the fakes."

Cheetor stopped paying attention to the bomb - oops, Rattrap thought, detracting a few more points.

"You knew?!"

Fifteen.

"'Course I knew. Who d'you think Rhinox got to rig up the fakes? Ha, ain't nuthin' you can hide from me, kid."

Seven. Cheetor's hands were flying again; his mouth was open halfway. Rattrap had seen that expression before; a bulb of terror grows from the face outward when your hands and your brain aren't working faster than the timer. It could paralyze you if you weren't careful, he'd seen more than one smart Autobot taken out like that.

Six.

Cheetor whimpered.

Five.

He fell back.

"We gotta get rid of-…"

Four.

Rattrap's hand was shoved into the bomb's guts in no time at all. Tugged the red, cut one of the blacks. The timer stopped at three.

Cheetor was staring at him. Kid didn't look like he could move.

"Ya see what ya did wrong there?" Rattrap asked of him, busy dismantling the rest of it. "Blue wire. Not the same when yer dealing with a two-liner like this guy. Doesn't have a second circuit for you to break. Anyways, congrats on not blowin' yerself up."

Kid didn't look like he could speak, which was a good look fro him.

"Kid." Rattrap turned to him, converting back to beast mode and picking up the grenade's shell in one paw. "Take a piece of advice; don't mess around with important stuff ya don't understand. And leave the disarming to me. Doing this on a regular basis is gonna mess up your cute little head."

Kid…wasn't that easy, even though both their ears are now lying flat.

"I'm not afraid."

"Oh, that is so much not my point…"

"And if you get blown up or shot or whatever, someone's going to have to do it. Right?"

…Huh.

"Oh, so now we're forward planning? Heheheh."

"I want to learn how to do it."

He grinned. "Aw, but what-ev-er for, kitty-cat? Sherlee yer not thinking that us good guys are gonna die, right?"

He outright laughed at his expression, and patted his shoulder with a paw. "Think ya can come past my quarters after yer patrol tomorrow?"

"...Yeah."

"Good. Think I might be done dealing with those nasty little surprises the Preds left for us by then. I'll bring one back for ya. Give ya a few pointers."

It was ridiculous how quickly Cheetor forgot that he'd just endangered both their lives.

"You will?! You're the best, garbage guy!"

Cheetor licked his ears gratefully, and Rattrap muttered about cat spit and rolled his eyes. Kid was so easy.

"Oh, and don't tell Optimus about this."

He nodded and Rattrap believed him. (He'd made good on his word the last time Rattrap had made him promise.) Shaking the pollen from his coat, Cheetor ran off across the grass with the remains off the fake and the timer between his teeth. Rattrap, still toying with the shell, watched him.

The sky was dusky purple with fallout and the final screams had just quietened down. Seekers were drawing near, blacks dots now but they'd be getting bigger. One last yellow halo bloomed behind the command centre up on top of the hill, right before the command centre itself went down in flames. He was lying underneath Grindaxe's body; Waterdive was dead, Grim was dead, Underrun was in two pieces and dead and his hands were slippery from all the free-running oil. This evil, evil glitch was still ticking.

The rest had all gone off ten minutes ago, when they were meant to; it was only because they'd detecetd this one early that Rattrap himself was still functioning. Waterdive, now vaporised by one of the little glitches they hadn't detected, had been in the process of slowing and then, hopefully, stopping the countdown when the first wave had attacked. He was probably going to mourn the big guy later, when he didn't feel like punching his corpse for not finishing the job.

Too big to throw. It would take out him along with the rest of his dead squadron and the rest of the station, without the seekers having to trouble themselves.

"Blue wire...blue wire, where the SLAG..."

He tugged the right one completely by accident. He hadn't meant too, but his arms were shaking so much and he could barely see with all the smoke. The timer stopped at eight.

Two weeks later, on the spare time his new squad leader allowed them, he taught himself how to do it right. Terror was the best teacher.

NOTE: This? Is probably not how you disarm an alien bomb. Just in case you ever find yourself in that position; I don't wanna be responsable for you blowing up the human race, yo. Take some classes first or something.