Not a cloud was in the sky and only one moon was visible. The cries and calls of local creatures could be heard coming from the surrounding forest, but thankfully none of them encroached any closer into the field that the inhabitants of Colony Zeta now resided. It was bright, the temperature was ideal for humans, and nothing horrific had (yet) happened. So Moonhunter, feeling more optimistic than normal, had decided that today could be written in the logs as a good day.
After their commander, Optimus Unus, had warned him not to push his troops too hard, the chief of security had no choice but to step back with his training regimen. But he continued to push his men every day, and had been rewarded by the sight of not only increased fighting acumen amongst them all, but also increased muscle mass in the human members. They were getting stronger, more determined, more formidable. If the Predacons they were forced to share a planet with ever attacked, they would be ready.
As he sauntered through the field and observed his forces, he stopped to watch a certain pair—a Maximal named Streak and a human named Ripley. "Joints," he spoke up to remind Ripley. "The sooner you take out the joints, the easier it'll be to disable a Predacon."
Streak had to admit, the human wasn't bad, as far as humans went. Nonetheless, the aerial warrior wasn't getting any benefit from this practice at all. The bot's movements were deliberately sluggish, his attacks were weak and easily dodged, and he was on foot, which was his least favorite place to fight. Vorns ago, Streak had been talked out of his Predacon allegiance, largely because of how little regard he held for his own kind… but he had to give them credit for their competence, which was more than he could say for the humans. Even if he had been talked into joining the Maximals a long time back, that didn't mean he respected humans any more than he had before. Perhaps he acknowledged their right to exist, but in general he understood them to be inferior creatures to both persuasions of his own species, and not worthy of the resources spent on them.
"Go ahead and let me know when my training starts," he said casually to Moonhunter. This was ridiculous, he needed to be training with opponents actually capable of matching him. "Not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to babysit your humans, but I think that it probably helps our defense situation more to have me in top shape than to have your Ripley here smacking Predacons in the elbows." Sure that some sort of anger would be forthcoming from his human opponent, Streak began to move his bladed staff-flats-forward, of course-at top speed, the two gleaming, gossamer ends flashing hypnotically as they whistled through the air in wide, sweeping figure-eights. The human was driven back as the Maximal pressed forward, stopping their advance/retreat a few paces short of their commanding officer. He considered smirking triumphantly at the human, but opted to tilt his head instead, as if he was not dismissive of the human, only innocently disappointed that the fight had not continued. This charade would no doubt fail to fool the leader watching.
It was his particular attitude against "fleshlings" that caused Moonhunter to assign him as combat targets for the humans. He wanted Streak to learn to respect his human partners and find that they could be just as reliable in a situation as another Maximal. He knew that better than most… though he could not tell anyone. It was admittedly difficult, but history had recorded enough incidents when Transformers had been taken down by humans—and not just super-powered ones—to prove that it was not a fluke. It could be done, and even if the average Transformer was in general superior to the average human, Moonhunter still wanted to see mutual respect on each side of the species barrier. Especially amongst his department. "It's all about developing teamwork," he told his mouthy subordinate. "We're only as strong as our weakest members. No offense, Ripley." The human nodded in affable concession. "If you want a better challenge, I can give Ripley an energy weapon."
"Will an energy weapon make him faster or more skillful?" He looked skeptically at Ripley, but that expression soon softened, if only marginally. "Not to offend him, because I've had my quota of that for the day, but what good is it to grant a more potent weapon to an arm that isn't fast enough to hit the target? It's not even the humans' fault; no amount of determination or willpower could change the basic, physical limitations of their calcium-supported, water-sack bodies. The only reason this is even lasting is because I'm not striking at full speed or full power, and moving slow enough to be hit. Granting the human an energy weapon won't mean anything practical if I remain slow enough to be poked to death, but it will mean even less if I move too fast for the human to hit me."
The lower pair of Streak's wings, still in place, began to beat through the air. His feet lifted a few inches above the ground in a heartbeat. He glided backward over a cushion of air, his tiny black eyes, a stark contrast to the massive blue ones of his beast mode, which now were the dominating ornaments of his uncharacteristically bulky shoulder-pads, narrowed. "Or do you propose that this-or any-human will be able to handle me actually training to improve myself, simply by giving them a slightly superior stick with which to smack me?" The drone of his wings beating through the air grew louder. Moonhunter hadn't seen him in real battle much, but had certainly seen him practice against other Maximals. What would follow would be a high-speed strafe at his opponent, and a swipe with his staff strong enough-even with the flat of the blade-to break ribs and send a human sprawling end over end. A tactic meant for a Cybertronian. A tactic at Cybertronian speeds and with Cybertronian strength. Streak actually considered following through with it, but he fully expected his kill-joy commander to call an end to this before he started taking it seriously.
Arrogance was a pet peeve of Moonhunter's. Whenever a member of his unit bragged about their abilities, he made a point to call them out on it. The bigger the braggart, the more he made them work to back up their claims. Streak had been acting particularly annoying as of lately, and he was tempted to step in and challenge him himself. He filed away that option for later, but the last time he had tired that he had ended up getting wounded in the back by a sore looser afterward.
Moonhunter could see Ripley growing angered by Streak's less than flattering description; the human would have pressed the attack with renewed vehemence had Streak not taken to the air. "Calm down. Take three kliks," he dismissed the human before turning to Streak. With a motion, he ordered the dragonfly back to the ground.
Streak descended the foot or so he'd been hovering above the ground, and smirked as the human went off to calm down. Nonetheless, he had a point, didn't he? A human couldn't match his speed. A human couldn't match a transformer in strength, firepower, durability...even in terms of intelligence, technology on both sides of the Transformer race put whatever the humans had constructed prior to the merging of the peoples to shame.
"Exactly how many battles were you in during the tail end of the War?" Moonhunter asked. He knew that he was certainly not the most experienced veteran within the community, but sometimes it was not all about experience. Being a warrior was also a process of mentality just as much as it was about strength and speed. Moonhunter took his job very seriously but never, ever assumed he was the best there was. When he fought, he fought with the same sense of ruthless will to survive as he had done at the onset of his life in the war. The day he became confident in his own abilities was the day he would finally fall.
"Engagements? As a Predacon or as a Maximal?" The question came out dry. His allegiance was irrelevant to the question, he knew. Nonetheless, he also knew that whatever number he gave would be held against him that much more by any Maximal listening in. Streak was aware of everyone's inherent distrust of him, and his retort was more in resentment for his commander bringing out these differences than an actual unwillingness to answer. Really, it was a loaded question, whether the commander knew it or not. If the number was small, he was to be looked down on as a braggart. If the number was large, he was to be regarded darkly as a killer of Maximals. His answer underlined his understanding of the implications behind the question. Before the commander could give answer, he went on.
"The number, as you know sir, is irrelevant. My abilities today are what they are, regardless of my fighting history." This much was true. The question was meant only to demean him in front of more experienced bots, to put him in his place, or at least define a place for him from which he would be expected to defer to the long-term veterans, and could maybe still get away with some shenanigans with the younger fighters. Nonetheless, ability spoke for itself, independent from social organization or norms.
Moonhunter narrowed his eyes at Streaks retort. It wasn't the fact that he had fought on the side of the Predacons that bothered him, it was the fact that he still acted like one. Why did they all have to be so stubborn, arrogant, and even foul-smelling? Nevertheless, Moonhunter was not a pedant commander. If Streak had the skill to back up his claims, the chief of security could tolerate a little bragging. Still, he preferred humility in his troops.
"Only a Predacon would be insulted by the assignment to train the rookie fighters," he sneered. He knew resorting to racial slurs was a bad mistake, but sometimes he could not help himself. He despised their arrogance and proclivities to thuggish violence. Besides, it was true. In general, it was considered an honor to take on the position of a mentor to others. For a mechanical race that was incapable of reproduction, it was the closest thing to a legacy they could pass on to future generations. "Or perhaps your past allegiance is tainting your efforts. Tell me Streak, are you scared by the prospect of facing your former people?"
The blue-dragonfly Maximal simply stared blankly back at his commanding officer as the allegations were laid on. A slight smile twisted his metal lip, and he tilted his head slightly to the side. The Maximals he'd met were usually so clammed up about their prejudices...it was both shocking and strangely refreshing to have Moonhunter throw them in his face. He silently held up one hand, between himself and the bulkier bot in front of him. Three of his fingers were held up.
"There has only ever been one Cybertronian who I hesitated to kill when it was my duty to do so. He convinced me that the Maximals shared my interests more than did my Predacon compatriots. To escape with him alive, a good show of faith to my new allies, I extinguished the sparks of my squad-mates, the only three Predacons with whom I had regular and casually tolerant relations. Having never seen fit to trust me in real battle, there's no way you could know this, but when I fight, I rarely see anyone I kill. They hear my wings, they know I'm coming approximately six seconds before I arrive. My lock-on missiles are weaving smoke trails and finding targets a second or two before I arrive, and I usually show up just in time to see between two and six enemies either incapacitated, or obliterated. From there, I open up with my rapid-fire weapon and cause as much confusion as possible. With only my secondary weapon, and a body too fragile to stay locked in combat with heavily-armored opponents for too long, it's usually the allies that come in behind me that do the up-close murder." His smile here wasn't self-satisfied, but seemed actually if anything a bit empty, like maybe it disguised a bitter taste in his mouth.
"I deliver over half of my offensive payload in the first few seconds of battle. My adversaries are slated for death before I even see their faces. The guidance systems in my missiles couldn't care less about the prospect of facing my former people, sir." His voice was flat, now. He heard some of the other Maximals growing quiet around him.
"As for me being insulted by the assignment to train rookie fighters, I'm not. I'm insulted by the assignment to train auxiliaries. Give me a rookie Maximal, and I'll train with him, because his abilities will matter on the battlefield. No, sir. I'm not insulted by a teaching assignment. I'm insulted because you're taking time out of my training regime to improve the abilities of a human, implying that his abilities are of equal importance with mine, when this is clearly incorrect. Humans don't belong on the battlefield. If they did, their watery husks wouldn't be so fragile." His last statement was made matter-of-factly. Moonhunter wouldn't take much more lip, he was sure, but the addressing of race in this matter meant that backing down wasn't something that he could do easily, not before the matter had been put away in a satisfactory manner.
Bombardiers were a necessary evil during times of war. Moonhunter understood that. And he was no samurai; he never believed he had to look every single foe that he killed in the eyes. But there was a damn good reason the nickname "flyboy" was often used derogatorily. He was not trying to find fault with this soldier, but Streak was really getting on his nerves. So maybe he had done his function well in the Great War. The wars were (officially) over. Could he adapt his function to a style of combat less drastic than carpet-bombing? Was he courageous enough to?
"I see. And did you kill your former teammates while their backs were turned, or did you give them a chance?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically. Before Streak could answer, he went on to the real heart of the matter. "Humans may not belong in a battlefield alongside Maximals and Predacons, or even Autobots and Decepticons," he conceded that much to Streak, but only to make a larger point.
"But it's not because they can't stand up to the Predacons. It's because the feud that exists between the two races should not concern them. And yet, if Bane's Predacons attacked us, they would not spare the humans and just come after us. The humans have just as much a stake in survival as we do, and they are not going to sit back and do nothing while we fight. They may be fragile, but they are not any less noble than us. Perhaps they are more so. Their wars have never come any where near the ruthlessness and viciousness of our own." He remained stoically still as he lectured Streak, boring his optics into the subordinate officer. He was not saying humans were a perfect species, no, but Moonhunter had a rare outlook on the subject matter. As perhaps the only being who had walked on both sides of the barrier between the species, he knew that Cybertronians were not as superior as they wanted to think they were.
Streak's smile was gone. The beginning of Moonhunter's response was all he cared about. The rest, well...he could spare a short reply for that, just to make it clear that he was unimpressed with the commander's logic, but the real subject of this argument had shifted, and the humans were not central to it any longer.
"Humans can train other humans, it doesn't take me for that. And even if it did, improvement of your Maximals is more important to the survival of your pet humans than improvement of the humans themselves. My training is more important to human survival than Ripley's, if it's humans I'm defending. That is all that need be said on that count. If you want proof," he paused, meeting Moonhunter's glare with an even, black-eyed stare of his own, "Take the training wheels off and see how long he lasts against a Cybertronian."
He didn't wait for an answer to this before forging on. "And as for Predacons, grant no honor to those who have none. I killed two with six missiles. The third was a flyer, like me, and our battle went high into the sky and low to the ground, and lasted until neither of us had any ammunition left. It came down to close-in fighting, and by the end I had to pull my wingman off the end of this very blade."
He was quiet for a moment, his gaze hadn't shifted a millimeter. "Living life as a Predacon, trust is a very limited commodity. We weren't close, but I had learned to trust my life with him on the battlefield. I gave that up to join your cause. I gave up my allies, those who accepted me as one born into their number, I gave up those who accepted me as I was because I thought you Maximals had a lot of things right. I've given up a life surrounded by people programmed to watch my back, and taken on one where each of you would consider letting me die from a field wound on a whim of paranoia. I've endured your cowardly whisperings and your sideways glances. I've given up more to be a part of this than you have. As far as I'm concerned, that makes me more Maximal than you."
Moonhunter actually approved of Streak's comment regarding how to handle Predacons, and found the story of how he betrayed his former comrades both reassuring and disturbing. Perhaps he and Streak shared the same core beliefs, but their methodologies differed. They were both just as ruthless, but Streak was not as great a team player as Moonhunter would have prefered. Though in all likelihood, that was not his fault. He could actually relate to that – before changing his identity, he had been forced to endure to accusations of not being truly Maximal, of being a half-breed and a freak.
Moonhunter didn't actually consider himself a Maximal anyway. Sure, he had a Maximal body, but his was not a Maximal's spirit. But he was not truly human any more, either. So what was he? He was a warrior.
And perhaps this firefly was one too. "Perhaps I misjudged you, Streak," the chief of security admitted finally. He was not arrogant enough to assume he was right all the time. Generally he assumed a pessimistic outlook on almost everyone he met. In such cases, being wrong wasn't the worst thing in the world.
Though, that was not to say he was going to concede the original point of the argument. "If you want to hone your skills, that's fine by me," he said. "I can arrange to match you against Maximals more often. But you'll also continue to aid in combat training for the humans—for their own safety. We are still a team, after all, both Maximals and humans working together for our mutual survival. The better prepared each individual member is, the better the chances for us all. End of discussion." He turned his back to the flier and marched off to see to his other men. Enough time had been spent on Streak's complaints. They were duly noted, but for now dismissed. Moonhunter was a busy mech and had other things that needed to be dealt with before the end of the cycle.