All Creatures Great and Small

The Maximals found, after a few weeks on the planet, that their beast modes had instincts they couldn't ignore. Rattrap ate garbage. Optimus Primal had an unavoidable banana obsession. Rhinox liked to graze for hours while he thought. Dinobot tried to eat Rattrap--well, okay, he blamed his beast mode for that, but nobody really believed him.

Cheetor's beast mode had a more amusing habit, or at least so Rattrap claimed. Optimus wasn't so amused, but he seemed to be the cheetah's favored victim, so maybe that was understandable. Cheetor would hide behind one of the base supports and look bashful whenever caught, but Primal always had the feeling that he wasn't listening to his lectures. It was just the way that spotted tail would move--flick flick flick--that made him suspicious. He actually said so once.

"But Big Bot," the cat said meekly, tail flicking (flick flick flick), "there's a mouse right behind you."

The ape turned around and, sure enough, there was a field mouse. It was industriously eating a piece of cheese. Primal resolved to tell Rattrap to clean up after himself as the local wildlife was getting positively obese off the rat's refuse. He also resolved to NOT hold these lectures outdoor as Cheetor shot by him in a spotted blur to chase this particular part of the obese local wildlife. It wasn't much of a contest as the mouse could probably have rolled faster than it ran, and Primal put his face in his hand as the cat trotted back to--once again--proudly lay the pudgy mouse at his feet.

"You've got to stop this, Cheetor!"

Cheetor's eyes flattened, and he looked up at his hero/leader with pitiful eyes. "I can't help it, honest!" he wailed. "I just walk outside, and suddenly I'm chasing something small and fuzzy! It's just--just FUN, Big Bot!" He truly did look pathetic, all kittenish and pleading, and Optimus knew his willpower was crumbling as fast as he could scrape it up. He tried to remember the tiny pile of small and furry creatures left outside his door this morning and the unpleasantly squishy way he'd encountered said pile. It had made a mess of his foot and the floor. Rattrap had laughed himself off his chair when he'd seen.

But…kitten eyes…

"Keep them OUTSIDE, Cheetor," the Maximal leader said with the grimness of the terminally cuteness-crippled. "I understand that your beast mode has instincts, but I don't appreciate you depositing them around me." Desperation seized his spark as Cheetor looked, all despondent, at the dead bit of fluff he'd already laid at his commanding officer's feet. "Why don't you give them to Dinobot?" Dinobot didn't like anything, he reasoned, so what did it matter if Cheetor gave him dead little animals? The ex-Predacon was permanently grumpy, anyway.

Two days later, Optimus Primal was ruing his words.

He stood paralyzed in the corridor, unable to look away from what he knew was about to happen. Part of him was screaming to interfere and yell either a warning or a reprimand. The other part of him seemed incapable of repressing the sheer, gleeful hilarity of the moment. Ahead of him, Cheetor's tail swayed, the end flick-flick-flicking, and the cat advanced another silent step into the main bridge room. Across the room, the small and fuzzy victim being stalked glanced around, perhaps warned by the instincts tiny, crunchy prey animals usually had.

Cheetor struck!

Some evil piece of Primal's psyche cheered.

"'EY! Lemme go, ya dumb cat! Hey! HEY!"

On the one hand, Optimus thought later when the damage to the base had been repaired and he'd lectured the miscreants appropriately, he'd never heard the language that had come out of Rattrap's mouth anywhere but the docks before. It had been quite educational. On the other hand, he'd never seen Dinobot laugh that hard before. Even Rhinox had smiled when Cheetor had faithfully dragged one rumpled and swearing rat by him on the way to the raptor's door. The cat had adhered to the letter of the law, if not the spirit, and seemed very proud of himself for it.

Optimus figured the Maximals had come out about even on this one.

Weeks later, Cheetor had graduated in the self-taught predators' school from chasing scurrying things to catching birds. They were far more difficult to stalk and kill, and Primal--and Rattrap--had breathed a sigh of relief. For such a energenic kid, Cheetor would spend an inordinate amount of time lying in wait for innocent feathered creatures. That was time Rattrap had one less many-fanged animal after his tail and Optimus didn't have to keep an eye out for stashed critters somewhere in his room. He'd given up on getting the cat to stop. Really, it was harmless. Besides, Cheetor had gotten very clever at hiding his prizes. That sometimes meant Primal would smell something rotting long before he found it. At least the feathers usually gave away such, ah, feline tokens of affection before they decayed.

Then came the day Cheetor caught something for Rhinox.

"Big--stay still! Stay--Birrg Bfrrt! Brrfg Bffrt!"

Alarmed by the muffled shouts, Primal stepped outside his quarters and found himself enveloped by a fuzzy cyclone of spots. "Cheetor! What in Primus' name do you think you're doing?!"

Kitten cuteness had disappeared in a series of adorable but unmistakably frustrated sounds all along the lines of "Mrowr!" "Ffffft!" and "Hiissssss!" as Cheetor wrestled around him on the floor. He appeared to be trying to keep a hold on something with fluttering wings, but for the life of him, Primal couldn't make out what it was. His first thought was irritation because he'd TOLD the cat to keep it outside. Hunting live prey in the base was NOT acceptable!

Then Cheetor managed to pin his prey down, and Primal lost his irritation along with his jaw. "A CyberBee!"

The cat spat out a wing. The 'Bee made an aggrieved sound and thrashed harder. "Yeah! It was outside the base, and I thought it was a bird!" Cheetor's wide eyes attested to his surprise when he'd pounced only to find the miniature Predacon machine. "Think Scorpinok's spying on us?"

"Let's find out," Primal said as he reached down to carefully pick up the disabled spy. He strode off toward Rhinox's lab but turned a few steps away. "Good job, Cheetor!"

Cheetor beamed happily. That was the last time anyone said anything against his beast mode's weird habits.

Weeks later, however, Tigatron did smile at Cheetor and say, "I can catch my own birds, Little Cat."

The spotted cat hunched in on himself in the manner of the horribly embarrassed. "I know," he said meekly. "She was just…there." He wouldn't meet their eyes. "Sorry."

At least Airazor took it well.

Months later, and Cheetor knew he shouldn't. He really shouldn't. But he had gotten excellent at stalking small and furry things, and birds weren't hard at all anymore, and he was bored. Bored cats found ways to entertain themselves. It didn't help that he was hungry, too. Plus, he'd been experimenting with fishing before Megatron had forced the Maximals to relocate far away from a convenient river. That had been kind of fun. He'd wanted to try again but never found the time.

And Bit Bot HAD asked him to bring in their rather grouchy fellow Maximal…

Cheetor licked his chops as he stalked the unsuspecting raybot. Behind him, his tail moved.

Depth Charge glared. "Stop looking at me like that, cat."

Flick flick flick.

My cat brings me chipmunks and birds. My mind made the sudden leap from housecat to cheetah, and viola! Cheetor bringing Optimus dead animals. Then I had a dream about Cheetor stalking Depth Charge, and, well...yeah.

The point is that beast modes come fully loaded with things like hunting instincts. These things come out occasionally.