Lay the Dead Down

Cheetor asked Dinobot about war because Dinobot knew war.

That's how things around the base were. Cheetor looked up to Optimus Primal because Optimus Primal knew how to lead. He'd captained before and knew how to deal with wide-eyed younglings out on their first deployment. He never came out and said so, but Cheetor knew that Big Bot had fought before. It wasn't what he said that gave it away, but what he did. Captains of exploration ships didn't know how to fight wars without some kind of experience. Rhinox and Rattrap had that odd kind of experienced aura hanging about them, too, the kind that nobody talked about but he'd figured out was there by just sitting back and observing. Peacetime science officers didn't invent things to counteract weapons of war right off the bat. Rattrap, braggart that he was, never actually mentioned how exactly he got so good at espionage and sabotage working on exploration missions. Subjects mysteriously changed whenever Cheetor tried to directly ask any of his three crewmates about these things.

Young and ignorant he might be, but eventually Cheetor got the point. There were some things the crew of the Axalon didn't talk about to their youngest member, and war was one of them. So when Cheetor needed someone responsible to talk to, advice and someone to look up to as a genuine hero, he turned to Optimus. When Rhinox's expression grew too grim or he became too involved in warcraft to look at anything else, Cheetor the kitten bounded into the fray to ask a million meaningless questions and learn something in the process. When he needed a pal, he went to Rattrap, because Rattrap could act his age even when they both knew the rat was older.

But pretend all they wanted, the Maximals were in a war. Again. Despite themselves. Refusing to talk about it with him wasn't going to make it go away.

That's why Cheetor went to Dinobot. Dinobot never tried to sugarcoat himself to anyone, much less Cheetor. He didn't deny that he had fought before out of some strange urge to defend Cheetor from the past. He was a strategist, a killer, a fighter, and an idealist hiding under a rough exterior of a realist. He wouldn't hesitate to manipulate or outright lie to the Maximal cat, but he wouldn't cross his strange code of honor, either. Which was how Cheetor, young little Cheetor, found that the evil ex-Predacon was a teacher in addition to being a ruthless, brutal, power-hungry 'bot. Under all the rest of the things war brought out in the ex-Predacon--the kind of things the other Maximals tried to deny about themselves--was the spark of someone who would tell it like it was and help Cheetor with that reality so long as he wasn't willfully stupid.

Cheetor followed Optimus Primal in war.

He turned to Dinobot to understand it.

"Why did you want to attack Megatron from the east?" he'd ask on the last leg of the patrol, and Dinobot would roll reptilian eyes at him. The raptor always did that. A teacher he may have been, but that didn't stop him from being a caustic, foul-tempered one. Fortunately, Cheetor had long ago perfected the art of letting mean comments roll off his back by letting them go completely over his head. He asked his questions, and Dinobot would snap back at him, and that was how their patrols passed.

"Why is Big Bot better at fighting in the air than Terrorsaur?"

"Why's it called a 'flank attack'?"

"Do you think Predacons on Cybertron will fight with Megatron if he gets back?"

"Why does Megatron think a shipload of energon make a difference on Cybertron? Is that enough to restart the Great War?"

There were always questions to ask. Cheetor just…didn't understand war. He hadn't been around for the Great Wars or the Maximal-Predacon war. He hadn't even been around many Predacons, not before they'd crashed on this planet together. It didn't make sense to him, turning on each other to fight over…what? Energy? Colonies? People? Power? What was the point?

"Tarantulas made Blackarachnia evil, er, a Predacon, right? Can he do that to stasis pods back on Cybertron? I mean, can he force 'bots into stasis and just, um, CHANGE their programming like that?"

"Why did you say Scorpinok is a stronger fighter than Rhinox? Didja mean because of his missiles?"

"Okay, so I know what a 'pincer maneuver' is, but how does it work with spaceships? Space-fighting's gotta be different than here on the planet, right?"

"Why don't you think a truce will work?"

Over and over, Cheetor listened to Dinobot explain that stop in the Maximal-Predacon war was only temporary. The Predacons were just waiting for a revolution. They wanted a new regime, THEIR regime, on Cybertron. Look at the example set by the Great Wars, the raptor said repeatedly, his voice grave and angry at the same time. Cheetor listened and tried to picture it: the Decepticons and their splinter groups, attacking over and over and over again, never stopping their attacks on the Autobots no matter the outside threats to Cybertron or the cease-fires called. They wanted war and power for the planet and their faction. Dinobot snorted at the Maximal High Council, dismissing them as a temporary setback for the Predacons. The faction had been suppressed, not obliterated, and the only way to stop the Predacons' lust for domination was to destroy them utterly. The Maximals, as Dinobot was quick to point out, were entirely too soft-hearted for such tactics.

Confused, Cheetor paused on the top of a rock ledge to look down and back at the raptor expounding on these lessons learned from the Great Wars. "How did the Great Wars end, then? Did the Autobots destroy the Decepticons?"

Dinobot cocked his head sideways to look up at him. "Doubtful." His brows creased. "History doesn't record how the Wars ended, just that they did. Some say the Great Destroyer, Unicron, ended the Wars, but there are remnants of a large base on Charr said to be built by the Decepticons after Unicron's defeat. I find it highly unlikely that a group of warriors would have gathered their strength in a militarily secure location without planning further military activity. Peaceful colonies are laid out differently." The raptor's tail swayed as Dinobot strode past Cheetor's perch, and a glittering, fanged smirk slanted toward the cat. "That is why colonies are often the best targets in war."

Cheetor started to answer and then hesitated to think about it. His tail lashed, and he jumped down to follow Dinobot. "Because they're less protected than bases?"

"Indeed." The raptor glanced over his shoulder. "Your High Council has approved the establishment of colonies that a well-armed warrior could level single-handedly. The loss of life in the upcoming battles will correct future design flaws, I would think." Cheetor didn't have to see the smirk to know that it was singularly nasty. Dinobot was probably already planning how the Predacons would attack.

He'd worry about that, but for all of Dinobot's threats, he knew the raptor's odd honor system wouldn't allow him to attack an unarmed opponent. The planning was a mental exercise in strategy for the ex-Predacon and a threat meant to rattle the Maximals he sneered at. All of which hadn't answered Cheetor's question, however. "You said history didn't say how the Great Wars had ended, but what do YOU think happened?"

For a few minutes, there was only silence, but Cheetor spent the time bounding up and over the rocks Dinobot walked around. Neither of them hurried the last few miles of their patrol route, and Cheetor really enjoyed using these miles to appreciate his cat beast mode. Besides, the silence didn't mean that Dinobot hadn't heard him. This had happened before, usually when Cheetor asked him for an opinion or theory on something that hadn't come up in the Beast Wars yet. He'd learned not to pester the raptor or attempt to rush him for fear that Dinobot would snap his head off and refuse to answer at all.

Finally, the raptor slowed his steps. Cheetor obligingly sprinted to catch up, and Dinobot turned to hiss into his face, "How many Maximals would Megatron have to kill before you stopped fighting?"

Cheetor hit the brakes, scrabbling with his forefeet while his butt skidded in the dirt. "Wh-what?!"

Narrow eyes glared at him, and the cat gulped. No joke, Cheetor. "He'll kill you all, Maximal. He won't make the same mistake your faction did of letting the insurgents live out of some misguided sense of pity. Mercy has no place in war! Wars kills until there is no one left to die!" The raptor's head twisted to fasten one grim eye on the stunned Maximal. "So I ask again, Maximal: how many of your faction would Megatron have to kill before you stopped fighting?"

Spotted fur bristled, and Cheetor's ears flattened to his skull. "I'd never stop fighting!"

Dinobot rolled his eyes to the sky as if asking to be saved from unspoiled innocents. Still, the answer seemed to satisfy him, and the raptor turned once more to walking. "Predacons will fight for power to the last, for they care little for their comrades' deaths so long as it benefits them. Maximals are foolish in that they care too much. It would save their fellow Maximals' lives if they surrendered, but instead they turn their dead into heroes. They hold up the dead as symbols and keep fighting. The dead inspire them where a Predacon would be much more reasonably afraid at the threat of death. Predacons surrender hopeless battles and so live to fight another day. Maximals become martyrs, and their surviving comrades use their deaths to fight further fruitless battles."

The Maximal cheetah took a moment to translate the brusque, snapped monologue into something he understood. When he finished, Cheetor stopped in his tracks to shudder in the abrupt chill. All he could see in his mind's eye for a blind moment of terror was the battlefield Dinobot's words painted for him: the Maximals never surrendered and the Predacons only pretended to. "You're saying we're all going to die." Rattrap's catch-phrase suddenly didn't seem funny at all.

Dinobot's sharp gaze had an edge to it that almost seemed like regret as he took in Cheetor's huddled form. For his former faction, perhaps, or the one he'd defected to. "Hnnn. You're not as stupidly optimistic as Primal, cat."

Optimus wouldn't have seen what Dinobot was talking about right away. Eventually, yes, but not as quickly as Cheetor had, because Optimus held so much hope for the redemption of Predacons like Dinobot. Maximals believed in redemption, of war-experienced 'bots on harmless exploration ships. In Optimus' presence, Cheetor wouldn't have seen it, either, because Optimus led in such a way that nobody thought of the outcome as death. Ever. He led them into the Pit, and they blindly believed that he would lead them back out.

Dinobot didn't believe. And Cheetor had asked why…

"There are very few of the oldest of our kind left on Cybertron," Dinobot said almost kindly, but ungently nonetheless. "The Autobots and Decepticons didn't disappear from history by themselves."

"Rattrap has a Great-Aunt Arcee," Cheetor offered somewhat morosely, still hunched in on himself.

"The rat has a trash compactor in his ancestry as well, I'm sure," the raptor snarled. "Many of the older Predacons and Maximals are descended by sparks or recycled parts from the survivors of the Great Wars. We know that much. It's recorded in history how Cybertron was remade into our modern world from what was left behind." He shook his head like a gnat had buzzed in his ear. "My point, cat, is that history doesn't record the end of the Great Wars. Common hearsay is that the survivors had to have survived some momentous event, but we do not know what."

Cheetor uncoiled and slinked after him as he started walking again. "You think differently." It wasn't a question. He knew…but he still had to hear him say it.

Dinobot grunted and was silent for a long moment. When they came to the edge of the grassy plain that the Axalon lay on, he stopped to stare at the distant exploration ship turned base for war. "…it's self-evident," he said in the acid, snide voice he used when cutting down one of Optimus Primal's strategies, but the bitter derision wasn't directed at Cheetor. Sometimes when he spoke like this, Cheetor had the feeling Dinobot taught himself as much as he taught one ignorant young Maximal who didn't understand war. "The two factions destroyed themselves, one for power and one in the name of heroes and hollow causes." He cast an impatient look down at the cat, but Cheetor hadn't protested his words as Primal would have. "I speak of honor and you don't understand it, but I have fought for my honor as you Maximals fight for your so-called freedom and rights. Yet how foolish would we be to fight to extinction?"

He had the feeling, wide-eyed and queasy, that the question was rhetorical. Dinobot, he already knew, would die for his honor. And Cheetor would follow Optimus Primal into any battle because what Optimus fought for was RIGHT. If Optimus died today, Cheetor would STILL fight for him, because he was good and worth fighting for. And the others, the other two Maximals on this planet who tried so hard to shield him from the Beast Wars in all its harsh reality, would fight beside him as they had before and now fought again. Because that was how a war started, when one side refused to back down, when one side took a stand and fought back--and continued to fight when sanity dictated one side should have long ago given up. Maximals against Predacons, like Autobots and Decepticons before them.

As for endings…well. Cheetor wished he'd never tried to understand war. He thought of temporary defeats in inevitable wars, of Predacons who would kill anyone in their way, and bowed his head. He wanted to crumple into himself and disappear. Ignorance was easier than knowledge, at least in retrospect.

"The only hope I hold," Dinobot said, "is that you Maximals will surrender. Lay the dead down and end this war before we end each other."

It seemed a very feeble hope.

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Doesn't anybody else find it kinda suspicious that Rattrap's good at espionage, Rhinox can counter Scorpinok AND Tarantulas AND Blackarachnia, and Optimus somehow holds his ground against a group of warmongering Predacons? And we know from the show that those three were also involved in subduing Protoform X. But Cheetor kinda doesn't fit into that. I wanted to paint a picture of the parallel between the Beast Wars and original Transformers using Cheetor and Dinobot.