Priority Code

It struck him hard at times how unfair it was that the first casualties of war were civilians.

Oh, it was a fact Dinobot had known for most of his life. He'd even seen it happen before. It was just that…warriors didn't typically come into contact with civilians. Not the same ones time after time, anyway. Warriors were the part of civilization that civilized robots kept on long leashes: tightly controlled but at a distance so as to not bring the savages near. One never knew if the pristine ivory towers could be contaminated with bloodlust by contact, after all. Best not to tempt fate. The civilians created their armies and paid tribute in fear for what they had made to protect themselves.

It led the soldiers to internalize as much as they were ostracized. It led to a culture that could not be understood by the civilians outside looking in; codes of honor, bootcamps meant to indoctrinate the outsiders, and hazing to make sure these outsiders were up to standards that were often disparaged by the wary civilization that looked on but never participated. A thousand rules that ensured the soldiers had a strict routine to live by. It made them uniform and closed their ranks to the outside culture. These things ensured that they would live a little longer in war. It kept their minds hard and sharp. Civilians were a soft influence soldiers couldn't afford.

Dinobot had lived and worked with these peaceful Maximals for months. He knew viscerally now what every good warrior learned: involvement gave comrades and enemies alike faces, and faces made death hard, no matter which side it landed on. This time it had landed on the Maximals' and taken Tigatron and Airazor away.

They pretended at fighting, all of these explorers. Behind the necessity of taking up arms against Megatron, they were civilians. And the civilians died first.

He curled up underneath the Axalon's bridge consol and brooded on that. Soon the rat would waddle in and insult him in his nasal whine, and they would patrol. Maybe the kitten would come in first, fresh and hyperactive from running with one of the scientist's new inventions. Optimus Primal, at least, was busy with the fuzor.

All of them would die, just like Tigatron and Airazor.

The tiger he remembered with a certain fondness, although he would never, ever phrase it that way. Beneath the placid exterior, Tigatron's spark had meshed with the heart of a predator. The tiger protected, but it had taken war to strip the protector's gentle paws to the hunter's claws. Necessity made them strange allies, the tiger and the raptor, and he found he missed Tigatron's impassioned speeches on saving the planet from their Cybertronian war. Primal argued, but he became exasperated with Optimus' pig-headedness on certain subjects. Tigatron could see both sides of their arguments and managed to reject Dinobot's points without taking insult at the way the raptor had presented them. Tigatron's veneer of civility made him far more cultured than Dinobot, but he had little difficulty getting along with the warrior's manner. Dinobot had thought that they understood each other because of their differences; despite how different they were from each other, in a way those difference had separated them both from the Maximals. Outsiders stuck together, perhaps?

Dinobot didn't miss the hawk much, but that was to be expected. She was more of a…Maximal than he. More accepted, and more likely to get along with the main group. Plus, she had a bird's-eye view on the war, literally and figuratively. Passion had come to her in quick blazes that spent themselves in the dive and dodge of battle, then leveled out to a mellow soaring. Her predatory nature could and was ignored. As a ground-bound killer, he'd found the bird gliding serenely overhead to be beyond his comprehension. They hadn't understood each other.

But Tigatron had. The tiger had loved her, and despite his grumbles about civilians in combat, Dinobot didn't begrudge him that. Tigatron had been a civilian. Civilians were soft like that. They, unlike warriors, could afford to be. Throughout the months of battle, Dinobot had tried to change these Maximals into soldiers, but now he saw how futile his attempts had been.

The reasons for separation of civilians and soldiers were complicated, but what happened when that separation wasn't kept was simple. The civilians died. Warriors fought and died for them, but it was the civilians who paid the price of their armies and fell. Had a fellow warrior died, Dinobot knew, he would praise the 'bot. Soldiers had different goals, separate from their civilized worlds, and those goals were as hard as their armor. Under the thin purpose of protecting the civilians, a warrior wanted to be remembered. Heroes, villains, or the 'bot at his back--Dinobot remembered them because that was their life. War was their purpose and glory their goal.

What did civilians have? They weren't remembered by war. They were remembered by how they had lived, not how they had fought. Civilians were afraid of battle, and for good reason. To earn honor in war didn't appeal to them. Sometimes Dinobot thought that it actually shamed the Maximals that they fought for their lives. He had tried to force the Maximals into molds that didn't fit, and even after death, Tigatron and Airazor didn't fit. When the other Maximals spoke of them, they didn't talk about Tigatron's stealth in battle or Airazor's marksmanship. They spoke about how the tiger had courted the hawk, and when Airazor had first met Tigatron. Civilian terms of life, kept separate from the warrior ranks, and Dinobot had never felt so lost. Tigatron and Airazor had lived as best they could as civilians in a war, but it had been unfair to hold them to the standards of soldiers. These Maximals were not an army. He was the warrior, and had he done as a warrior should, he would have stood between civilization and what threatened it.

He would remember the dead couple as he knew how, but it struck him hard how unfair it was. Civilians were kept apart for a reason. Warriors were a bulwark between death and civilization, dangerous but ready. They fought and died in the breech. That was how a warrior became a hero, and didn't all warriors want to be remembered?

Dinobot's teeth bared behind his tail as his priorities reorganized, formal as a code, and determination gripped his spark.

No more civilian casualties.

.

.

I suddenly thought that I've looked at Optimus and Cheetor's take at grieving for Airazor and Tigatron. I really had no inspiration for Rhinox or Silverbolt, but what about Dinobot? A little lightbulb went off in my head, and somebody said, "Of COURSE..."

So here it is, the extra weight on the Maximals' side when it came time for Dinobot to decide in "Code of a Hero."