Beast Wars Anonymous:

Author's note: All right! I'm keeping it short this time (oh, yeees). This is a tag to Code of a Hero, something that I just had to write after I saw the episode (some weeks back), but since I haven't been online that much I'm posting it only now. Author's Warning: English still isn't my first language (it's German) so there are grammatical errors here for sure. Copyrights haven't changed at all. They all belong to Hasbro and Kenner. More stories can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/9992/. Have fun. Comments welcome..

Solitude
by Birgit Staebler (mac@robyn.rhein-neckar.de)

A silent figure stood in the vastness of the desert, two dim red optics gazing forlornly over the plains stretching out in front of him. Everything was cool and quiet, no sound disturbed the silence. Now and then a night-active animal entered the peripheral vision of the figure, but he never moved.

His optics were fixed on the star-speckled sky. It seemed to him that someone had taken a handful of diamonds and had scattered them over black velvet. No cloud obscured the beautiful sight, no shuttles or ships added their blinking lights to the stars above. Everything was naturally beautiful. He was adrift in blackness in an alien universe, alone and unseen

Just like he wanted to be.

Rattrap lowered his gaze and found his optics drawn to the far edge of the lava flow he was only a few walking minutes away from. When the alien device had almost destroyed this planet, a lot of volcanoes had suddenly become active, spouting ash and finally magma. Now everything had more or less quieted down and the cool lava was one reminder of what catastrophe had almost happened here. All around him silent reminders stood. Bare trees, burned ground, ash-covered soil.

But the planet was already reviving, struggling against the suffocating mantle of debris and fighting.

Yes, fighting. Just like the Maximals had fought and were still doing so. They were fighting for this planet, just like the planet was now fighting for itself and for its continued survival. And what had it gotten them?

Rattrap looked at his hands. Silvery metal gleamed dully in the star light. He was a Transmetal now, a change from what he had almost grown used to being for such a long time. He had been a partially organic creature, a rat. A robot in a rat's body, as he had once put it. Now he was a metal rat, though Rhinox had once mentioned that this was not real metal. Not metal in the sense of metal.

Parts of him were inseparably fused with the organic molecules. The quantum surge had done this. It had done the same to some of his comrades and also his enemies. He didn't know what to think of it, though this was more like what he had been before this whole disastrous trip with the Axalon than anything he had been before - and just as far from it as well. One change had led to the other.....

The sun broke over the horizon and slowly boiled up into the morning sky. The night shadows began to shrink back and the smell of wet sand began to receide. It was going to be a hot day, out here in the desert. Rattrap watched the brilliant ball of light rise. This early in the morning it was still comfortable to be here, but in the afternoon it would be unbearable and cooling systems would labor hard to keep his core temperature down.

He sighed.

Rattrap had come here, as he had come every night for the last week, to think and be alone. He could have done that back at the Axalon because he was rarely disturbed in the mess he called his quarters, but he had chosen this remote location. Another location had been in his mind as well, but the valley held too many painful memories and those painful memories were the reason why he was out here. He didn't need enhancement; what his mind held was enough already.

Here, in this isolated hell hole, he was truly alone and nothing and no one would remind him of the painful day he had lost a friend - except for what he did himself to be reminded.

A small smile flickered over his features.

When had he come to think of him as a friend?

Answer: a long time ago.

He sighed again. Shading his optics against the brightening beams of light he tried once again to shut out the last minutes, but it was impossible.

Dinobot was dead. And with him, a small part of Rattrap that had been born on this planet had perished as well. He had hated Predacons ever since he could remember and he had fought them wherever he could. He had been a spy, he had infiltrated and sabotaged, he had killed - and he had seen his friends get killed. Then he had signed onto the Axalon to see something else, to escape this dangerous routine that had settled in, to get away from what memories he still had of the war... only to be forced to work and live together with a Predacon traitor!

Dinobot.

A stinkin', scaly dinosaur with an attitude you could cut through titanium steel with. From the first day on they had been at each other's throat, keeping their optics open for opportunities to strike at the other, to verbally attack and slaughter. The few hassles, the physical shoving here or there, had just been to add to the verbal threat. Somehow, Rattrap now thought back, he couldn't think of Dinobot really attacking anyone of them to kill.

True, okay, so he had nearly shot him....

He sighed deeply. Dinobot had defected back to the Preds and when Megatron had ordered him to terminate Rattrap, Dinobot had seemed to go through with it, only to stop in the last moment. He had seen it in his optics then, Rattrap recalled. Dinobot had grown ... had changed... had been unable to kill his comrades. They had started out hating each other's guts, then changed into respecting the other one and finally.... yes, what then?

Rattrap leaned back against the rocky surface behind him. He had accepted the Predacon among them. He had accepted his presence and had also reached out to become a friend. They had fought, yes of course; they had nearly strangled each other on occasion, called the other names, but he had changed to a point where he was ready to step in for Dinobot and defend him.

//A lot of defending you did! a small voice mocked. He died alone against an army of Predacons because none of you great heroes were fast enough!//

//He risked and lost his life because he was stupid!// Rattrap raged back silently. //He could have waited for back-up!//

//And the human race would have been destroyed; Megatron would have won//, the voice reminded him.

Dinobot had given his life so another race would be able to survive, to stop Megatron from achieving what he had come here for.

//Unfair!// Rattrap's core screamed. //Unfair!//

He should have waited!

One life to save many. Dinobot had finally found his destiny, as he had put it himself in his last moments.

//It wasn't his destiny to be slaughtered by the Preds!// Rattrap's inner self cried desperately. //It should have been me kicking his butt into the Pit!//

They had always threatened each other like that, making promises that one would one day terminate the other. But there had always been this tell-tale twinkle... the amusement hidden behind harsh words. It had been a game.

Now the game was over and one player was dead.

Thinking back to the last weeks before Dinobot's death, Rattrap suddenly saw the tiny changes in the former Predacon. He had been on the edge, always wired, tense.... ready to strike. It had started way before his almost desperate defection back to Megatron, he now realized. It had started...

when? Optimus Primal's death? Sooner? He didn't really know. He only knew that everything had effectively led to these last actions, this heroic death.

Heroic, yeah, right!

He snorted and scooped up a handful of warm sand, letting it run between his fingers. It trickled back onto the ground. The sun played with the dust and glittery particles, dancing through the veil of sand and over his armor.

What was so heroic about it? Dinobot was dead, for crying out loud! His spark had risen to join the Matrix, which was at least some comfort. He was among those other great warriors.....

Rattrap dimmed his optics more, but not because of the flaring sun in the sky.

What had Optimus said? 'He lived a warrior, he died a hero..... Yes, a hero. Too bad heroes always died early.....

He had lost a friend. A good friend.

//And I never even got the time to really apologize for what I said//, he thought, a painful stab sinking into his fuel pump. Had his words driven Dinobot out into that valley? Had he been part of this suicidal decision? It was a thought he was unable to lose. He had provoked the Predacon just before he had left, and he had seen it in Dinobot's optics that he had been ready to strike him. But Dinobot had reigned in his temper and merely left, also leaving a confused Rattrap, and the next time they had met Dinobot had been dying.

He remembered the shock coursing through him at the sight, the mind-numbing fear, the fist of ice enveloping his fuel pump. Rattrap had been unable to say anything for several seconds, mouth agape, optics wide, and finally had averted his optics. Realization of what was about to happen and what had happened before had hit him, but acceptance was still a long way off.

Rattrap cleaned his hands from the clinging sand and gazed into the desert, feeling lost and alone. The lava lay ahead in great, ropy masses, black against an almost white sand. It stretched into a limitless distance, disappearing from sight as it touched the horizon. Already the blackness began to shimmer in the rising heat.

His fault?

Was Dinobot's death his fault and he was to blame for it all alone?

No one openly blamed him, but no one knew of those harsh accusations. Maybe some did, maybe Optimus knew, but then he had always known that Rattrap and Dinobot were not exactly on friendly terms. At least on the outside.

Rattrap lost track of time as he sat in the rising heat, staring at the almost featureless landscape. His accusations had hit a nerve inside Dinobot and maybe they had triggered his suicide.

That's how Rattrap mostly thought of his death. Suicide. The dim-witted lizard had killed himself with what he had done! Stupid Predacon honor! A truly narrow-minded way to live!

Dinobot's way. His actions had been driven by his code of honor, his Predacon honor, and in the end he had given the ultimate sacrifice: himself. His life for others; his salvation. His freedom.

Rattrap tried to forget the dead body shell, the burns and blasts, the open wounds, but it was impossible. It was imprinted in his mind. The funeral pyre had not been able to erase this memory as it had disintegrated Dinobot's shell. It would always be a part of his life and his past.

He had lost a bit of himself that day.

He bravely tried to fill the void, searching almost desperately for a replacement, and he had somehow found it in Silverbolt. Teasing the Fuzor was just as much fun as getting on Dinobot's nerves. Granted, Silverbolt was kind of slow in the cynism and sarcasm department, or at least he did a pretty good show of not understanding half of Rattrap's ambigious one-liners, but he was easy to irritate if you knew what buttons to push. And Rattrap knew some pretty short-wired buttons that were assured to get a reaction quickly and sometimes violenty.

He chuckled, then shook his head.

He had tried to hate Dinobot when they had met. He had tried to hate himself when he had discovered that beneath that Predacon shell was someone not so unlike himself.

He had tried to.... be a friend. And failed.

He had to live with it.

As he had to live with so many decisions, failures and events from before.

Dinobot had found his peace, he thought with a faint smile, rising to his feet. But in doing so he had left a gap among his comrades. One day the gap might close, the wound might heal, but a scar would always remain.

"Good-bye, lizard-lips," Rattrap said quietly into the undisturbed silence of the desert. "It was an honor serving with you."