Ep0.5 – “Bend and Reach” – Closed

"It coulda," Rattrap allowed, dropping his optics from the swivel of Prime's hip joints as he straightened, back to the wires he'd been randomly shuffling around since Prime's oh so helpful arrival. He leaned closer to his 'work' to hide a smirk. "Things roll around down here all th' time. Lotsa vibrations." Another meaningless connection, and he looked back up...and for a mech his size, it was a slaggin' long way up, giving him an excuse to sweep his optics all the way along the Prime's body. "Mighta got under somethin'. Helps sometimes ta get down on all fours an' look."

He nodded absently at a bank of thick conduits on the far wall, coincidentally positioned just where he'd be able to observe every stretch, twist, and contortion as the Prime tried to see through the small gap between them and the floor. "Things sometimes get kicked over there. I'd check it myself, but I," a seemingly sheepish laugh; Prime didn't know him well enough to say any different, "got my hands full."

" 'Preciate it, Prime." More than ya'd ever guess, he added silently, as the Prime leaned down. With no one to see him, he gave up all pretense of working and sat back to enjoy the view. No denying the Prime was a well designed mech, all unselfconcious grace and... Oh yeah, that bottoms-up pose was being saved to a memory capture for sure.

Cameras, he thought as a slight charge heated his plates. Somethin' better than th' human tech security slag in this dump.

Prime glanced over, and Rattrap went back to being busy, attention on the console and not eyein' his commanding officer's aft at all, no sir.

The compliment was unexpected enough that Rattrap felt like he could look at Prime openly. "Thanks. We got a lotta practice maximizin' efficiency when it was just us in th' middle a nowhere against a buncha Cons." He dropped his gaze again, a grin on his faceplates and in his field as he added, "Ya'd prob'ly be amazed at all th' ways we found ta rev things up out there."

The easy hiss and slide of well-maintained hydraulics belonging to a mech in the (no pun intended) prime of his functioning span was music to Rattrap's audios, accompanied by the nearly inaudible shift and clink of his own plating loosening as his systems heated. He was careful not to let his reaction show, though; stated ideals aside, he knew perfectly well that few things made a frametype like the Prime's clamp down his plating as fast as a mech of Rattrap's caste showing interest.

The longer he behaved himself, the longer he could enjoy the show Prime was inadvertently putting on .

"Don't think fer a klik I don't know how lucky I was ta have Wings around," Rattrap said in response to Prime's words. "Me 'n' her mighta driven each other crazy, but it kept us both sane." He grinned cheerily as mention of Airazor gave him another idea. "An' ya know, now that ya mention it, she mighta been the last one ta use that laser spanner." He made a vague gesture upward, toward a narrow walkway which ran around the perimeter of the room; all that remained of what had been the floor above before the base was remodeled to a Cybertronian scale, it was useless except for storage of seldom used items, and near enough the edge of Prime's reach that he'd either have to boost Rattrap up there to look, or do some serious stretching. Either way, Rattrap figured he won. "She coulda left it up there on that catwalk. Sometimes she don't remember th' resta us can't fly."

Scrap, Prime was right; Wings probably would be coming back any time. In fact, Rattrap was fairly sure that it was only the hypocrisy of chasing Rhinox outdoors without taking a break herself which had made Airazor leave in the first place.

And if she came back now...no way was Rattrap gonna be able to keep her from noticing his reaction to the long, attenuated line of Prime's body as he groped blindly along the walkway. Slag, one badly timed glance from Prime and there was no way he was gonna miss it, either, even without knowing Rattrap the way Airazor and Rhinox did.

Conversation was as good a distraction as any (though Rattrap devoted a processor thread to recording all the details of Prime's search for later).

"Slag, th' Axalon left Cybertron clear back b'fore Megatronus started gettin' delusions of grandeur," he said. "Crewed and equipped for long-term exploration; pretty much self sufficient. I was hired on as a pilot." Under entirely falsified credentials, but he always had been good at improvising and a fast learner. He chuckled a little and began untangling the mess of wires he'd been playing with since Prime arrived. "With vorn fulla nothin' ta do between planets, though, it wasn't long b'fore we all started learnin' each other's jobs, just ta have somethin' ta do."

That, or 'face each other stupid, he thought fondly, remembering those days.

"Luckily, we all got along pretty good. Rhinox never m inded havin' help with th' ship's systems - said if I was gonna keep puttin' a strain on 'em, I oughta be able ta fix 'em too - an' I was th' only one smaller'n Airazor, so she'd stuff me inta any holes she couldn't fit through." An' Tigatron kept her from leavin' me behind when I got mouthy, an' Cheetor...

He cut off those memories with a pang; now was not the time, and Prime was not the one to share them.

"We got word'a th' war startin' after th' fact. Communications had been spotty fer a while...we was talkin' about goin' back when Wings' oldest got a message through tellin' her an' Tigatron that their youngest had been killed in battle. If we ever woulda considered stayin' outta th' war...That ended it, right there."

Prob'ly he shouldn'ta said all that, Rattrap thought, watching as Prime continued his fruitless search. There had been more to it, of course, endless breems of arguing back and forth, but what stuck in Rattrap's memory, too deeply felt to be archived, was the lance of pain which had gone through Airazor and Tigatron's fields when they received the news, spreading through the rest of them like a virus.

An' Prime wanted ta know what they were ta each other. That, th' base reason they hadn't stayed outta th' war, summed it up right there.

"Ya think Megs can really be stopped, shorta blowin' him an' his ship ta slag?" Rattrap asked; the memories summoned by this conversation made that option sound most appealing, but there had to be a reason Prime hadn't tried that yet. His hands stilled and he focused on Prime again, letting the shift and sway of that long, powerfully built body distract him. "From what I hear, he ain't ever been particularly reasonable. Ya got any reason ta think that's gonna change, with a world fulla hostages at his pedes?"

Nice a ya ta notice that at least, even if ya are a little late, Rattrap thought, but even he had the good sense not to utter the words aloud. This wasn't the kind of conversation he'd been looking for when all this had started (though he admitted that the odds of getting the Prime to talk dirty to him had been slim from the start, despite the fact a laser spanner was normally innuendo gold).

He vented a little; he wasn't the kind of mech to apologize without weapons being pointed at his head, but even he could see the tension in Prime's body right now had nothing to do with the long arch of his stretch, and it was noteworthy how the big mech kept his gaze turned away as he answered.

Rattrap regarded the graceful shift and sway of Prime's body as his weight settled fully back onto his pedes, using that to settle his temper before he spoke. " 'Preciate it, Prime," he said. "You lookin' for that laser spanner, I mean. Rhinox musta sub-spaced it or somethin'." He met Prime's optics steadily. "Not that I'd say no ta endin' this war, 'specially if I was able ta get my paws in on it. We've already lost," one planet, "enough, ain't no reason ta bring that slag down on th' humans too."

"I'm glad ta hear ya ain't gonna let it happen again." Rattrap's fingers tapped lightly against the console he was playing with. He had plenty of unofficial skills that could be useful to ending this slaggin' war, both things he'd learned before deciding to go law abiding (kinda), and things he'd picked up over vorns of fighting. Things that Prime should probably know about.

"Look Prime, it ain't only here I can be useful." He gestured around the room. "Yeah, I picked up enough ta be a decent engineer, an' I ain't gonna deny that I got my uses with all the tight spaces around this place. But that ain't th' only thing I'm good for. Or d'ya think we were really able ta take out alla those Con ships an' stations with just a refitted science ship an' some stolen guns?"