A.N.: So I went back and re-read this and yeesh. I made a few minor changes, but mostly what was making me cringe was the formatting. Hopefully this helps make things a little easier for all you lovelies. Also, I'm working on another little vignette. Hopefully you guys like it. Stay lovely my darlings.

"It ain't fair, I tell ya."

"You are worse than Cheetor."

"Well what if they run into Preds while out there? Optimus shoulda taken me instead of the kid. I'da shown those Preds a thing or two about what Maximals are made of!"

"You? The vermin who would rather flee than stand his ground and fight?"

"Hey, you wanna come over here and say that to my face, Chopperbreath?"

"Namecalling: How original."

"You think you're such hot slag, don'tcha Lizard Lips? I bet you couldn't even beat me in one round of quattra!"

A long pause. "You mean you actually know how to play?"

"Eh don't let the good looks fool you – I do have a brain under this handsome physique."

That was how Optimus and Cheetor found when they came back from patrol, staring intently at the board, muttering insults at one another under their breath. Cheetor bounded over in beast mode to where the two were sitting deep in concentration. "Hey, what're you guys doing?" Cheetor asked brightly.

"We are playing quattra," Dinobot said, watching Rattrap warily as the rodent's optics flicked between various pieces, considering.

"Oh cool!" Cheetor said, putting his paws up on the table to get a better view. "I never learned how to play, but I always wanted to. Think you could teach – "

"Hey hey hey, quit distracting me, will ya?" Rattrap snapped, optics not leaving the magnetic board floating between them.

"Yes," Dinobot said smoothly. "The vermin needs all the help he can get."

"Oi, Chopperface, if you're so smart, how come I'm winnin?"

Dinobot snarled. "Perhaps because you continuously hog the high ground?"

"That sounds like a loser's excuse to me."

"You do not employ nearly enough defense to be a challenging opponent. Brutal assault will not win you anything!"

"Oh yeah?" Rattrap shot Dinobot a smile before claiming another one of the latter's pieces. "With my inferior intellect, I seem to have forgotten: Is this the fourth or the fifth piece of yours I've taken?"

Dinobot growled. "Do not test me, Vermin."

"Oooh, I'm quakin in my pelt. Stop yapping and make a move already before I die of rust."

"That's rich, coming from the mech who just spent twenty cycles to make a move!"

The squabbling continued, and Optimus shook his head fondly. He put a servo on Cheetor's shoulder. "Come on Cheetor: I'll teach you how to play, since these two are busy."

Cheetor looked up at the gorilla, a little hurt. "Optimus, they're ignoring me!" He couldn't keep the childlike whine out of his voice.

"They're not doing it intentionally," Optimus explained gently as he led Cheetor off to another table in the common area where they could set up their own quattra board. "They're both very stubborn mechs, Cheetor, and they tend to get very absorbed in anything they've set their processors to. They didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but both of them want to win very badly, I imagine. Once they're done, I'll make sure at least one of them plays a round with you."

Partially mollified, the youngest member of the group cast one last wistful glance at the two quattra players in the corner. Neither of them seemed to be having a particularly good time, but Cheetor just wanted to be included. Soon enough, however, he was lost in the excitement of learning to play a new game and having Optimus's entire attention on him.

By the time Dinobot came to join him in a game, Cheetor had quite forgotten how slighted he'd felt by their exclusion. (They'd finished their game: Rattrap won, much to his own delight. He'd cheered and gloated, shoving it in Dinobot's face, who'd snarled and cursed and insisted that Rattrap must have been cheating. It had gotten so bad that Optimus had had to separate the two. Rattrap had crowed that Dinobot should play with the noob, as they'd probably be at about the same skill level, before cackling out of the room. Optimus had held Dinobot back, the only prehistoric Maximal looking ready to launch himself after the rat. Optimus had steered him in the direction of Cheetor, and told very firmly that it would be nice if he did indeed play with Cheetor. Grumbling somewhat, Dinobot had done what Optimus hadn't quite ordered him to do. By the end of the game, though, Dinobot was smiling slightly, and not just because he'd won. Cheetor's sheer exuberance at being included and at getting to do something new was an excellent cure for a sour mood, especially since Cheetor was such a good sport about losing.)

Not long after that, Dinobot had insisted on a rematch for the quattra match he'd lost. With a confident laugh, Rattrap had accepted. "Can't you just accept that I'm the better strategist, Chopperface?" Rattrap asked, still strutting from his last victory.

Dinobot utterly demolished him.

Rattrap stared at the board in horror as he saw, too late, Dinobot put the finishing touches on a trap.

"You cheated!" Rattrap snapped suddenly, unwilling to accept his defeat.

Dinobot vented air in annoyance. "You will find that I only used legal moves," he said tensely. "You should also notice that unlike some vermin, I do not gloat so when I win!"

The two stared at each other angrily across the table. It was eventually Rattrap who broke the staring contest. With a huff, he said "I still say you cheated," and stormed off, fuming and muttering angrily to himself. Dinobot reviewed the state of the board once more with an approving look before checking his chronometer and realizing that it was nearly time for him to relieve Rhinox from monitor duty. He had just enough time to grab some energon before going to the rest of his duties for the day. He cleared the quattra board and left to get himself a pre-work snack.

Cheetor still wasn't over the whole Tarantulas debacle. Rattrap had gotten the cat's tail out of danger, but Cheetor was still clearly upset and frightened by the whole experience. Rattrap had an idea of how to (hopefully) pull him out of his funk.

"Yo, Chopperface!"

Rattrap was leaning casually against Dinobot's door. This irked Dinobot in so many ways: Rattrap's clear disrespect for Dinobot's ability to tear his head off if he wanted to, the intimate nature of coming to visit Dinobot in his personal quarters as though they were friends or some other such nonsense. And then there were just the general things about Rattrap that irked Dinobot: His smell, his smug ignorant face that looked rodent-like regardless of his form, that oddly accented voice of his...the list went on.

"Kindly remove yourself from my quarters, Vermin," Dinobot growled, not looking up from the report he was writing about his most recent patrol.

Rattrap shifted uncomfortably in the doorway, all of a sudden rethinking this tactic. Maybe he should have asked Rhinox instead? Rhinox knew how to play, surely. Or maybe Optimus…?

"Oh very well, what do you want then? Quickly, before I change my mind and decide to eat you."

Rattrap smirked. "Wouldn't I give you indigestion or something, Chopper?"

"If it'd shut you up," Dinobot said dryly, "I'm sure I could bring myself to live with it."

Rattrap scuffed his foot against the floor. "I'm, ah...worried about Cheetor. I don't know if you noticed, but he's kinda not been himself lately, and uh…"

Dinobot turned around to face Rattrap for the first time. "What did you have in mind?" he asked.

Rattrap was surprised. "You mean...you want to help?"

Dinobot gave him a scathing look. "One would have to be blind not to notice Cheetor's somewhat abrupt change in demeanor," he said dryly. "I am as concerned for the boy as you, as his emotional well being might very well affect his performance on the field of battle."

"So nice to know you care," Rattrap said sarcastically, unnerved by Dinobot's decidedly practical reaction to the obvious distress of a teammate.

Dinotbot gave Rattrap a look that he couldn't decipher. With a sigh, Dinobot added, somewhat reluctantly it seemed to Rattrap, "I admit I have grown to...enjoy...the young mech's company." He held Rattrap's gaze, as though challenging him to say something. When Rattrap kept quiet, Dinobot continued: "If there is something that might cheer up the young mech, and I may help, I would like to do so."

Rattrap looked at Dinobot for longer than Dinobot found particularly comfortable. Finally, Rattrap said "You know, Chopperface? You ain't all bad. Not that I'd let anybody hear me admit that."

That made Dinobot smile slightly, despite himself.

"Anyway, I was thinkin you could play some quattra with him again, 'n I'd sorta, you know, help the kid out. Coach him, or something. Might make him feel better or something you know?"

"You know?" Dinobot said after contemplating the idea for a moment, "that's actually not a bad idea. For a vermin."

Rattrap laughed.

Cheetor, with Rattrap's help, won the game. Later, Rattrap and Dinobot agreed that, even though Rattrap had technically made all the important moves, they wouldn't count it in the official score, since Dinobot insisted he'd been going easy on the cat.

The night after the teleportation incident, Dinobot knocked on Rattrap's door.

"Well well well, if it isn't ol' Chopperface. Finally come to your senses and realized how much better I am than you at...well, basically everything?"

But Dinobot didn't react the way he normally might have, with a snarl and a returned insult. No, he simply stood there, looking...off somehow.

"Hey, Chopper...you don't look so good. Maybe you need a few megacycles in the CR chamber?"

Dinobot didn't look at Rattrap, and for a moment didn't say anything at all. Rattrap was just starting to feel truly uncomfortable when Dinobot abruptly said "Play quattra with me."

"Huh?" Rattrap said, not sure he was hearing right.

"Play quattra with me," Dinobot repeated again, and Rattrap could almost swear he heard Dinobot's voice waver slightly.

That unnerved Rattrap enough to agree without much sass.

"Geez, Chopper, you sure your beast mode ain't a horse? Your face is long enough for the part…" Okay, so he could still manage the sass. After all, this was Rattrap.

Dinobot's spark really didn't seem to be in the game, and Rattrap asked him multiple times through the game if Dinobot wanted to stop. The ex-pred simply shook his head, but he certainly didn't look any happier for playing.

A few times, Rattrap tried to position his pieces so that he deliberately gave Dinobot an advantage, but Dinobot always noticed it. And every time he noticed it, he'd snarl and snap at Rattrap to play him for real, deliberately ignoring the obvious gifts.

It made for very one-sided play, with Rattrap easily wiping the floor with the distracted Dinobot. At first, Dinobot didn't realize he'd lost, and Rattrap had to gently point out to him that the game was over. Dinobot didn't say anything, he simply got up and left, somehow looking more frustrated and troubled than when he'd knocked on Rattrap's door. Rattrap felt distinctly uncomfortable about the whole situation, and reluctantly locked himself in his room. Somehow, he didn't think Dinobot would take kindly to Rattrap running him down and forcing Dinobot to talk to him. But that didn't mean that Rattrap felt any less inclined to do exactly that.

It was a long time before the two played quattra again. It wasn't for lack of free time; both had plenty of that, and more than enough of it overlapped. But Dinobot was ashamed of his sulking during their previous match, and couldn't bring himself to look at a quattra board without wincing at his childishness. Rattrap had been made entirely uncomfortable by Dinobot's complete lack of interest and denial of that lack of interest - it had simply been too unsettling for him to handle.

Ironically, it was Rattrap's "betrayal" of the Maximals that brought the games back.

Rattrap was in his quarters relaxing for the first time in what felt like weeks. He'd been on

edge about the prospect of an enemy spy being in the compound; he'd been the one to bring up the fact that the Preds were getting a little too "lucky" for it to be luck. After all, as a spy, it was his job to know when another spy was around. And the idea that one of his friends might be a Predacon spy was just too uncomfortable for him to think about.

And then while he was pretending to be the Predacon spy, and even worse, while he was on the Darksyde, Rattrap couldn't let his guard down for a second. It was the kind of challenge he thrived on during the act. But afterwards he needed to just lock himself in his room for a few megacycles and ride out the nervousness and jitters that he'd had to suppress while he was playing "Rattrap the Traitor".

A knock on his door was the last thing he'd needed, but there it was anyway.

Rattrap was sitting on his berth, his back to the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, a cube of energon in his servos and braced against his knees to keep the shaking of his hands from spilling the fuel. Normally, he prefered organic food to the energon, as he didn't have to think about how much he missed Cybertron when he wasn't holding the fuschia liquid. Now though, when he felt emotionally fragile, the nostalgia was comforting as opposed to grating.

Another knock. Rattrap tried to ignore them. He really didn't want to see anyone right now, not when he felt so...breakable. He'd be fine in a few megacycles, surely. He could face his teammates then. Not before.

Whoever it was, they weren't going away as there was yet another knock on his door. It was probably Optimus. Except Optimus had known the plan all along, and Rattrap had explicitly told Optimus that he needed some time to just...be. Optimus had seemed to understand. It probably wasn't Optimus. Rhinox, then? Rhinox was an old friend. Bit of a technogeek, but Rattrap wasn't gonna hold that against him when that particular quality had saved their afts so many times. But Rhinox knew better than to go looking for him right after a hard job.

"Rattrap?" Dinobot. Rattrap closed his eyes. Of all the voices he could have heard on the other side of his door, that had not been the one he was prepared to hear, and it was probably the last on a very long list of mechs he didn't want to face right then.

"Rattrap, if you are in there...please. I need to...I'd like to talk to you."

'Please'? Since when did Dinobot say please?

"I've…Primus, this is pointless...I've got something I'd like to share with you. Rattrap, if you're in there, would you let me in?"

He sounded about as uncomfortable as Rattrap felt. Maybe that was why he got up and finally opened the door. "What do you want, Dinobot?" He winced, realizing that that had come out a lot harsher than he'd been intending. "Er...sorry, Chopperface. I been kinda...edgy since...y'know?"

Dinobot raised one optic ridge. "Since you pretended to betray all of your friends?"

Rattrap winced again. "Yeah. That."

He stood in the doorway, feeling miserably upset, hand shaking where it was propped up against the frame.

Suddenly, Dinobot shoved something towards Rattrap. "I thought that maybe you could use a distraction," he said slowly, and completely self-consciously. "Rhinox said...well, he mentioned that you might...need some cheering up. That you get...depressed after a job like this." He was holding a quattra set in his servos.

Rattrap couldn't help but smile at how completely embarrassed Dinobot sounded, and without meaning to, he burst into laughter. Knowing Dinobot would undoubtedly snap something at him and storm off, Rattrap threw a hand out and grabbed onto Dinobot's wrist to keep him there.

"Ooooh, Primus. Sorry bout that there, Chopperface. Just…" he shook out his arms, quickly releasing Dinobot's wrist to do so. "Just letting out some stress."

Instead of answering like he might normally have, Dinobot was frowning at his wrist. Rattrap rolled his eyes. "Being a rat ain't contagious, Chopperface. Lame lizard breath on the other hand…"

That snapped Dinobot out of it. "Just for that, rodent, I shall crush you."

"Bring it on, lizard lips!"

"Vile vermin."

"Get in here with the slaggen quattra set already, you fragger." Dinobot didn't need to be told a second time.

They'd only been playing for about a half a megacycle (insults flying back and forth, as usual) when Dinobot suddenly got quiet. Rattrap didn't notice, as he was studying the board intently for traps that might work against or for him.

"Why didn't you shoot me when you had the chance?" Dinobot asked abruptly.

Rattrap's hand jerked on the board. He looked up at Dinobot like a deer caught in the headlights. "Where the slaggin frag did that come from?" he asked, more than a little angry at being reminded of why he was barricaded in his room in the first place.

"You shot Optimus Primal, our leader," Dinobot pressed on relentlessly. "I was under the impression that you didn't even like me. So why not just shoot me?"

Rattrap looked genuinely angry now. He couldn't have said why, but he didn't want to talk about this. He was uncomfortable in ways he couldn't explain, horribly embarrassed, and hadn't it just been a few megacycles ago that he'd been threatening his friends? That he'd been terrified for his life, of getting caught and tortured? Slaggit all, why couldn't Dinobot have kept his mouth shut? They could have played a perfectly decent game of quattra (Rattrap winning, obviously), traded some insults, and then Dinobot would have left and Rattrap would have been able to spend the rest of the evening in a moderately decent mood.

"I don't have to explain anything to you. I don't owe you anything!"

"You spared me pain and suffering when you didn't have to, you gave me the opportunity to get the upper hand on Megatron when you could have let him rip me to shreds: Why?"

"Megatron ain't the only one capable of ripping you to shreds, and if you keep talking I'm gonna have to prove that point right now!" Angrily, he moved one of his pieces in a particularly aggressive manner. "It's your turn. Let's finish this damn game and then get the slag outta my hab suite!"

Calmly, and with an almost careless quickness, Dinobot moved one of his pieces. "I don't understand why you're so defensive about this, vermin. It's a simple question."

"Shut UP!" Rattrap made another move, just as quickly as Dinobot had, barely even looking at what he was moving.

"Rattrap-"

"If I tell you, will you slagging leave me alone?"

Dinobot looked startled, and Rattrap felt as surprised as Dinobot looked. He had no idea where that had come from. He didn't want to talk about this, slaggit all, and he didn't want to talk about it with Dinobot. And for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why he was most reluctant to talk to Dinobot about it. But now that he'd said it, there was no way he could go back on it.

Dinobot contemplated the board, moved one of his pieces. Then he folded his servos in his lap. "These are...acceptable conditions."

Frag, why was Dinobot so good at being stoic? Rattrap just wanted to shake the mech until some semblance of emotion showed on his face (like when he couldn't help but smile - those were Rattrap's favorites because of how real those smiles were.)

"Alright here's the cheese, then," Rattrap said, hoping that if he just said it as fast as possible, he could get over it as quickly as possible. "Optimus knew about the plan. It was his plan, or at least mostly. So I knew that if I shot him, he wouldn't take it personally. But with you, it wasn't like you were exactly in my camp from the start. You wouldn't understand, and you'd probably never forgive me, and by the time Terrorsaur told me to shoot you I had the info we needed so it didn't matter anymore. And…" He couldn't look at Dinobot. "And to be honest, at first I thought the spy was you. And when I found out it wasn't…"

He let that statement hang in the air between them for a moment. At first, he was about to explain further, to point out that it made sense what with him being the only ex-Pred on the team. But somehow, he knew that'd probably only make everything worse.

"So that was...what? Some sort of apology for questioning my loyalty?"

"Well, sorta, but it's a little more complicated than that, y'know? I mean-"

"I'm hurt, Rattrap," Dinobot said with a savage intensity that made Rattrap stop mid sentence, something completely unheard of. "How long has it been? And you still don't trust me?"

Rattrap bristled, feeling stupid and horrible for jumping to conclusions. Dinobot was completely right. But… "Dinobot, I didn't trust my own shadow last week. Do you even understand how deadly the infiltration game is? It's all about misdirection - whether it's planting a booby trap or getting into the enemy base, you can't let them know you're there. You can't trust anyone. Worse than that, if we were being spied on, it means that I've lost my touch, that I can't spot a trap or a spy right away anymore, and that means we're all basically dead. So no, Dinobot, I didn't trust you. I didn't trust Cheetor, who's about as capable of betrayal as he is of suddenly waking up loving water. I didn't trust Rhinox, who's been my best friend since I can remember. Do you know how long it took me to work up the nerve to tell Optimus about our infiltration problem? I had no slagging way of knowing he wasn't in cahoots with Megatron and this whole slagging war wasn't just a misdirection itself as a way for Megatron and Optimus to kill us all off and rise to power together."

Dinobot stared at Rattrap, wide-eyed. For an impossibly long moment, silence stretched between them. But silences never could last between the two, and finally Dinobot broke it. "You realize how incredibly paranoid you sound?"

Rattrap violently cycled air through his vents and ran his servo down his face. "You think I don't know how paranoid it sounds, Chopperface? I know it's not how things are, but I can't help thinking it. Especially when the Preds suddenly seem to know more than they should. I ain't proud of it. But if I hadn't listened to that instinct, the Preds would still be giving us major trouble. I ain't gonna be ashamed of something that saved our afts today, Chopper."

There was the slightest softening to Dinobot's face. "So it was not personal, then?"

"No, Chopperface. I suspected you, I felt bad after, so I didn't shoot you. End of story. Can we finish the stupid game now?" He squinted at the board. "Whose turn is it, anyway?"

"No one's: You lost three moves ago."

"Slag. No way. You're just saying that to make me forfeit!"

"I would not do such a thing. If you'll just look here, you'll see that-"

"You gotta be slaggin kidding me. You can't get more obvious than that! How the frag didn't I see you doing that?"

The edge of Dinobot's mouth twitched. "I suppose you could say it was...misdirection?"

Rattrap looked at Dinobot in disbelief. "You slagger! You did cheat! You asked those questions to get me worked up so I'd lose like a slaggin noob!"

Dinobot looked genuinely offended. "I did no such thing! I did not plan that. But since you were getting sloppy, it was not beneath my honor to take advantage of your carelessness. In battle, it is no different."

"Oh that's a load of slag. You just wanted to win!" Dinobot began to protest, but Rattrap cut him off. "You are not leaving until we finish another round, Chopperface - I ain't letting you get away with that underhanded win."

Another few megacycles passed as they finished another game, bickering and insulting one another. Rattrap started chucking pieces at Dinobot as he started losing again, and Dinobot threatened to just take the board and leave. In the end, they were both having such a good time insulting one another that they abandoned the game part way through to get something to eat. They met Rhinox in the cafeteria, who was just glad to see Rattrap in better spirits. For some reason, insulting Dinobot, and being insulted back, made Rattrap happier than Rhinox could ever manage to make his friend. It was a bittersweet thing, to know your friend had found someone who could cheer them up much more effectively than you could. But he bore in with grace, at least until he kicked them out when a gentle shoving match nearly knocked over an open energon storage container.

After that, they played quattra as often as they could. On slower weeks, they could go three days straight doing nothing but playing quattra, stopping only for necessary functions and involuntarily dropping into recharge from sheer exhaustion. There were times when there was so much conflict with the Preds that they were lucky to get in three megacycles of play in a week.

Somehow, though, they always managed to set aside time to play, just the two of them.

At first, they spent the whole game trading insults (Garbage muncher, slimy scales, filthy mammal, stupid reptile). But that soon gave way to more serious conversations. They were at their most serious when they were playing quattra (Dinobot revealing his discomfiture at abandoning the oath he swore to the Predacons; Rattrap revealing the death of his mentors when he was still legally a sparkling). They were also at their most ridiculous while they played quattra (Discussing Megatron's infamous and unconfirmed rubber ducky addiction; trying to describe taste; who among the team would make the best river dancer). They talked about Maximal gossip while they played quattra (Rhinox's high-grade stash and how yes, he really did work harder than any of them but you'd think he'd at least share something from it; did Optimus really descend directly from the legendary Optimus Prime or was that just posturing and propoganda; swapping stories of pranks and shenanigans from boths sides; what a weird hippy Tigatron was, and would he hook them up with some processor altering herbs if they asked?; Airazor was a hottie according to Rattrap, but not really frag material, Dinobot declining to comment on the matter; that new spider chick on the Predacon side would be hot if she weren't completely nuts and a Pred). They talked about everything and anything, and sometimes nothing at all. The days where they were both so exhausted from a days events where they really should just recharge, but they forced themselves to stay awake for at least a megacycle just to play quattra with one another.

Occasionally, they'd branch out and try to include the rest of the Maximals in their games, but it wasn't quite the same as just the two of them, an empty room, and a quattra set. It was how they both unwound, how they worked through their problems. It got so that the one could tell how the other was feeling by how they played the game. Rattrap only made certain moves when he was itching for action, usually reckless and bold moves that could end in triumph just as easily as they could be disastrous. Dinobot pointed it out to him once, and Rattrap would have blushed if he'd truly been organic. Instead, he started chucking quattra pieces at Dinobot.

As for Dinobot, whenever he got frustrated with the Maximal ways of doing things, his pieces would become particularly defensive. Rattrap never failed to laugh at him and start poking fun at him when this happened, eliciting snarls and snappy insults from the dinosaur.

At first, they tried to keep score. Whoever pulled ahead in quattra got bragging rights, at least until the other eventually knocked them off that post. Some reigns were longer than others, and some uprisings were more peaceful than others, but eventually, they both decided that it was more about the game than the score. It was fun to say you were winning that week, but eventually the fun wore off and they decided it was more fun to just keep what happened during quattra sessions between themselves. The rest of the ship didn't really need to know who'd beaten whom.

Upon the first discovery of the alien artifacts, both mechs were uneasy. They played cautiously, the game ending in a near textbook stalemate. They always played their worst when the aliens came back into play - neither quite knew what to make of the aliens, what to expect from them. They were a frightening unknown. So they did the only thing they could do in the face of something they couldn't understand or control: They stuck to routine. And for them, routine meant quattra.

The quantum surge had left Rattrap vastly different physically. He was stronger, faster, and better able to withstand exposure to raw energon. And once Optimus Primal was back among them, he felt on top of the world.

That was, until he remembered Dinobot hadn't actually gotten an upgrade. What if Dinobot felt jealous, and stopped wanting to hang out with Rattrap? What if he didn't like Rattrap's new look?

Rattrap was rarely one to show how he was really feeling, and he took a trip to Dinobot's quarters, posing dramatically and asking Dinobot what he thought of the new Rattrap.

Dinobot cast a critical eye over Rattrap's new form. He wasn't fooled for a second by Rattrap's show of confidence and bravado - in Dinobot's experience, Rattrap was always at his most vulnerable when he appeared most confident.

"Tell me, this fancy new form of yours with all its whistles and bells...can you still play quattra with it?"

Rattrap looked at Dinobot in confusion. "Well yeah. Obviously I can. But what do you think of it, Chopper?"

Dinobot looked Rattrap straight in the optics. "I think that so long as you can play quattra with me, it makes no difference to me what you look like."

'Ah slag,' Rattrap thought as he looked into Dinobot's pred-red optics. 'I think I love him.'

"Primus help me," he muttered before yelling through the door "You're a warrior! Warriors don't hide in their rooms like sparklings because they're afraid to look their own teammates in the optics!"

Dinobot threw the door open. "I recall that not too long ago, you once locked yourself in your room with far less cause to do so." With a look of pain in his eyes, Dinobot added "I shot you, Rattrap. When you betrayed us...when we thought you'd...I actually betrayed you. How can you…?"

Rattrap had never seen Dinobot so upset before. "Chopperface, just cause I didn't actually betray the Maximals didn't mean I didn't feel like scrap afterwards. And I remember a certain disgusting lizard-breathed Maximal coming to cheer me up." He unsubspaced a quattra set and held it out to the mech.

Dinobot looked first at the set, then at Rattrap. "Why? I shot you, Rattrap. By rights, you should hate me."

Rattrap took a deep breath. "You know...when the boss monkey said it was my call, it uh, occurred to me that I could just...throw you under the bus. But I couldn't, cause...heh, well, cause I guess I just trust ya too much, Chopperface. You had your reasons for what you did, and sure, they were stupid, but you didn't actually want anybody to get hurt. And...I trust you," he repeated quietly.

Dinobot stared at Rattrap, dumbfounded. It was a huge admission coming from the rat who'd once admitted that there were times when he'd turn into a paranoid mess who couldn't trust anyone. 'Slag you,' Dinobot growled mentally at Rattrap, not daring to say it aloud. 'How dare you make me fall in love with you, you filthy rodent?' With a frustrated snarl, Dinobot grabbed the quattra board. "Come in then, if you must," he said, refusing to give Rattrap any indication of his inner thoughts.

Rattrap smiled slightly and entered Dinobot's quarters. "So we're even then? You forgive me for not trusting you if I forgive you for shooting me?"

Dinobot made a dour face. "I think mine is worse," he said gruffly.

Rattrap shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. Back then, back when he'd admitted he hadn't been able to trust Dinobot, something that felt a lifetime ago now, the mech had responded with "I'm hurt, Rattrap." The honesty of that pain, and the look on Dinobot's face had nearly broken Rattrap's spark. It had been what he hadn't wanted to face from his friends. He'd realized he didn't want Dinobot to look at him like that ever again. Oh, he'd slip up and say something hurtful when he got genuinely angry with Dinobot, but that was expected, right? Primus knew he wasn't perfect.

All this ran through his processor. But of course, it wasn't like he could say that to Dinobot. He'd think he was being a glitch-head. So Rattrap kept his trap shut and started setting up the quattra board after Dinobot cleared a space for it and pulled up a few chairs for them to sit on.

It was the quiet quattra games in their personal quarters that got them through the pain of losing Airazor and Tigatron, and Megatron's capture of the alien vessel shortly thereafter. It was the loud, public games in the common areas that helped everyone unwind after the Rampage fiasco. It was the variability of the games that helped break up the mundane tasks of everyday life.

But after several weeks of near-constant predacon attacks, and having to constantly be on edge in order to protect the proto-humans from predacon attacks, they hadn't been able to play quattra for quite some time. Even Cheetor could feel the tension in the Axalon's shielded atmosphere. Everyone was cranky and snappy, even Rhinox.

Normally, Rattrap and Dinobot would have whipped out the quattra board the second everyone started looking a little ragged. But if there was one thing they couldn't cope with, it was an unfinished game of quattra. A short one, yes. One where they kept stopping and starting because they kept getting distracted, yes. Long stretches of no quattra at all, yes, albeit grudgingly. But one where they'd start, the alarm sounded and they'd dash off to a fight that ended up lasting the whole day and they came back too exhausted to finish, slip into recharge and completely have forgotten whose turn it was or what anyone was planning? No - that was something they couldn't handle. They would rather go without a game than have to abandon a perfectly good one.

It was the only explanation for why Rattrap said the things he did. The looming fight wasn't making things any easier, and he was fully aware of how woefully unprepared their ship's defenses were to stand up to a full-blown assault from Megatron. Dinobot's own crappy mood wasn't helping de-escalate the situation either, but that was just an excuse, and Rattrap knew it. It didn't excuse the things he'd said:

"Not much changes around here. Except maybe the occasional allegiance."

"Find any golden disks lately? Pass them on to any Predacons?"

The shove.

Those particular words and countless other biting, venomous ones echoed in his head as he and Rhinox raced towards the valley. He knew how insecure Dinobot still felt about the switching of allegiance, but he'd still gone there, still pushed those buttons. And Dinobot knew plenty of slag about him - why hadn't he fought back?

Rattrap's optics switched off involuntarily as he remembered the effect his words had had on his quattra partner, and a shudder went through his frame. He'd promised himself he wasn't going ever going to give Dinobot a reason to look at him with that kind of betrayal again. "I'm hurt, Rattrap." He'd completely messed everything up.

And those might be the very last words he'd have ever uttered to his best friend.

"Oh man...no matter how soon we get there, it's going to be way too late." He hadn't realized he spoken that out loud until Rhinox answered him.

"Do you always have to see the bright side?"

Rattrap responded automatically, not really thinking about what he was saying. He was panicking inside, and trying desperately not to, because it wouldn't do Dinobot an ounce of good for him to show up fallen to pieces. It was a miracle he hadn't already lost it, that none of his true panic leaked out when he'd made his comment about being too late.

But the look Rhinox was shooting him told him that the engineer wasn't fooled for a second.

As he'd feared, they were too late to save Dinobot. But at the very least he had a chance to say goodbye. Rattrap wasn't a particularly religious mech, but he sent up a silent 'thank you' to Primus for not letting his last words to his best friend be something hateful.

But with Optimus and the rest standing around his dying friend, he couldn't exactly say what he really wanted to: "Dinobot...I think I love you. I have for a while now. You can't leave - it's not fair!" Yeah, like he was going to let those be his last words to Dinobot while there were witnesses. He'd probably die himself from embarrassment.

So instead he swallowed around the lump in his throat and apologized for the slag he'd said before in the only way he knew how - by turning words over on themselves. "Like I said, you're just a blasted, slag-spouting saurian, but...it's nice to know where you stand."

He knew he was forgiven the instant Dinobot opened his mouth and an insult came out. Despite himself, Rattrap laughed a little, relieved that his greatest friend in the world didn't actually hate him in the end; Primus knew he would've deserved it.

"Rattrap?"

The rodent looked up from his cube of energon. It'd gone flat megacycles ago, but he couldn't seem to wrench his eyes away from it, or to move in general. The memorial service was all just a blur to him, and part of him couldn't quite believe Dinobot was gone. Then he'd think that maybe he'd challenge someone to a game of quattra to help cheer everyone up, and he felt like the pit all over again as it hit him that Dinobot was gone.

Rhinox was standing over him then, looking concerned. They all looked concerned. Especially when they thought he wasn't looking. He could feel those looks, though. Everyone knew how close they'd gotten, and they were all looking at him with pity.

He hated it.

He tried to force some normality into his voice. "What's up, Rhinox?"

Rhinox hesitated for a moment. "How are you holding up," he asked in that low voice of his, normally so soothing. Now, it just made Rattrap feel...tired.

He glared at Rhinox. "I was actually just planning to break out into song and challenge the Preds to an arm-wrestling contest. How do you think I'm doing?"

At the hurt look on Rhinox's face, Rattrap rubbed his own. "Sorry. It's just...I dunno, weird not having him around."

Rhinox nodded. He shifted somewhat, pulling something out of subspace behind him. "I, er...we were cleaning out his quarters."

Rattrap stared into his cube. "Yeah. I know." He hadn't wanted to be present for it. He knew it was necessary - they could use his spare equipment and spare parts in the fight against Megatron and the Predacons. But Rattrap just couldn't bring himself to join them. It made everything just seem so...final.

"Well…while we were cleaning things out...we found this. Optimus thought we should give it to you. No one disagreed." He pulled what he'd been holding behind his back out into the open.

The quattra board.

Later, in his own quarters, alone and after a good cry, Rattrap went through the pieces they'd used. This was the piece Dinobot liked to lead his attacks with - he called it The Paladin. And that one, that was the one he used to thwart Rattrap's own favorite leading piece (he didn't come up with stupid names for his pieces like Dinobot. He didn't attribute personalities to inanimate objects like a certain sentimental warrior). Dinobot called it The Tank. And there was another, the one that Dinobot used most often in his traps, the one Rattrap had to keep particular attention to whenever Dinobot's servo got even remotely close to it - he'd called it The Vermin, much to Rattrap's annoyance. Rattrap had complained once about how tricky Dinobot was with the piece, and how annoying it was. Dinobot's retort had been that it wasn't dissimilar to Rattrap himself, and had proceeded to name it after the rodent.

There were others, of course - The Right Hand, Bait, Switch, The Inquisitor (or alternatively, The Fool). Each had its own "personality", based upon the style Dinobot used to play them with.

Rattrap found himself wandering around the Axalon with them. At first, he'd grab one at random. But once, he hadn't particularly wanted to see anyone, and realized he'd grabbed The Vermin to fiddle with as he snuck through the ship. It hadn't been intentional.

The second time, it was the first night he'd actually joined the rest of the crew for dinner after having lost Dinobot. He'd grabbed The Paladin, thinking how he envied the piece's inner strength, a strength Rattrap didn't feel he had.

He started bringing them along on missions, eventually. He'd keep them in a small subspace pocket, and he'd take them out to fiddle with them every so often. He always grabbed the one best suited to what he needed - The Tank when he was feeling particularly exposed. The Inquisitor when he had doubts about Optimus's plans and just needed a little blind faith for once. The Animal when he knew he'd need to trust his instincts. The Berzerker for particularly dangerous frontal attacks on Pred bases. The Bait when he was serving as a distraction. Every time he held one, he was reminded of his friend and a particularly good play he'd made with the piece. That of course led to memories of their games, their conversations, their constant insults.

Healing hurt, and Rattrap wallowed in that hurt, reveled in it. Because it meant that Dinobot had been real, and alive, and had meant something to him once upon a time.

And somehow, that made the hurt easier to bear, to set aside when he needed to.

None of the Maximals were unaffected by the loss, but Rattrap seemed to bounce back quicker than any of them. What none of them realized was that it was because he had something Dinobot had poured so much of himself into as they'd passed countless hours.

Every time he held one of those pieces, he could almost imagine that he was holding part of Dinobot's spark.

It hurt. But there were worse ways for the warrior to have gone out. At least he left doing something heroic; at least he'd gone down fighting. It was fitting.

And whenever the hurt got too bad to bear, Rattrap would take out the board. He knew all Dinobot's moves by heart, and as he played against himself, he could almost swear he saw Dinobot smiling at him from the other side of the board.

That tiny, almost reluctantly genuine smile that Rattrap so craved.

He still had quattra. As long as he had quattra, Dinobot couldn't really be gone.

End.