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Commander in Absentia
Characters: Ratrap
Prompt: Not Enough
Word count: 243 words
Rating: General Author's Notes: Set in Season 1, 'Chain of Command'
Ratrap doesn't like being stranded on an uninhabited planet. He doesn't like the fact that their best protection is a half-slagged spacecraft. He doesn't like Optimus' insufferable and persistent optimism. The boss-man is entirely too willing to risk his own circuitry and he expects the other Maximals to follow his lead. It's not until their fearless leader is held captive by an alien probe that Ratrap realises that he also doesn't like Optimus' job.

He thinks he does decently enough, in that none of the crew get scrapped under his watch. The Axalon and it's shield survives, more or less intact. Ratrap's been around too long to screw up in combat. Given more experience and a team of bots he knows, he thinks he'd make a decent enough leader on the battlefield. He knows about tactics and how to survive.

It's only after the battle that he realises exactly how far out of his depth he is. Dinobot defers to Ratrap, praising his selfless actions. Any other time Ratrap would be chuckling and bowing as he took his long-awaited due from the ex-Predacon. Not now, because Dinobot also laments that he was not similarly selfless. Dinobot considers himself dishonoured and honestly ashamed and Ratrap can't laugh. Ratrap can't make a jibe or take it less than seriously because Dinobot wasn't admitting defeat to Ratrap. He was confessing his failings to his Commander and that's the one thing Ratrap doesn't know how to be.

The End

Disclaimer: Neither BeastWars nor Transformers belong to me, sadly enough.

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