Archive of Our Own

"They said it would be easy money," Rattrap said miserably. He was mumbling directly into the surface of the enforcer's desk, both hands clasped over the top of his head. "Followin' a few guys, a hint of petty theft, a coupla deliveries where I wasn't s'posed to look in the boxes—nothin' worse! I knew what they were probably up to, but—but it wasn't my problem, you know? I wasn't the one shooting people. I was just tryin' to make an honest livin'!"

"'Honest.'"

"Tch—fine, a decent livin'. Decent as it gets when ya had to replace your hind legs with cheap wheels and still can't hide your tail in 'bot mode. How do you sound so monotone and so judgmental at the same time? Do you practice that? Is that a—a skill ya practice, here? You got your good cops, your bad cops, and your completely-neutral-but-vaguely-condescendin' cops?"

The officer that Rattrap was talking to, one Prowl of Petrex—and oh, boy, did he exemplify everything Rattrap had ever heard about Petrex—didn't even acknowledge the jab. "So. Stalking, robbery, smuggling—"

"Whoa whoa whoa, don't make it sound that bad! It's nothin' worse than petty misdemeanors, you've got my word." Rattrap lifted his head enough to give Prowl an earnest look. "But, hey, you wanna fine me, throw me in the slammer a couple weeks to pay off my debt to society? Be my guest, pal. Anythin' it'll take to get away from the 'Cons. I ain't even a 'Con, myself! Think they're crazy!"

"I'm not charging you with anything yet—"

"'Yet.'"

"—I'm just repeating what you told me," Prowl said, just as dryly and droningly as always. He wasn't even looking at Rattrap—his gaze was fixed on his datapad, fingers tap tap tapping away, no doubt taking copious notes on everything Rattrap said. No wonder the Senate had this guy on statistical analysis up until Orion dragged him into his crack team of hero cops (pfeh to that); based on the one comm call and fifteen minutes of conversation Rattrap had had with him so far, he had the personality of a calculator. He'd actually said, out loud, with his mouth, like he'd really done the math, that there was only a 2% chance anybody would walk into Prowl's office while Rattrap was talking to him. He should have a numpad instead of a light bar. "And you were okay with doing all that."

"Sure. Like I said: easy money. That ex-senator they got in their ranks's got a pile of shanix the size of Luna Two, and he don't care about givin' it away almost exactly as much as I do care about gettin' it."

"I take it you're talking about Shockwave and not Ratbat."

"Heh! Yeah, you got it. Shockwave's been bankrollin' me. Ratbat? Pffft." He shifted, laying his head flat down on Prowl's desk, staring at the wall behind Prowl's elbow. "All Ratbat does is sigh wistfully 'bout all the moolah he don't have anymore and wishes he did. You'd think him 'n' me would get along better—bein' a couple greedy beastformer Rats like we are—but nah, he's still all high-n-mighty. Hehn! Like he still thinks he's the king of Kaon and everyone around him is wallowin' knee-deep in the gutter."

Rattrap had to give Prowl this: he endured Rattrap's tangents with good grace and greater patience than most people Rattrap had met. The twitching of his elbow, however, suggested that he was still typing. "... You uh... you think that's relevant to your case, here?"

"Everything is relevant."

"Yeesh. Little intense—but okay, whatever you say. You're the cop."

"So what changed? There's an enormous change from 'rolling in easy money' to 'not only backing out, but also calling up a cop frequently seen in the company of Orion Pax, Decepticon hunter, to confess to petty misdemeanors and gossip about ex-senators.'"

"You think I offered to be your stool pigeon because you hang out with Orion Pax? I woulda called him up if I wanted to catch his audial."

"It's certainly not because I have a reputation for being open and approachable."

Rattrap let out a genuine laugh. He finally lifted his head off Prowl's desk, sitting upright. "You're self-aware, neutral cop. I like that."

And a little too savvy. Prowl was right: Rattrap had sought to speak with him because he was associated with Orion Pax.

Or rather, he'd been sent to speak with him because he was associated with Orion Pax.

"But—do me a favor and keep the big 'bot outta this, would ya? It's not that I don't respect what he's doing, takin' down as many 'Cons as possible, and all—like I said, I ain't one of them, I just take their money—but word on the street is he ain't too careful about how many pieces they're in when he gets them in to the station, you know what I mean? And I might not be wearin' their badge, but, considerin' what I've been doing for them..."

Without glancing up, Prowl cut Rattrap off with a swift, small hand gesture. It was the most expressive gesture Rattrap had seen him make so far. "I understand completely. He won't be involved in this at all. If things progress to the point where I need backup, I'll ask," he paused for a couple of seconds—even his typing paused—and finished, "Bumblebee, most likely."

Rattrap perked up. That was a new name. "You got a bugformer on the force?"

"No, that's just his name."

Disappointed, Rattrap said, "Ah."

"He's a car. About your size."

Rattrap scoffed. "We don't want the new senate to be too progressive, I s'pose."

"Sarcasm?"

Rattrap gave him a startled look. Did he really just—? "Nah, not at all."

Prowl said, "Hm," in a vaguely uncertain way that made Rattrap think he wasn't sure if that was sarcasm either. He really was a calculator in a cop car's body, wasn't he? No wonder Shockwave was wary of him. He probably thought Prowl was gonna horn in on his schtick.

"Back to my question. What changed? What made you come to me and offer to tell me everything you know about the Decepticons?"

Rattrap hesitated. "Okay. Lemme emphasize first that—that—I had no idea things were gonna get this bad. If I'd ever expected things were gonna end up like this, I'd never have agreed."

Prowl nodded once, stiffly, like a ratcheting joint clicking down and back up. "No doubt." Somehow, he sounded even more monotone.

"Pfeh. I bet all your informants say that, don't they."

"You're self-aware, too."

"Okay, okay." Rattrap slouched back in his seat and laced his hands behind his head. "Tell you what, neutral cop—if you promise to make a note in your unnervingly thorough report you've got goin' there that says I defended my honor fiercely, I'll do us both a favor and skip past all the excuse-makin' and face-savin'."

Prowl looked directly at Rattrap, for what Rattrap was sure was the very first time since Prowl had met him in a shadowy back alley and hustled him in through the back door. "I appreciate that," he said; and if he'd had slightly more emotional expressivity than the average text-to-speech program, Rattrap might have even believed he meant it. "So what's your story?"

Here was Rattrap's story:

The last and biggest job he'd done for Shockwave had been to sneak into a secure energon refinery, steal the access codes, and take them to the 'Cons. He'd thought that the Decepticons wanted to jack a few free cubes. That's what he'd been lead to believe—although they'd never told him that was what they wanted, they were always talking about how hungry they were, how worried they were about running out of fuel. Instead, the results...

Well, Prowl no doubt knew the results. He might've been one of the enforcers sent out to what was left of the refinery to try to pick forensic evidence off of the smelted workers.

And that was it for Rattrap. Forget the easy jobs for easy money. He'd been willing to go along with it as long as the Decepticons had him doing small jobs with small consequences, but now people were dying and energon refineries were exploding, and he was getting out.

So he'd done some snooping, found Prowl's frequency, and called him up. He could help—he could tell the 'Bots all sorts of things about the 'Cons—and in exchange, all he asked for was protection in case the 'Cons found out and retaliated.

That was the story Rattrap told Prowl.

It was true.

But here was the part of the story Rattrap didn't tell Prowl:

Between deciding he wanted out and contacting Prowl—which originally, he'd never intended to do—he'd gone down to Nyon to chew out Swindle for getting him into this fragged up game in the first place. Swindle had told him not to do anything hasty, not to walk away just yet—he'd get Rattrap one last job, just wait and see, with a very lucrative payout. Think of it as generous severance pay. And while Swindle had steered a great many people very, very wrong, he'd never steered Rattrap wrong—rats had to stick together, after all, and Swindle was certainly one in spark if not in body—so, begrudgingly, he'd let Swindle talk him into taking one last job.

A week later, Shockwave had called him in for his final assignment: take out Orion Pax's top supporter, the stiff white-and-black knockoff with the army-builder frame that seemed to be scowling just a step behind Orion every time he was on the news. Orion might have been the face of the new senate's war on Decepticons, but, Shockwave assured Rattrap, the vast majority of what passed as Orion's brain power was actually located inside Prowl's head. Without Prowl reeling him in, he'd be just another dumb jock cop who liked beating up suspects in dark alleys and then saying they resisted arrest in his reports.

Now. Rattrap was no moron. He wasn't overcome with misty-opticked patriotism at the sight of the enforcers' recently-adopted "Autobot" symbol. He'd been telling the truth when he said he was no Decepticon; but he was no Autobot, either. And he sure didn't think Cybertron would suffer with one less enforcer on the streets.

But if the enforcer that was being taken off the streets was, as Shockwave had suggested, a good ninety percent of Orion Pax Hero Cop's impulse control? Rattrap wasn't so sure he wanted to see that one, in particular, get the ax.

And that aside—Rattrap was no murderer. He was torqued off—no, more than that, he was horrified—that his info had been used to kill so many innocent refinery workers. He didn't want someone else's life on his hands, especially knowingly. Even a cop. Hell, especially a cop—if he was caught...

... But...

But...

But.

But.

But then Shockwave showed Rattrap what he'd pay him to do it.

And, well—Primus below—that changed everything, didn't it?

Rattrap and Ratbat didn't like each other, but they both liked the Decepticons even less. And rats had to stick together. If this was fishy—if Shockwave was gonna go back on this deal, or arrange for Rattrap to be found out later—Ratbat would know, and Ratbat would tell him. What Ratbat said, though, was that Shockwave was playing on the expectation that if Rattrap was greedy enough to take this job, he'd be greedy enough to take just one more, and just one more, and just one more, until he'd just-one-mored himself straight into the Decepticon army.

Shockwave didn't know Rattrap. Unlike Ratbat or Swindle, he didn't do what he did for the love of money; he was doing it to get his legs back.

He'd lost them a few millennia back—workplace accident. The medic who'd repaired him had fixed him down to his hips, then slapped a couple wheels on and called it a day. When Rattrap had protested—said he was supposed to have legs, said he wanted his legs, said he was a rat, it was even in the name—the hospital had told him that, in their professional medical opinion, wheels were an improvement on a rodent's haunches, and he oughta be grateful for them. And what did it matter if he wasn't mobile enough to do his old job anymore? Planting explosives for building demolition wasn't what one would call specialized labor. Anyone could fill his position. Just a dirty job for dirty 'bots.

Ever since, Rattrap hadn't considered his relationship with Cybertron to be what one might call cordial.

This last job wouldn't just push him over what he needed to get some back-alley surgeon to reconstruct and reattach his legs; it'd also give him the means to get off this stupid planet and find one where he wasn't gonna be judged for having as many limbs in one mode as in the other. At least in the GC he could be judged for something different for a change.

So he took the job. Okay. Just one more.

Here was the plan: Rattrap was to contact Prowl like he wanted to be an informant ratting on the Decepticons. He had permission to say whatever he had to in order to make it believable. Shockwave had long since reaped the benefits of all the old jobs Rattrap had done for the Decepticons, and he and his cadre of terrorists had only ever met Rattrap at neutral locations, so Rattrap didn't have any info Prowl could honestly use against the 'Cons. As long as Rattrap achieved these two things:

One, make sure that Orion Pax didn't get involved.

Two, make sure that Prowl agreed to protect Rattrap.

At the start, Prowl might keep a couple officers stationed around Rattrap's place at all times. Probably no more than that; he didn't have much pull without Orion to back it, and he wouldn't be able to turn to Orion for this case. Eventually it would be down to one officer. Shockwave was convinced—although Rattrap had doubts—that Prowl would put himself in the rotation of officers protecting Rattrap.

When Prowl was watching him, and only Prowl was watching him, a hired killer—nominally sent to dispose of Rattrap—would show up. Prowl would fight him. He would retreat, and Prowl, like a good little enforcer, would pursue. And the hired killer would lure him into a trap.

Now, Rattrap wasn't too keen on the whole "hired killer pretending to try to kill Rattrap" part. That sounded a little too likely to end in tears—specifically, Rattrap's tears, as he lay dying. Shockwave offered to let Rattrap meet the guy who'd be doing the job ahead of time.

They had dinner. He was a decent thug. Good lookin', too, in a patchwork kinda way. They'd lamented together over the costs of getting good bodymod work done outside of the official healthcare system; Lockdown even recommended a guy who did medical work for gladiators that might be able to handle Rattrap's repairs—don't let the constructibot alt mislead you; he's the best doc on Cybertron who's never been to medical school. Lockdown said he was saving up for his own ship to get work as an interstellar bounty hunter; Rattrap was planning to head to Hedonia when he was fixed up and all this was over. He invited Lockdown to look him up on Hedonia sometime down the line.

So, Rattrap was in.

And when Prowl said, "We're stretched thin right now; if I get Orion to pull some strings, I might be able to get two officers posted around your apartment at all times, but if you don't want to get him involved I can probably only manage to get one officer to look in on your place"?

Rattrap said, "Hey, that's fine. I don't need my place swarming with law enforcement anyway, you know what I mean? I think I can trust ya to make sure nobody's gonna get to me."

Waiting to be attacked was nerve wracking.

Even if he knew the guy that was gonna do it—well. What if Lockdown's hook slipped? What if he was a bad shot? Rattrap had no idea what kind of a shot he was.

What if Prowl decided he didn't need Rattrap's info as much as he'd originally thought, and decided to just... not worry too hard about keeping him safe? What if he didn't even have someone stationed outside anymore?

Rattrap had fallen into the habit of pacing in the evenings after dark fell—the time he thought it was most likely Lockdown would come for him. Rolling back and forth in a long figure eight through his filthy apartment, crumbs of dirt breaking up and discarded foil wrappers crinkling under his wheels. He cast green and orange shadows across the walls, illuminated by strings of light and a couple of lamps buried so thoroughly in his collection of things that he hadn't been able to scramble up to them to turn them off since he'd lost his legs. He figured nervously pacing was an appropriately in-character action for a 'bot who supposedly thought he was gonna get hunted down while only a single plucky enforcer stood between him and certain doom.

Whenever Rattrap glanced out the window, he never saw anybody standing guard. He told himself that meant that whatever officers Prowl had assigned him were good at their job, not standing out and all—but it still made him nervous.

Surely, though, Lockdown wasn't gonna attack until he was absolutely sure that Prowl, and only Prowl, was outside—right? Right. Right?

It was eleven nights in before his window shattered. Someone barreled Rattrap over; he crashed to the ground screaming. Please be Lockdown. "What're ya—hey!" Rattrap reflexively swung a fist at Lockdown's face. Lockdown held Rattrap down with his hook pressed to Rattrap's throat and leaned back. Rattrap's fist couldn't even reach his face. "That ain't fair."

Lockdown grinned crookedly. "Half my job is about making things as unfair for my target as possible."

"Okay—point." He tried, unsuccessfully, to wiggle out from underneath Lockdown. His wheels squealed against the floor as he spun them uselessly. That probably had to look good to any officers watching from outside. "So how're we gonna do this? You pretend I actually managed to slip free and chase me around the room a couple times 'til siren-butt shows up?"

"Naaah, I'm not letting you up."

Well, that was disappointing news. "Yeah? What if it takes him a while to get in here? He's gonna be suspicious if you've got me pinned for a while and don't take the opportunity to kill me."

"Oh, I don't need to worry about that." In his hand, he raised— That was a gun. Why was he pointing a gun at Rattrap's head. "See ya."

"See ya?!" Rattrap crossed his arms over his face. Lockdown snagged his hook around a wrist and tried to tug Rattrap's arms back down. "Whaddaya mean, see ya?! What's the gun for! I thought we was on the same page!"

"Yeah, we were," Lockdown said. "But when Shockwave heard you were planning to make a run for Hedonia—"

"You told him?!"

"—he decided there's no point in paying out if you're not gonna eventually come back to the 'Cons for more jobs." Lockdown successfully tugged one arm away from Rattrap's face. Rattrap wrapped his other arm more tightly over his forehead. "Prowl's my target, but I get a nice bonus if I take you out too."

"H-hold on! What's Shockwave payin'?! I can beat it! Or, or pretend I'm dead, and we'll both pay ya—"

"He's paying me with your bank account info."

Rattrap's jaw dropped. "... I hate how clever that is."

The gun jammed into his mouth. "Sorry about Hedonia." Rattrap squeezed his optics shut.

Lockdown's weight suddenly disappeared. Rattrap's optics flew open again, and all he saw above him was the ceiling. He turned toward a noise just in time to see Lockdown and Prowl tumbling back his direction. He scrambled out of the way, crabwalking/rolling backwards.

Watching Prowl grappling with Lockdown was somehow one of the most terrifying things Rattrap had ever seen. Not because of his fighting—Rattrap was actually pretty confident that Lockdown could take him—but something about his face. His eyes were wide and his jaw was set tight, and he should've looked angry but he didn't, and somehow that was more disconcerting than having a furious cop twice Rattrap's height in his apartment would've been.

Lockdown got a hook in one of Prowl's doors; Prowl pulled his knee to his chest and kicked Lockdown's shoulder, and Lockdown's hook snapped off in Prowl's door. He drew back, hesitated as he glanced at Rattrap, and retreated out the window. Prowl rushed to the window and leaned out, watching which way Lockdown went.

Lockdown had dropped his gun.

Rattrap picked it up.

Maybe it wasn't too late. If he killed Prowl himself, threw himself on Shockwave's mercy, and gave some bunk about seeing how awful the Autobots' noble enforcers were up close and wanting to get rid of them, maybe Shockwave would let him sign up as a full fledged Decepticon. He didn't want to be a Decepticon, hell no, but it was better than being dead. He could empty out his bank account in a couple of minutes—buy a bunch of scrap he didn't need, maybe a mountain of lottery tickets—an empty bank account would buy him some time if Lockdown came back and Rattrap told him there was no longer a bonus for him to claim—plus Shockwave might believe Rattrap’s professions of allegiance if he could check and see Rattrap no longer had any funds to get himself off-world. It was a long shot, it was a gamble, it'd mean several more millennia before he could get his legs back; but Primus what was the alternative? If Rattrap warned Prowl that this was a trap, admitted he'd been in on the setup, and begged for some real protection, he'd get hauled to some Autobot secret prison and beaten to death. The only other option was running for his life. Once Prowl took off after Lockdown, Rattrap would only have until Lockdown had lured Prowl into the trap and killed him to pack his things and run, and Rattrap might've been more familiar than most with Cybertron's underworld—both the figurative one and the literal one—but there were more Decepticons in dark corners and subterranean tunnels by the day, and it wouldn't be long before one saw him and reported back to Shockwave.

Running wouldn't work. This was his only chance. He had to kill Prowl—now, right now, before he jumped out the window and ran off and Lockdown killed him instead—

Prowl did not jump out the window. He turned around.

Rattrap froze, gun pointed at Prowl's chest. Prowl looked at the gun, then Rattrap's face—his expression was ice cold, his gaze so sharp it seemed to pierce straight through Rattrap’s head.

Then Prowl pointed at the floor and snapped, crossly, "Gun safety."

Rattrap almost dropped the gun. "What?"

"Gun safety," Prowl repeated. He reached forward and pushed the gun barrel down, so it was aimed between their feet. "Never point your gun at something you aren't interested in shooting. There's no point in trying to cover the window if there's someone between you and it."

And then, to Rattrap's further disbelief, Prowl walked away from the window, and turned to survey the mess of crates and packing materials that had been recycled into Rattrap's shabby—but very thrifty—furniture. "Does any of this serve as a chair?"

Rattrap gestured at his lower body. "Do I look like I need chairs? My butt's two inches off the floor."

"Hm." And then Prowl sat, on the floor, and turned to face the window. Like he planned on staying there.

"... Okay. All right," Rattrap said. "I give. What's going on, here?"

"You said you don't have chairs. Did you want me to sit on a table?" Prowl glanced at a stack of flat boxes. "This is a table, right?"

"Not that! How come you ain't going after the guy that just tried to kill me? Isn't that your job?"

"Ah," Prowl said, like he finally got it. "No."

"No?!" Rattrap gestured emphatically at Prowl.  "You, a law enforcer, your job ain't to enforce the law! Is that what you’re telling me? Because I'm pretty sure he just tried to kill a bot! Last I checked, that was a crime!"

"As I understand the parameters of my job, my duty is not to prevent criminals from killing bots." Rattrap's jaw dropped, but Prowl immediately went on: "It's to prevent bots from being killed by criminals."

Rattrap almost said there was absolutely no difference; but paused, uncertain, as he started to realize maybe there might be.

"Sometimes, yes, the best way to prevent murders is to chase after the murderer. In this case? I think the best way to prevent a murder is to stick close to the potential murder victim, in case the original assailant doubles back or an accomplice arrives."

"... Yeah," Rattrap said. "Sure. Makes sense." It made perfect sense, for anyone whose priority was protection instead of punishment. Except Rattrap had never once considered the possibility that that would be Prowl's priority. Nor, apparently, had Shockwave; nor had Ratbat, nor had Lockdown; nor had any of the other 'Cons.

But here Prowl was, blithely avoiding a fatal trap just by not being interested in it.

Rattrap attempted one last time to fit this information into what he already expected out of Prowl. "You uh— You think the info I've got is that valuable, then, huh? On Shockwave?"

Prowl looked—not at Rattrap, but near him—with an expression that, while basically emotionless, Rattrap was pretty sure was meant to convey cluelessness.

"That you'd rather guard me than chase after one of Shockwave's goons?" Rattrap prompted.

"Oh. No, I don't think so. We checked out the info you gave us so far; it all appears to be about projects that the Decepticons have concluded or bases that they've burned. From our past experience with the Decepticons, we've determined that they only have outside agents like you doing jobs that they could wrap up almost immediately after their involvement, just in case those agents decide to do exactly what you've done. You've probably got nothing useful to us," Prowl said. "I'm guarding you anyway. You're a living person and therefore automatically worthy of being protected. That's true even if you're not a vector for strategically valuable information."

"A vect—?!" Rattrap laughed. "You know, that's the first time anyone's ever called me a vector for something and meant it as a compliment?"

Prowl looked around at the piles of empty cubes and broken-down equipment scattered around Rattrap's apartment. "I wonder why."

Rattrap swatted at Prowl's shoulder. Prowl visibly flinched. "You know what?" Rattrap asked. "I think that maybe—just maybe—you're one of the good ones." He didn't need to specify that he was talking about enforcers.

"I'm the only good one."

Rattrap snorted.  "You includin' the famous Orion Pax in that statement, neutral cop?"

"I didn't include any qualifiers when I said 'only.'"

Rattrap didn't know whether Prowl's declaration was a statement of supreme egotism, or a sweeping indictment of every other enforcer on the planet.

Whichever one it was, in that moment, he decided he liked Prowl. Cop he might've been, but there was a little bit of rat in him—and Rattrap meant that as a compliment. You had to be a rat to openly distrust the cops from inside the cops. And only fellow rats had ever looked out for Rattrap.

That's what rats do. Look out for each other.

Rattrap looked at the window—somewhere out there was Lockdown, sitting in the center of a trap that was never going to be sprung—and then at the gun in his hand.

He tossed it on a makeshift table, rolled up next to Prowl, and sat. Okay. He was taking a chance. Maybe he was still gonna end up dead in an Autobot prison, but he wasn't going to end up anywhere better any time soon if he didn't take the chance.

"Well, as long as you and me are all cozy in here," Rattrap said, "I figure I might as well tell you I am, in fact, a vector for strategically valuable information. Somethin' you might find personally interesting."

Rattrap couldn't even tell whether or not Prowl was surprised at the revelation. "And that would be?"

"First, you gotta promise you're not gonna hold it against me."

"Hold what against you? Holding out on me?"

"No. Conspirin' to lead you into a fatal trap."

And Rattrap still couldn't tell whether Prowl looked surprised. But he did notice how Prowl glanced at the gun on the table.

"I switched sides," Rattrap said quickly. "For real, this time."

"Glad to hear it. Tell me about this trap."

"First," Rattrap said, "before Shockwave realizes I've sold out, you've gotta let me transfer my whole bank account into yours."

For a long moment, Prowl was silent. "... What?"

"Yeah, Starscream's let me into everything," Rattrap whispered into the comm to Earth. Every once in a while he threw glances over at the entrances to his hidden quarters, double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking that they were still blocked. "He's havin' me pass around his orders, he's tellin' me which guys he wants to have trailed—he's even tellin' me who he expects to backstab him, in what order, and his plans for backstabbing 'em first. And I'm on the list. Can you believe that? And he's still trusting me with all this?"

"Starscream takes 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' to excessive new heights." Even through the many alterations to the comm signal—from distance, from a dozen layers of encryption, and from the deliberate distortion of the pitch to disguise the voice—Prowl's old, familiar monotone was unmistakable. Rattrap didn't know why he even bothered to disguise his voice. "Is he up to anything that calls for an immediate response?"

"Nah. Just dealin' with infrastructural issues and doing some ego-stroking projects—you know, things that'll make him look good to the populace." Another check to the door, and Rattrap lowered his voice again: "He's made some worrying talk about plans to contact Caminus, though. I wouldn't say he's up to anything bad—yet—but I don't like the way he's talking about Caminus, you know? Like he's already viewing them as future citizens."

"If Starscream starts expanding his empire, he's never going to stop. Keep me updated on his plans. We need to be ready to stop them as soon as he puts them into action."

Prowl was already talking about empires, was he? Rattrap didn't think Starscream was anywhere near that yet—but he also didn't think Starscream would pass up the opportunity if it came to him. And Prowl always did think far ahead. "You got it, boss. I'll call you when I've got more."

Over the course of the war, Prowl had become something of a rat king: the point at which a hundred little rats tangled together. Spies, saboteurs, and assassins—every dirty 'bot that did every dirty job the Autobots had. And as long as Rattrap had known him, Prowl had always looked out for his rats. He'd kept Rattrap out of the 'Cons, he'd connected Rattrap with the medic that gave him his legs back, and he'd kept Rattrap at one of the safest (and, admittedly, most boring) stations in the war when he didn't have more practical ways to make use of Rattrap's skills. And Rattrap was proud for Prowl to make use of them.

Because no matter what nasty accusations were flung at Prowl (some of which, Rattrap happened to know quite intimately, were true) and no matter how many people declared that Prowl was cold and sparkless, and no matter how many people said that Prowl was nothing but a manipulator—Rattrap would always know that he was the one cop on Cybertron who'd sneered at the idea of arresting a murderer when instead he could protect a useless rat. And Rattrap didn't believe for a second that was manipulation. That was Prowl's core.

Four million years later and Rattrap was still willing to trust Prowl with his life. After all, Prowl had never steered Rattrap wrong.

Rattrap hung up the call, transformed to beast mode, and scampered out into Metroplex's tunnels. Back to work.