Prologue: Megatron No Longer

Megatron knelt at his knees, holding his head as he reclaimed control of his body on the ruins of Cybertron with the Autobots and Predacons before him. The battle with Unicron and his undead horde had just died down, but before the Decepticon tyrant could so much as blink, his 'loyal' air commander Starscream darted down from the sky and rushed to his side.

"Praise the Allspark!" Starscream cried out, shifting from jet to robot as he touched down beside Megatron, "Master! You're alive!

"Indeed..." Megatron spoke between pants, rising to his feet after a mere moment.

"Your new battle armor will take things to the next level my liege!" Starscream boasted, clenching his fists in a sinister fashion, "Together we will reunite all Decepticons, and once again grind Cybertron under your mighty heel!"

"No!" Megatron barked at him

"What?" Starscream questioned, a puzzled look coming onto his face "Why?!"

Megatron didn't answer, instead walking away from Starscream and coming to a halt just in front of Optimus. Prime in turn rose up to meet his gaze, not sure what to expect some from the Decepticon leader. After thinking it over for only a moment, Megatron simply turned his head to Prime and broke the silence.

"Because I now know the true meaning if oppression..." He spoke simply, "and have thus lost my taste for inflicting it."

Starscream let out a laugh, stumbling over himself as he made his way over to Megatron, "You've clearly been traumatized Master," he bowed, using his display of loyalty to regain his composure, "a good power down a stroll around the smelting pit will put you back in touch with your inner warlord!"

"Enough!" Megatron swatted Starscream away, staring him dead in the eye, looming over the seeker more and more with each step he took towards him, "the Decepticons are no more, and that is FINAL!"

Without another word more, Megatron took a running start and took off the ground before shifting into his star ship mode and jettisoning himself from the planet. The former Decepticon leader only took one look back to the planet he brought to ruin before blasting himself further into space, not knowing where he would go.

Throughout his voyage, he scanned over his memory banks until he came upon one that caught his attention and began to play it over. In the file, Megatron was before the Iacon council only moments after he had mentioned the cast system that stripped his fellow cybertronians of their basic freedoms and the unjust punishments that would befall them should they choose to not follow it. The council that surrounded him from all sides glared down to him from their perch, the soon to be Optimus Prime, Orion Pax, standing by his side.

"You speak of injustice, Megatron," the head of the council touted, "but the systems you are so quick to deem us ill are in place for a reason. Surely to do not expect us to simply destroy them on a whim, do you?

"I do not seek for you to destroy them out right, rather to replace and restructure it!" Megatron pleaded, placing his hand over his spark chamber, "You have seen little of the torment your worker drones suffer in their daily lives, and the beatings their task masters inflict if it is not to their.. Standards." the utterance of such an unsuited word made Megatron's skin crawl. "Any task master who would abuse their power to damage those under them does not deserve to keep their placement!"

The head of the council raised a brow as the other members began to whisper among themselves. The head of the council thought for a moment, then spoke, "But what of the task masters who wish to not be removed from their positions? They will not take the command kindly, I can assure you that."

"Remove them by force then," Megatron laughed, thinking this question had to be a joke, "if that is what it takes."

Gasps and whispers escaped from the lips council, the head silencing it with a simple raising of his hand as he shot glare at Megatron.

"You would need the power of a Prime to do that," the head of the council told Megatron matter of factly, "I hope you realize that... Gladiator."

Megatron gritted his teeth, balling his hand into a fist, "Then make me a Prime!" he boasted, placing his hand over his spark chamber, "I will take on the tasks you wish to neglect! You would not even need to lift a finger!"

It was with these words that the council was set into an uproar, "MONSTER!" barked a member of the council, "BANISH HIM!" demanded another.

"Order!" The head of the council called out, "There will be order in this council!"

Megatron's optics scanned the crowd that had so quickly turned on him, letting out a gasp and turning his head back once a gentle hand had been placed on his shoulder from behind him. The hand of Orion Pax, his only friend at the current moment.

"Orion," Megatron sighed, motioning towards the angered council, "talk some sense into this lot brother, for my sake."

Orion nodded before stepping forward, "If I could speak for a moment?" Orion requested, getting the council's attention.

"A clerk?" Asked the council head, "what's your name?"

"Orion Pax, your honor," he bowed before motioning towards Megatron, "While I agree with the basis of what Megatron is saying, I believe a just structure can be achieved by a peaceful, non violent means. Change from within by words, not by force."

The head of the council grinned at Orion, "Now those are the words of someone truly deserving to be made a Prime."

Megatron froze, looking to Orion with a puzzled look before glaring back to the head of the council, "You would make HIM a prime?" He laughed, pointing over his shoulder to Orion, "He spoke nothing but empty platitudes! The title of Prime should be earned by bold actions, not gentle words!"

"Actions which you clearly have no desire to take, Gladiator!" The head of council glared at him, the entire council joining him in doing so, "Regardless, the title of Prime can only be truly earned through claiming a treasure of Primus, the Matrix of Leadership. Which you would know if your arrogance did not get the better of you."

Megatron snarled, Orion extending a hand to him,"Megatron, perhaps we should-"

"We?" Megatron glared at him, striking Orion's hand away from him, "Orion... You have betrayed me..." He turned on his heel to leave, "there is no we."

There was a skip in Megatron's memory banks, soon he was watching a clip of him flying back to Kaon only moments after the previous memory. The peaceful yet uneasy sky was disrupted by a sudden shout caught his attention.

"STUPID DRONE!" shouted a voice from below, drawing Megatron's gaze to a bright red taskmaster with a bulky build as he struck down a scrawny miner in a deep chasm just outside the city, "GET BACK TO WORK! OR I'LL HAVE YOU TERMINATED!"

This simple action infuriated Megatron, diving down into a nosedive only to shift into his robot form just he struck the ground between the task master and the worker.

"Speak to him again in that tone, " he snarled, shooting a death filled glare into the task master's eyes while extending his blade from his arm, "and I shall carve out your very spark!"

The task master and all the workers froze in place, the task master himself shaking where he stood. "Hey, isn't that.." called out one worker, "no way, its Megatron!" Cheered another.

"What are you all doing! Back to work!" The task master cracked his whip, "Or you'll all be dismantled!"

Megatron narrowed his gaze on the fool holding the whip, digging his feet into the ground before lunging towards him. Megatron grabbed him by the head, forced him to the ground and raised his blade to the bot's chest.

"The only one who shall be dismantled," Megatron informed him in an ice cold tone, "is you!"

Before the bot could even so much as scream, Megatron plunged his blade into the bot's spark chamber taking him offline instantly. Megatron then tore off the bot's head and tosses it at the feet of the cluster of workers who all stood in awe of him.

"These task masters shall do as they please no longer!" Megatron called out, "Rise up with me my brothers! And we shall take what is ours by force!"

The crowd remained quiet for a moment before one scrawny worker called out, "All hail Megatron!"

"All hail Megatron!" The others joined in.

"No.." Megatron uttered to himself as he shut off the recorded memory, his gaze turning to cold void of space, "I am Megatron no longer..."

His peaceful and vacant mindset was soon ended by a sudden spike of energy shot up on his radar, alarms flaring up on his internal systems.

"WHAT?!" He shouted in disbelief as he turned his gaze to a planet covered in a honeycomb patterned energy field that he hadn't noticed until it was practically right in front of him and drawing him fast.

Before he could process what was happening, he was already in the planet's atmosphere and quickly approaching the ground.

"Engines and weapons, overloaded!" He gritted his teeth in frustration, attempting but failing to pull up, "Scrap!"

With a loud crash and scattering of native wildlife, Megatron hit the ground with his forced landing only slightly cousins by the rather large foliage. He groaned in pain, managing to reorient himself into his bipedal robot form and with a bit of effort, stand himself up.

He looked around his new fog filled environment that could only be described as a rain forest with a mixture of organic and bio mechanical life of both plant and animal varieties. It was then that the sun began to peer through the energy field that seemed to take up the entire sky from his current vantage point.

"So… this is life in exile, is it?" he questioned, dawning a smirk after a moment of silence, "Well then, let's begin."

Next - Chapter 1: Within the Spider's Web