Chapter 2: The Traitor's Exile

Three days later, on Cybertron…

Soundwave stood in front of the memorial silently, his expressionless face hiding his grief well as he gazed at the statue of Frenzy, the son he lost during the battle with the Swarm.

He hadn't been the only one, of course. Between the Swarm and the G2 Decepticons, Soundwave had seen many of his comrades destroyed: Ramjet, Dirge, Crankcase, Runamuck, Skullgrin, Octopunch, Stranglehold, Quake, the Combaticons…the list went on and on. Soundwave himself had been lucky not to join them when Megatron had arrived on Earth with the rheanmium at the literal last second.

Turning around to gaze at the rest of the Cybertronian Mausoleum, Soundwave reflected on how the Autobots had been similarly affected. Smokescreen, Inferno, Red Alert, Mirage, Slag, Nightbeat, Joyride, Slapdash, Slingshot…in the end, re-unification of both factions had been the only way to at least give them a fighting chance against their 'descendants'.

Sparing a final glance at Frenzy's statue, Soundwave exited the Mausoleum and headed for the command center. Ever since evidence had been found that only a small part of the G2 Decepticons' total army had been destroyed with Jhiaxus, it had become necessary to mobilize the Autobots who had retired from war and set up a new army with Prime and Megatron as the joint commanders and Soundwave and Grimlock as the joint sub-commanders. Every preparation had been made to prepare the original Cybertronians for whatever would be coming.

Before that, though, there was another urgent matter to attend to…

"Commander Soundwave! Message coming in from Silverbolt, Priority 2!" Skids called to the purple armored Decepticon as he entered the main control room.

"Onscreen."

Skids' hands danced across the control board, bringing the image of the Aerialbot commander and leader of Epsilon Squad onto the large viewscreen.

"Interrogative. Did you find Starscream?" Soundwave asked.

"Negative", Silverbolt replied. "We made a full sweep of Subsectors Senior and Wildman without any sightings."

"Understood. Return to base."

With a nod, Silverbolt's image disappeared as Soundwave mulled over the news. Over the past few months the Transformers had been hunting down Starscream for his betrayal in siding with Jhiaxus during the war. Megatron had finally decided to repay Starscream for the countless millennia of backstabbing and deceit that the former Air Commander had bestowed on him, a sentiment that Optimus fully agreed with. The Seeker had been declared an enemy of the state, with many squads assembled to find him. The failure of the airborne squad, consisting of Silverbolt, Skywarp, Springer, Thundercracker, Skydive, Divebomb, Swoop and Thrust, marked the fifth time Starscream had evaded them. Mentally cursing the Seeker's survival skills, Soundwave turned to Skids.

"Assemble Gamma Squad at Hangar D. I want them ready to go in 12 breems."

"You got it", the Autobot theoretician nodded, switching the intercom on.

As Skids relayed the order for Gamma Squad to assemble, Soundwave found himself praying to Primus that the matter could be resolved soon. A free Starscream was a wild card no one wanted around.

*****

Starscream watched as the last of Epsilon Squad transformed and took to the air. He waited until he was sure that he was outside of their hearing range before he let out a deafening screech and planted his fist through the wall of his makeshift shelter.

He almost had it all. Using the Matrix, he had fused himself with the Warworld and became a living weapon, trashing Jhiaxus' Decepticons in every battle he fought with them. This incarnation made the power boost he had received from the Underbase all those years ago seem like a pittance in comparison. In essence, the Universe was, to coin a human phrase, his oyster.

But, of course, things went horribly, disastrously wrong.

What Starscream had failed to realize about the Matrix was that, having been tainted by evil once before from its dalliances with the android known as Deathbringer, a parasitic predator on VsQs and the Decepticon known as Thunderwing, it was unwilling to go down this route again.

So what did it do? Instead of being influenced by its' new holder, in this case Starscream, it began to influence its' new holder.

Thanks to the Matrix, Starscream had ended up protecting Earth from Jhiaxus' attack and, even more humiliatingly, had helped Prime and Megatron to defeat himself. In the end, he had to give the Matrix back to Prime or end up becoming as nauseatingly pure and good as an Autobot.

Wrenching his hand free of the wall, Starscream hobbled out of his shelter and warily had a look around. In order to hide from the various Transformer squads, he had purposely been running on auxiliary power only in order to throw off heat and power sensors. Combined with a few hiding places he had found for himself in the early days of the war, (places he would retreat to whenever Megatron wanted to have a 'chat'), he had been able to successfully evade them for quite some time. The Transformers were the least of his worries, though.

Strange creatures, theorized to be Primus' first attempt at creating life, tended to roam the dark corners of Cybertron. The Dinobots were the first ones to meet the creatures during the aftermath of the battle with Unicron. Grimlock's transformation into a state the Cybertronian scientists had referred to as Transmetal was the only reason the Dinobots survived the encounter. Since then there had only been sporadic sightings and rumors concerning the metal beasts. Starscream had met four of the beings five months after returning to Cybertron from the Warworld. He had barely managed to escape thanks to his auxiliary power strategy and the serious wounds he incurred still lingered on his body due to the makeshift repairs he had had to make.

Still, Starscream though as he trudged towards the next hiding spot, with my former comrades and a race of cannibal mechanoids after me, it's beyond the realms of reality that things could get any worse.

Starscream had barely finished that thought when ten long, red mechanical fingers wrapped themselves around his midsection and grabbed him. Tightly.

Aw, fuck it.

To be continued….