ERRORS IN JUDGEMENT OF THE PERSONAL KIND

Part Four

Turbulent memories continued to agitate Starscream as he knelt there in the great hall at the top of Sentinel's tower and waited to die. Stupidly, he began struggling again against his electro-bindings, even though it was useless, even though he knew it would earn him the swift crack of a blaster barrel to his head from one of the nearby guards. He simply had to move, he couldn't stand being fettered a moment longer! Starscream wanted nothing more just then than to be set loose and granted one last chance to fling himself at Sentinel's face and claw his beautiful blue eyes out.

"Look at this rowdy bunch. The High Guard!"

It was him, striding up from behind between the two groups of prisoners! Starscream went instantly on high-alert, his rage surging. He could hear the tak-tak-takking of Sentinel's repulsive lieutenant, Airachnid, walking up on the other side of him, stepping in amongst the other bound fliers, and her presence was the only thing which salvaged his sense of self-preservation and kept him down on his knees.

"Oh ho ho! You captured Starscream!" Sentinel exclaimed.

Then both of them were there, peering down at him. Starscream knew that he'd never even make it to his feet. He exploded in the only way he could.

"I'm going to rip you apart piece by piece so that your death is painful and you'll regret—"

A disaster. Until that moment he hadn't realized how damaged his vocalizer had been during his fight with D-16. Sentinel burst out laughing at his staticky, fractured threat.

"You sound ridiculous," he jeered. "It's weird."

And just like that, Sentinel turned away, dismissing him to go and gloat elsewhere. Starscream trembled violently. He felt defeated and humiliated all over again.

His volatile emotions flattened and he sank back down into depression, too numb to notice much of what the false Prime did next. The loud clank of a foot being forced down was the only thing which pierced his self-pity, after which his peripheral vision picked up that Sentinel and D-16 appeared to be confronting each other.

Thwack!

KLATHUMP!

Starscream swiveled his upper body fully about, startled. Sentinel had punched D-16 and put him on the floor! For standing up? Starscream knew that they'd exchanged words, but had been too distressed to pay attention to what was said. He watched, almost dumbfounded, as Sentinel went down on one knee next to the downed bot to snatch a decal off his arm.

"Ahh, Megatronus Prime! Of course you were a fan," Sentinel said, examining the decal and using the same jeering tone he'd taken with Starscream. "Megatronus was the coolest Prime. The biggest. The baddest! The toughest." His voice slipped down into something almost conspiratorial and, much to Starscream's shock, he all at once snicked his chest open. "That's why after I killed him, I took his cog for myself," he added smugly.

The unexpected revelation was clearly meant to goad D-16, who flared instantly despite lying helpless on his back. "He was greater than you'll ever be!" he shouted at Sentinel.

"I dunno. I'm pretty great," Sentinel shot back. He twiddled with the decal, considering. "But I can understand why you'd want to wear his face over mine. Here. Let's make sure it doesn't come off."

And with that, he placed the decal back on D-16, this time on his chest, took a blowtorch handed him by one of his guards and began burning the design into his prisoner's body.

Starscream winced involuntarily. Torching any Cybertronian's extremities for emergency purposes was painful enough. To use a blowtorch on one's chest, so close to one's cog and spark chambers, had to be an inconceivable agony. The excruciating procedure ripped several guttural screams out of D-16 before mercifully knocking him offline. Worst of all was the sheer bewildering cruelty of it. Starscream couldn't understand Sentinel's violent overreaction. Who was D-16 to him anyway? A chance captive who'd defied him by standing up? If anyone had a right to be upset with the silver bot it was Starscream himself! Of course the flier knew nothing about the prior history between the other two or that Sentinel had been nursing a grievance against a certain pair of miners all along—he didn't even know that D-16 had been a miner. All he saw was the mech he'd once treasured as his lover viciously assaulting a helpless captive for no good reason, and it left him faint, ill, and terrified of what might happen next.

More of the prisoners had begun watching the grim tableau, most of them keeping their heads down and trying to do so surreptitiously. Sentinel had risen back up to his full height and stood staring down at D-16, waiting for him to regain consciousness. All of the false Prime's glib inappropriate humour was gone. His expression had turned cold…calculating…devoid of empathy. Starscream, who'd never once seen him appear so before, thought that Sentinel must be revealing his true face to him for the first time.

When D-16 came back online, he groaned and floundered for a moment, then, laboriously, began struggling back up onto his feet.

"Not a good idea," Sentinel warned.

Awe overwhelmed Starscream when he saw D-16 square his shoulders and proudly lift his head high and stare Sentinel right in the eye once he stood upright again. What courage! Fearless and defiant to the bitter end. What a leader he would have made! And all for nought because Sentinel, his face now thunderous, was already preparing to kill him…

Something jerked Starscream's attention away and switched him back into high-alert mode. Some of the other bound fliers were likewise reacting, their bodies tensing, eyes going wide. The very air crackled with something sudden and impending.

"—breech! Protect Sentinel!"

Airachnid's shouting voice. Starscream's head snapped back as she ran past just in time to see D-16 knocked down again by one of Sentinel's personal bodyguards. Several more of the golden drones pressed in around the false Prime, began hustling him away as ordered. D-16 kicked out as he tried to roll himself into position to get back up. Still alive!

Rocket fire started chattering, issuing from Sentinel's tower. The sounds of battle aloft grew louder outside. Most of the guards were now rushing off to tend to higher priorities beyond maintaining order amongst a bunch of fettered prisoners. Starscream, mad hope flaring, pulled one leg up and braced himself for anything.

Even so, none of them could have anticipated that their would-be rescuers would use an entire train to smash through the tower's defenses and then through the very tower itself!

Chaos erupted. The crash had torn open two of the walls on their level and some of the fighters from outside began pouring in. familiar, furious, fellow High Guard fliers who went for the remaining guards at once before they could vengefully turn their weapons on the captives. Starscream jumped up and stared wildly around. The train had bored through behind the great hall itself, sparing them, but the vast expanse was still in ruins from the shock of the impact, its magnificent statues and appointments cracked and still toppling, clouds of dust and debris roiling. Starscream needed someone to free him, to free all of them!

Salvation came in the form of another very familiar aerial alt. Soundwave dipped low as he flew and fired bursts of electrical impulses at his captive High Guard colleagues to negate their bindings. Starscream was so anxious to get airborne that he began running before Soundwave even got to him. He leapt up into his alt mode the instant his arms were free and zoomed off, then thought better of it and came roaring right back into the great hall to confer with Soundwave. The sleek red and white jet pulled up so fast that he almost stalled himself out. "Report!" he barked out of habit.

"Shockwave and I brought the remainder of the High Guard," Soundwave told him, likewise out of long habit. "We had to ally ourselves with two of the Cybertronians from Iacon to gain entry to the city and for one of them to muster the miners to aid us."

"We have to destroy as many of Sentinel's troops as we can! All of them! He'll be vulnerable then. We can kill Sentinel if we all fight together!"

"What of D-16?"

"Find and protect him once we're done with Sentinel's soldiers. Sentinel wants to kill him. I have to go and help the others!"

"Understood," intoned Soundwave, and they parted again.

Starscream raced back out of the great hall. The air about Sentinel's tower was still full of aerial combatants, his own fliers, their hated opponents, scores of small grounders wearing jetpacks, who had to be the miners Soundwave had referenced. They were trying to fight as best they could using rifles and blasters and Starscream had to be careful not to simply run into them; they weren't very fast nor were they maneuverable. Still, they distracted the tracker drones, which made it easier for the High Guard warriors to get a lethal bead on them. The dark monotone fliers began going down in droves.

Unbeknownst to Starscream, there was another, equally vicious battle developing within the tower. Sentinel had never made it to safety. The train crash had trapped him on the great hall's level, and the four Cybertronians Starscream had briefly held captive himself and who'd become irrevocably drawn into the drama of dethroning Sentinel had been in the tower with him for a time. Sentinel was hardly helpless even without his golden bodyguards. He transformed into his airborne battle mode and went after them with a hail of rocket fire and other weaponry too powerful for the others to fight against. Three of them soon slid away to pursue a different plan to expose the false Prime's lies. D-16 refused to leave and remained behind. His rage had consumed him beyond all reason and he wanted nothing more than a chance to engage Sentinel one on one, irrational and hopeless though it might be.

Ordinary citizens were by now clogging many of Iacon's streets and looking up in astonishment at the fiery battle still raging in the confined air spaces far above. Sentinel's capture of the High Guard hadn't been announced yet. No one knew why the attack was happening or even who was involved. Panic spread as more and more wreckage and even whole offlined bodies rained down. The residents of Iacon had no idea that they were watching a desperate rescue attempt combined with a rebellion against the secret despot who ruled their city.

The aerial battle began to wind down. The High Guard fliers switched to seek and destroy mode, some of them plunging down hundreds of feet to land on the streets and boulevards to finish off those of Sentinel's soldiers who'd only been damaged and grounded. Civilians scattered in all directions as brawls broke out between what looked like fellow Cybertronians and the dark troopers meant to protect them. None of it made any sense.

High up in the city's broadcast station, three bots were about to change all that. They were the same ones who'd briefly tried to fight Sentinel, who'd recognized their limitations and gone in a different direction. While the High Guard had carried out their own self-imposed mission, they'd managed to capture and incapacitate Airachnid, the bot who so often accompanied Sentinel and who recorded everything…everything…

"Attention, Iacon City. Stand by for a live transmission from Sentinel Prime."

The familiar announcer's voice, ringing out over all of Iacon, arrested many of those who heard it. Starscream, who'd been swooping low over the remaining mop up action on the ground, ready to back up his warriors if need be, took especial note of the announcement's wording and transformed and landed himself. He stood, eagerly waiting, hoping to glean some clue from the broadcast as to Sentinel's whereabouts.

The footage, when it came, was raw and shocking. Sentinel, yes, and Sentinel's own words, but candid and unscripted, clearly live recordings of some sort which had never, ever been meant for broadcasting.

Here was Sentinel on a hundred giant screens and holographic projections with his cog chamber open, boasting about taking the brilliant red orb from Megatronus Prime after killing him. Belittling someone offscreen and talking about plucking the cogs from the chests of newborn Cybertronians before they came online and forcing them to mine energon. Starscream's mouth opened, snapped shut again. Where was this coming from? How? He glanced at the other bots around him and saw dismay already dawning on their faces and heard the occasional gasp or soft moan of disbelief. Maybe Airachnid? She was always lurking around Sentinel and recorded everything. Soundwave had said that they'd allied themselves with two Cybertronians from Iacon. Starscream remembered the blue and red mech who'd spoken to him before it had all fallen apart. He'd been typically misguided, yet had seemed resourceful. Starscream wondered if he and his friends had somehow managed to capture Airachnid and were even now forcing her to spill Semtinel's secrets at the broadcast station.

A clip of Sentinel and his entourage humbling themselves in front of a Quintesson leader. Sentinel's words were no longer even necessary. It was enough to see him groveling before their hated perennial enemies.

The crowds' initial silence and denial erupted into hot anger. Down in the mines, enraged miners began rioting and turning over cars full of hard-earned ore. Starscream, energized by the violence and death he himself had just inflicted during the air battle, excited by the growing outrage all around him, lifted up slightly with his thrusters, looking for other High Guard colleagues nearby. He again had the sense that something important and imminent was about to occur.

A plummeting, sizable thing streaked across one of the largest screens. It quickly revealed itself to be a pair of struggling figures clinched together in mortal combat, one of whom activated powerful thrusters before the pair struck the ground. Their fall turned into a crazy, careening, uncontrolled flight which ended with a full-on smash into a support upright attached to the city's civic center. Both bots, broken apart by the impact, tumbled down onto the top of the center, and for the first time, everyone watching could see that one of them was none other than Sentinel Prime, badly damaged and now missing his entire wing package.

The other bot who'd crashed staggered back up onto his feet to go after Sentinel again. It was D-16, although he was just a silver stranger to many of the onlookers, and he seethed with murderous joy to find his hated foe down and unable to escape. But then, confusingly, another mech, blue and red and also a stranger to many, seemed to appear out of nowhere and stopped the other from killing the fallen Prime. It turned into a grappling match, then a fight. D-16 kicked the other bot away and turned his weapon back onto Sentinel…

…and shot the blue and red mech when he barged back in front of Sentinel to stop his execution.

Two of the Cybertronians amongst the hundreds crowding in about the civic center to watch the drama, only two, cried out in horror. Most just stared, still confused. The mortally wounded blue and red mech slid to the edge of the roof and went over. He would have fallen then, far, far down into the very depths of the planet had the same bot who'd just shot him not inexplicably leapt forward himself to grab his hand and halt his fall.

For long seconds, the two remained frozen together in full sight of the citizenry of all of Iacon, one grasping the dying hand of the other. Then:

The silver bot let go. Stood up. Refocused and went back after Sentinel.

The scattered High Guard fliers watching began to cheer, sporadic shouts of encouragement which grew stronger and more cohesive as more and more of them recognized one another's presence and joined in. He was doing it, really doing it, about to fulfill their years-long united spark's desire. Their magnificent new leader, D-16, wading his way through a last little knot of golden drone stragglers who'd found their master during the interim and who tried in vain to protect him. There'd be no merciful, clean death for Sentinel anymore…

D-16 grasped the weakly struggling false Prime from behind, lifted him high up off his feet, and in a titanic show of strength and impassioned rage, tore his maimed body in half.

Starscream almost fell to his knees. He'd felt it as surely as if he too had just been ripped apart, except that for him it had been the two halves of his broken spark reuniting in a bizarre reversal of what had just happened to Sentinel. Lubricant began running from his eyes as he watched D-16 reach for the dead broken body at his feet and tear out its cog. The gleaming silver mech turned to the crowds on the plazas below and held up his glowing prize.

"The age of Primes has ended!" he cried in a deep resonant voice which filled the whole of Iacon. "No more false prophets. Follow me and you will never again be deceived. Rise up!"

Starscream, still weeping and utterly swept up by his joy and jubilation, pushed heedlessly forward past a number of other, stunned Cybertronians and raised his own arms. He had to get closer to his savior!

"I will lead us all into the future!" D-16 next declared, then, in a grand gesture, plucked out his own cog and replaced it with the one he'd just torn from Sentinel, the same cog which had once powered the transformations of the great Megatronus. It acted instantly on D-16's own body, remaking him, enhancing him, reshaping his exterior into a true reflection of the heroic liberator who'd just rid Cybertron of a monster. The High Guard fliers clustered together on the plaza below exulted throughout, many of them, like Starstream, leaking tears in their elation and triumph. Sentinel the betrayer was dead! Dead and reduced into nothing but faded scrap! Those celebrating were still, however, in the minority. The majority of the Cybertronians watching the revolution unfold still stood stunned, as if unable to keep up with the swiftness of the justice which had just been dealt out to their treacherous fake leader.

Starscream found himself sandwiched in between Soundwave and Shockwave. It seemed only fitting that the three of them stood together again to witness what happened next, the birth of a pure miracle.

D-16, as resplendent and magnificent a figure in his new body as any warrior Prime could have been, lifted his now massive fusion cannon high up above his head.

"I…am…Megatron!" he roared.

It was perfect. Prophetic! The High Guard fliers cheered in unison, their spirits and purpose reborn as well.

Megatron next turned his ire against the very trappings of the false Prime he'd just killed, his burning hatred still such that it needed for every last vestige of Sentinel to be erased. "Burn it down! All of it!" he shouted and fired at the nearest towering stylized statue. The High Guard, wildly excited, their bloodlust up, leapt to do his bidding.

"All hail Megatron!" Starscream, Shockwave and Soundwave rejoiced as one before unleashing their own weaponry on every last memento of the great betrayer.

A stupendous, explosive crash, issuing not from above but below, was what it took to halt the High Guard's incipient orgy of destruction. A new Cybertronian figure slammed down from out of the air right back into the same cityscape arena with Megatron. It was a figure at once familiar, shocking, and unthinkable. The same bot Megatron had dropped to his death, his former friend Orion Pax. Rescued and remade by Primus himself into yet another Prime.

"Impossible…" Megatron breathed. Then he saw what was twinkling within that now massive red chest. "Primus gave you the Matrix."

"We could have built the future together," the new Prime said, trying to be conciliatory. But Megatron heard none of that. All he saw was a replacement for Sentinel, another focus for his hurt rage and inexhaustible need for justice and revenge.

"I'll build it myself. After I tear down everyone in my way!" he retorted and launched himself at his new enemy without further thought.

The High Guard, as astonished as Megatron had been by the unexpected appearance of a new Prime, were still regrouping. Most, unsure of what they should do, merely watched the new battle for supremacy unfold alongside the still stupefied inhabitants of Iacon, most of whom were by now completely discombobulated. Only Starscream, Soundwave and Shockwave had gotten over their surprise well enough to consider what Megatron expected of them, whether he wanted them to assist him or continue standing back. It wasn't as though it were a fight for leadership or dominance, exactly, which had its own inherent, unspoken rules. Megatron just wanted to destroy his new opponent.

The three of them settled for repositioning themselves closer to the action, where they stood almost hopping from foot to foot in their eagerness to help their leader, yet were still unsure of whether Megatron would welcome such a thing or just view it as interference. In the meantime, he was holding his own through every blindingly swift transformation and blow. The new Prime was proving oddly inhibited. Megatron took advantage of his hesitation and got him down and started whaling on him with tremendous strength, not unlike the way he'd battered Starscream.

Then the energon axe appeared.

The High Guard fliers, with their long familiarity with what all the Primes had once been capable of, immediately recognized the new weapon as a manifestation of the Matrix itself, a potential game changer. The mere energy aura of its creation knocked Megatron flying the first time he struck it. Starscream and the two others, sensing trouble, charged in, trying to at least distract the new Prime so Megatron could again gain the upper hand. Unfortunately, all three were soundly swatted away at once as if they were mere motes of irritating dust. In gaining his energon weapon, its wielder seemed suddenly possessed by preternatural ability, as if suffused by the warrior instincts of all the Primes who'd come before him.

Megatron, undeterred, rushed in again. This time, the blue and red Prime sliced right through Megatron's fusion cannon, destroying it, and flung him down.

All the High Guard warriors went quiet after that. With his primary weapon disabled, Megatron had no hope anymore of winning. He lay defeated and dazed for a long moment before picking himself back up, then stood in brief conference with the mech who'd bested him. None of them could hear exactly what was being said and it didn't look good. Starscream, who was closest, saw an expression of surprise and hurt flit across his leader's face. But only briefly. Megatron steeled himself again as he pushed past his former friend and left him behind and strode off down the nearest roadway.

"High Guard! Follow me!" he commanded before transforming into his Cybertronian tank alt. It seemed unnecessary to add that they'd all just been banished. Just the fact that he was heading for the surface would no doubt make that abundantly clear.

To a bot, the entire High Guard fell into loose formation behind Megatron and followed their leader out of Iacon City and back into the wild.

to be continued...