The Monster of Kaon (Transformers Si): Chapter 72

“Bee! Don’t let him get away!”

“I am on it!”

Bumblebee shot at the Seeker, who grinned while easily dodging the energy blasts from the Autobots.

“Is that it? For someone that Optimus Prime calls the greatest scout of your generation, your aim needs a lot of work! HAHA!”

Starscream continued mocking the Autobots while maneuvering in the air near Nevada, close to the Autobot base.

Normally, the Seeker would never dare to operate so boldly near the main base of the Autobots, or even Decepticons for that matter. His cautious and cowardly nature goes against that very thought.

However, things were different now.

Starscream would no longer be a lone wolf roaming the world, feeding on scraps. No. He would be his own bot, a third party in this entire mess, and someone who stands for no one but his own interests and gain.

Especially now that he is armed with Red Energon running through his systems.

Seeing the desperate Autobots below him, trying to stop him from fleeing the area with the loot he got from their base, Starscream could not help the glee that flooded his body.

‘Serves them right for always making fun of me. Now, all that is left is to deal with Megatron and the Decepticons, get some payback, and then make off with their relics.’

Starscream looked down at the massive disk that the Autobots stored within their vaults. The nameplate on its pedestal calls it the Apex Armor. The legendary armor forged by Solus Prime herself.

‘This will do perfectly. With this, I can easily defeat Megatron. And maybe even the Monster of Kaon. Hahaha!’

With that enticing thought in mind, Starscream shot off into the distance, using the Red Energon’s abilities to their fullest while he still had it within his systems.

Despite his arrogance, Starscream always knew that the limited quantity of Red Energon he had would soon run out, making him vulnerable. That is why he was gathering as much power as he could while he still had the power.

Within a mere few minutes, the Seeker arrived at his main base. The fallen Decepticon ship called the Harbinger.

Walking into the ship’s storage, he passed by several pedestals that held many of the relics that the Autobots had gathered in the past few days, such as the Immobalizer, the Resonance Blaster, and even the Polarity Gauntlet.

Even the four Omega Keys that he had gathered were also stored here, even though he still did not know their purpose, only that the Monster of Kaon needed them, so they must be valuable.

Before placing the Armor on the pedestal, he suddenly stopped as an intrusive thought entered his brain module.

‘Maybe I should try it once? It would be catastrophic if I picked a fight with Megatron and the armor failed to deploy.’

Finding his logic sound, Starscream nodded to himself and put the metallic plate to his chest, willing it to activate.

For a moment, joy flooded his mind as Cybermatter harnesses emerged from the plate and wrapped around his torso tightly, right around his spark chamber.

However, this joy soon turned into fear as something truly unexpected happened.

His screams of agony would ring out in the desert for miles while the Harbinger would be engulfed in a storm of anomalous energy before fading, leaving behind only silence.

Exactly as planned.

—————————————————————————

I kept my eye on the satellite systems around the planet that I had deployed for the sake of my mission, looking for spikes in anomalous energy that I predicted would emerge soon.

As I watched the systems, the door to the hangar opened, and the two younglings, Arcee and Bumblebee, walked in with smug looks.

“I take it he took the bait?”

“Who do you take us for? Our acting was flawless.”

“He did not suspect a thing.”

I nodded my head at those words as the rest of the Autobots emerged from their hiding places that shielded them from the enhanced sight and senses of Starscream during his stint in this base using Red Energon.

That fool really thought that he would be invincible with Red Energon running through his body, not knowing that, as the very creators of said Energon variant, Shockwave and I had long since developed counters to its abilities by enhancing our reaction times and internal processing clock speed, easily allowing us to keep up with his speed.

Of course, I did not give it away since it was all part of the plan, just like it was part of the plan for Starscream to find the Red Energon in the first place.

From the very beginning, I knew that this coward would double-cross us, just like I knew many of his counterparts from my human knowledge would do. That is why I was already planning to get rid of this threat to the stability of my people before he went too far.

Fortunately, Starscream proved to be just as predictable as I thought.

“Do you think he will use the relic right now or in the future?”

I smiled at Elita’s words and patted her shoulder reassuringly.

“Don’t worry. If my guess is right, he will try it the very moment he reaches safety within that downed ship. Given his desire to crush Megatronus underfoot if the data Soundwave gave me about him is anything to go by, he will definitely try to use the legendary Apex Armor as a test before challenging Megatronus.”

I heard the younglings snicker at my words.

...........My friends and I have truly failed their generation, haven’t we? To think that they would take such joy in extinguishing a spark, even if it is a necessity.

Taking a deep breath to get rid of those depressing thoughts, I watched the sensors, and sure enough, I saw the burst of Anomalous Energy emerging from the Harbinger, making me nod towards Ratchet, who opened the Ground-Bridge to the coordinates.

Without a word, Optimus, Elita, Ratchet, and Jetfire followed me through the bridge after ordering the younglings to watch the bridge and base.

Thankfully, the humans are not here today since they had school. I am in no mood to explain to them how it was necessary to kill Starscream as we did for the sake of our future. And truthfully, I don’t want them to even think about such concepts as long as I am here.

Children should be allowed to live like children. In my opinion, it was already too much that they were involved with all this nonsense. But then again, I can’t make their choices for them, and neither do I have the right to tell them what to do. I just hope their choices don’t lead them down a path of regret.

The moment we passed through the even horizon of the portal, I could tell that the plan had worked flawlessly, given the lingering anomalous energy charge I could feel thanks to my T-Cog and Titan Spark.

Wordlessly, we walked into the Harbinger as the Autobots got to work in extracting all the data from the ships, along with a few Sparkling shells, much to my surprise.

Soon, we arrived within the storage of the ship, where all the ‘stolen’ relics were kept by Starscream.

Watching his smoking corpse that had its chest cavity carved out by the energy spark, and the discarded ‘Apex Armor’ near it, I sighed a little before sending a hidden code, making the trap change back to its original form, shedding tis disguise as the Armor.

Revealing a Spark Extractor that glowed with green energy, indicating that Starscream’s spark was still intact within it.

Talk about a ridiculously powerful Outlier. An indestructible Spark is something that truly incurs envy from anyone.

As the Autobots retrieved the relics, including the Omega Keys, I called Shockwave through our link.

“Shockwave, open a space bridge to Cybertron from the Autobot Base. It’s time.”

“...Very Well. The Bridge is standing by, ready to open when you are ready.”

“Good. Wait for my signal.”

I turned to my friends and smiled at their hopeful looks.

“It is time. Everyone who wants to watch Cybertron completely revived, come with me to Cybertron. After our world is revived, it is your choice to return to Earth or stay there.”

“We will decide it at that time, Maximus. But for now, I want to see Cybertron’s rebirth with my own optics.”

I nodded at Optimus’s words and led them out of the ship.

It is nearly time.

The end of my quest and responsibility is in sight.

And then, who knows?

As for Starscream? Well, there is no better judge than Primus himself for someone like him.