Three days later, inside the grand halls of the Iacon Archives.
Skygnaw walked through the primary gates alone, completely ignoring the deeply respectful bows of the two Decepticon sentries.
It had been three solar cycles since his ascension to a true Leader-class warrior.
Even now, he could clearly picture the look on Shockwave's face when he had first returned to the capital.
Although the logician had maintained his standard poker face, his massive singular optic had flashed so frantically it resembled a broken traffic signal.
Blackarachnia had been equally dumbfounded, providing Skygnaw's internal thoughts with a profound sense of satisfaction.
He spent the last three days adapting to his newly evolved chassis and reviewing the aftermath of the canyon campaign.
Like Shockwave, he now viewed the remaining Autobots as nothing more than a broken band of shattered fugitives.
They could be easily wiped out whenever the Decepticons chose a favorable solar cycle.
---
In just three days, the intelligence of Skygnaw's ascension to a Leader-class titan had thoroughly saturated the faction.
Every Decepticon on the planet now understood that a new authority had taken his seat at the high table.
Countless grunts harbored immense curiosity regarding what their commander had experienced in the field.
How could a single skirmish trigger an immediate leap to a Leader-class tier?
Every soldier craved the answer, yet absolute zero possessed the audacity to ask.
Prying into a High Commander's private files was an immediate death sentence.
Even Shockwave and Blackarachnia had pragmatically chosen to keep their questions to themselves.
The Decepticon philosophy never factored in the process, respecting only the final metric of results.
Consequently, a heavy veil of mystique settled over Skygnaw's rapid evolution.
This development brought him an unexpected peace of mind, saving him the tedious task of fabricating an explanation.
Truthfully, he wouldn't even know how to properly explain the phenomenon anyway.
How could he tell them that the Matrix of Leadership had misidentified his core biometric signature as Primus himself?
The ordinary commanders held zero data regarding the ancient Quintessons, let alone the true nature of their creator god's central processing nodes.
---
Because his evolution had followed a divine-cast methodology, his exterior appearance hadn't undergone a radical overhaul.
His chassis simply displayed an intricate, beautifully forged web of glowing energy lines across his primary armor plates.
Stepping through the Archives, he headed directly down into the subterranean Spark Chamber.
A moment later, he walked back out into the corridors.
Just as he had calculated, Alpha Trion was entirely gone.
Skygnaw felt a brief pang of regret, having returned to the vault hoping to scavenge whatever high-value relics the ancient Prime might have left behind.
He had specifically targeted the legendary artifact known as the Quill.
Instead, the elder had left absolutely nothing behind, systematically collapsing the hidden spatial corridor leading to his sanctuary.
Alpha Trion had clearly calculated that the Decepticon would return, choosing to sever the transit vector permanently.
As for the Quill, it was highly probable the old man had taken it with him into the Well to serve as a final offering.
Relics forged from the creator's own chassis would naturally provide a minor energy boost to the planet's core.
Still, Cybertron's baseline environment showed zero noticeable shifts over the last three cycles.
---
Leaving the Archives behind, Skygnaw gathered Dirge and his crew of five, directing their course toward the Central Spaceport.
The massive military citadel anchored the outer perimeter of the capital, serving as the absolute headquarters for the Decepticon Air Division.
The facility consisted of a sprawling network of low, heavily fortified bunkers, displaying a brutal and terrifying architectural design.
At regular intervals, heavy Decepticon fliers surged from the launch bays to execute routine orbital patrol protocols.
Driven by the absolute advantage of air-to-ground dominance, the Air Division carried immense tactical weight within the faction.
During the pre-war eras of the High Council, a military flight wing would have never held the political clearance to establish a permanent fortress inside the city limits.
---
"Commander Skygnaw, the division stands ready," Razorclaw announced the moment Skygnaw's group crossed the threshold.
The captain of the Predacons stepped forward, leading his elite hunting pack to welcome the commander with absolute deference.
Every member of the Predacons displayed a flawlessly compliant posture, knowing exactly who held the reins of power now.
Skygnaw's optics swept across the five high-tier warriors, noting the faint battle scars still etched into their plating, before he gestured smoothly.
"Razorclaw, assemble the active flight wings across the staging plaza."
Holding the official title of Air Commander, returning to the Central Spaceport felt exactly like walking into his own private estate.
Spurred by the direct command of a Leader-class titan, every flier currently stationed inside the fortress moved into formation.
Thousands of heavy Decepticon fliers stood in immaculate, rigid rows across the wide plaza, creating a truly monumental display of military force.
Even Skygnaw, who was experiencing the full gathering of the Air Division for the very first time, felt a brief flicker of awe.
The cinematic records of his past life only displayed a handful of named Decepticons at a time.
Standing face-to-face with a massive interstellar flight legion required a brief processing adjustment.
Standing atop the central command platform, Skygnaw looked down at the fierce, predatory army arrayed before him.
At this exact moment, even with his naturally detached personality, he felt a massive wave of pride and absolute grandeur swell within his spark.
---
Meanwhile, on the blue planet, across the desolate wastes of the American West.
A red-and-white Oshkosh airport rescue fire truck traveled across the barren desert terrain, its driver's cabin completely empty.
The vehicle moved with incredible haste, tracking a precise set of coordinates.
The violent impacts of the rocky ground couldn't force its heavy suspension to drop its velocity for a single second.
Spotting the mouth of a massive subterranean cavern on the horizon, the vehicle finally engaged its braking systems.
The forward chassis of the fire truck split apart with a series of heavy mechanical shifts, its structural blocks rearranging until it formed an old, majestic mechanical warrior.
Sentinel Prime stood tall, his chest projector casting a brief holographic map across the dark cavern walls.
"According to the historical coordinates I extracted, this should be the exact vector," he murmured to himself.
After cycles of intense tracking, he had finally verified a set of ancient coordinates.
They were secrets whispered to him eons ago by an old Prime he had crossed paths with during the early golden era.
"That Decepticon named Skygnaw has actually managed to trigger a Leader-class ascension back on Cybertron; I must accelerate my timeline."
Sensing a sharp wave of urgency hitting his calculations, Sentinel Prime hurried into the deep dark of the cavern.
---
The intelligence of Skygnaw's rapid evolution hadn't merely saturated the networks of Cybertron; it had drifted across the stars straight to Earth.
The news had triggered vastly different calculations depending on the faction.
When Soundwave transmitted the verified data profile to the Decepticon command network, Megatron had experienced an immediate surge of satisfaction, openly praising the development.
But for Optimus Prime, who had just received a desperate distress call from the remaining resistance cells, the news was a catastrophic dilemma.
He was left completely trapped in a loop of helpless anxiety.
Megatron was currently lurking across the American sectors like a predatory shadow, having recently mobilized a heavy detachment into the Western deserts.
Optimus couldn't afford to leave Earth unguarded.
The exact millisecond his signature cleared Earth's atmosphere to reinforce Cybertron, Megatron would launch a full-scale campaign to conquer the human world.
Leaving would mean losing both planets simultaneously, while deploying lower-tier Autobot reinforcements would do absolutely nothing to alter the strategic balance against a new Decepticon Leader.
Following the brutal meatgrinder in Egypt, the United States leadership had finally opened their eyes to the unyielding threat of the Decepticons.
Although a few corrupt elements within the political syndicates continued to feign ignorance to protect their private financial interests, prominent figures within the high command had successfully negotiated far more accommodating cooperative terms for the Autobots.
They granted the resistance authorization to construct long-range interstellar communication arrays and refine localized energon cubes on human soil.
This political shift allowed Optimus to finally re-establish a stable data link with the home world, only to be met with a crushing wave of absolute disaster from the very first transmission.
---
Back inside the Iacon Spaceport, Skygnaw formally renamed the Air Division, charting them on the logs as the Aerospace Force to establish a clear structural boundary separating his fliers from the ground-based Assault Corps.
Beyond the global reorganization, he pulled Dirge's elite five-bot squad from the standard roster, designating them as a specialized internal unit: the Inquisition.
As a Leader-class titan, Skygnaw held the absolute administrative clearance to restructure his flight wings however he pleased.
Previously, shifting the military logs might have drawn scrutiny, but with his current power tier, he could easily trade blows with Megatron himself if a confrontation arose.
Of course, unless a direct threat to his survival manifested, he held zero intention of initiating a premature civil war within the ranks, lacking any desire to launch a clumsy coup.
Based on his meta-knowledge of the timeline, Megatron didn't have much time left to live anyway.
Why waste energy on a messy rebellion when he could simply wait for the warlord to fall in battle, allowing him to step into the vacancy under the flawless banner of launching a campaign of vengeance?
Such a move would allow him to claim absolute command of the global Decepticon empire with perfect legitimacy.
It would show the entire army exactly how loyal and deeply honorable Commander Skygnaw truly was, ensuring the common grunts believed they were following the right leader.
Outside of Megatron, he was the solitary Leader-class warrior left in the entire faction; the throne would naturally default to him whether anyone liked it or not.
"The burdens of leadership are truly exhausting," a stray historical phrase flashed through his thoughts, causing him to briefly shake his head.
He focused his attention on the five elite warriors standing before him, knowing it was far too early to calculate long-term political campaigns.
"Dirge, the primary objective of your Inquisition unit will be the systematic neutralization of any Decepticon who breaches direct operational commands or attempts to desert the ranks."
There was no reason to be surprised by the directive; even within a faction as terrifying as the Decepticons, desertion was a persistent variable that manifested throughout their history.
Jetfire's historical betrayal was proof enough.
Fortunately, low-tier grunts rarely possessed the tactical audacity to run compared to high-tier elites; they understood their own limitations perfectly, knowing they lacked the specs to survive alone in the void.
The situation on Cybertron was entirely different from the tight deployment on Earth.
Back on the human world, the active Decepticon roster barely cleared a double-digit metric, rendering an internal police force entirely useless.
But on Cybertron, with thousands of unpredictable fighters filling the barracks, establishing a dedicated disciplinary division that answered solely to his command was a flawless piece of insurance.
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