The wind howled softly, pulling cinders through the open air like whispers of the dead. Megatronus stood still, his massive form casting a long shadow over the cracked ground. His armor, dulled by plasma burns and streaked with Quintesson blood, bore the scars of the day, but his optics burned steady, watching the last embers of battle flicker out beneath the bruised sky.

"You followed," he said, voice like stone grinding on stone, low and deep, vibrating the terra beneath his feet. He noticed you with ease, hard to sneak up on a Prime as skilled as him.

He looked away, back to the horizon, where the stormclouds brewed over what once had been a forest, now ash. His digits tightened around the haft of the Shock-Spear.

"You shifted forms mid-battle," he murmured. "You could have been torn apart. The Quintessons wouldn't have hesitated."

A pause. Then, more softly, almost too softly for a mech his size: "I would not have forgiven that."