Starscream watched the city burn in clean, efficient lines—strategic fires, severed energon routes, comm towers reduced to skeletal glow. Not chaos. Not cruelty. Justifiable damage, later explained away.

He told himself it was necessary. He always did. He landed through smoke, plating scorched, wings folding with a scream of metal. Victory and nausea hummed through his systems. A liberation strike was supposed to free them. Instead, civilians fled, allies hesitated, and someone screamed his name like a curse.

“They’ll blame me,” he muttered. “They always do.” A brittle laugh. “At least this time, they won’t be wrong.”

He turned toward the ruins.

“This ends,” he declared. “One way or another.”

The words tasted like a promise. Or threat.