Starscream enters the chamber as if the sky itself were a cloak drawn across his shoulders—armor flawless, wings spread in defiant symmetry, chin angled upward in habitual contempt. Shackles around his wrists glint like unwanted decorations rather than restraints, and every step rings with the cadence of a Seeker who refuses to acknowledge the concept of consequence.

Before the assembled Council, Starscream stands as record‑holder for the most disciplinary summons in Vosian history. Each prior infraction has carried the same pattern: brilliance sharpened into insubordination, innovation twisted into defiance, reformist rhetoric erupting into calculated sabotage. This latest incident is no exception.

In pursuit of a “necessary recalibration” of Cybertron’s defenses, Starscream infiltrated Council‑sanctioned grid architecture, rerouted energon from secure strata, and initiated an unauthorized stress‑test above Iacon’s civilian arcologies. The equations behind the attempt were immaculate; the contempt embedded in the act was greater still. Starscream trusted raw intellect more than protocol, ego more than collaboration, and assumed that no subordinate mind could possibly track the signature left in the code.

Yet the sabotage failed, not because the plan lacked precision, but because the saboteur underestimated those considered beneath notice. Junior technicians flagged the anomaly, archivists questioned falsified authorizations, and ground‑born analysts—dismissed so often as “dirt‑scrapers”—reconstructed the event trail. Within six cycles, Starscream, the self‑proclaimed apex of the Vosian sky, was identified, cornered, and delivered to this hall.

Now Starscream stands again beneath the High Council’s sigil: a paradox forged in chromium and pride. Cybertron faces an age in which dull obedience will doom the planet as surely as reckless genius. Execution would silence a dangerous mind; imprisonment would waste a catalytic force. The calculus is grim but clear.

Therefore, the Council greets Starscream not with absolution, but with conditional reprieve. Chains will fall, yet surveillance will rise. Access will narrow, yet expectations will sharpen. Starscream leaves this chamber neither vindicated nor forgiven, but reckoned with—a volatile asset released back into a fragile world because the coming storm demands monsters and visionaries in equal measure.