"Megatron. You've seen him win the first Arena, but how did he become Decepticon leader? Who was he beforehand? What drove him to become the Demon of Cybertron? How's he doing in the Dream Realm? All of these questions and more will be answered in his own little data-scroll!"
- An Arm and a Leg: After a guard shoots E-13 for getting too close to Decimus and other guards killing him, Megatron snaps and flings a pickaxe at the attacking guard so hard it sliced his arm off.
- As Megatron fights off Hot Rod's team, he destroys both of Arcee's legs with his mace and tears Hot Rod's arms off. They survive their injuries, on account of being Cybertronians, but still.
- Abnormal Ammo: Micronus Prime ends up being used as ammo for Megatron's fusion cannon, destroying him and several more of the Decepticon's foes.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: To the horror of the Decepticons, when they get footage of Ultra Magnus executing their friends at MacAddams, the populace cheers at their destruction.
- Appropriated Appellation: As the Destrons began their revolution and spreading their message, the Primes twisted the faction's name into the Decepticons, claiming that all they do is spread lies and deception. While many of the Destrons were insulted, Megatron insisted that they wear it as a badge of honor.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: As Operation: Devastation begins, Megatron describes how the Decepticons were doing their part in the attack:
- Chaos. Chaos and screaming followed. As well as plenty of explosions. The floats erupted into fire as Seekers and many other aerial-based Transformers came out of the flames, utilizing their various abilities to rain doom upon the populace. Those that tried to run found the ground beneath them crumbling, many more of my ranks rising and killing all that they saw.
I smiled as I watched them unleash their rage. Starscream was having a blast using his Null Rays to prevent escape, Straxus using his pick-axe to create devastating tremors that destroyed the foundation of various buildings, BB unleashing a cluster of bombs to turn every street into a wall of fire, Tidal Wave using a building as a bludgeoning weapon against the security detail, and many more.
Oh, and Flamewar was doing graffiti along with Shadow Striker, with a 'Just Bonded' ribbon tied around them both. I can’t help but be a little jealous of what they have.
- As You Know: Megatron writes the Data Scroll intending it to be either a refresher for the Decepticons, who already know him well, or an introduction of him for everyone else reading it. Though when he talks about the Silverscale Arena, it's meant more for the viewers, as not many Transformers had participated in one at this point in time.
- Attack of the Town Festival: The Decepticons chose to unleash Operation: Devastation on the date where the Primehood Parade was going to take place at.
- Badass Boast: Megatron takes a few moments in his Data Scroll to boast about himself.
- These three words have echoed throughout the far reaches of Cybertron and its Colony worlds, as well as anybody who managed to learn of our planet's dark history. Three words that send shivers down the universe's spine. Words that I know you’ll remember until your last dying gasp.
I am Megatron.
What follows is usually screaming and/or bowing, but...I'm getting ahead of myself.
- Blood from the Mouth: When Megatron digs out a gravely injured Nightbird from a rockpile, he finds blood pooling from her mouth, and she dies shortly afterwards.
- Captain's Log: The Framing Device of the story is Megatron writing his life story into a 'Data Scroll'.
- Crapsack World: Both Anduruna and Cybertron are this.
- In Cybertron's case, the leadership is very much corrupt and the concept of Functionism (dictating a Cybertronian's role in life based on their alt-mode)is just one of the layers making it so. The Primes controlling the planet also thought nothing of using a false-flag operation to destroy the Decepticons, thus kickstarting the war that wound up turning the planet (and Caminus, by extension) into a wasteland.
- Anduruna, as in canon, is rather similar in terms of corruption. Megatron is especially baffled at how powers are perceived as completely evil, despite everyone having powers.
- Cruel Mercy: Megatron decides to spare Motorhead after defeating him in a gladiator match, but only because Megatron didn't think he was deserving of an honorable death.
- Death by Origin Story: Nightbird and all the Decepticons that were killed when MacAddams was destroyed, including Terminus. Blaster is also listed among the causalities.
- Dying Declaration of Love: A platonic version. Nightbird's final words are her telling Megatron that she'll always love him. Sadly, she doesn't get to finish her sentence before she dies.
- Et Tu, Brute?: At the meeting with the Primes, Megatron offered his solution to change the system: a Might Makes Right society where everyone could make their own choices and would have to fight to earn their power. Orion then spoke, repeating several of Megatron's points, but instead offered a slower, more meticulous process, wanting to offer a hand to their fellow Cybertronians and other species abroad. To Megaton, he felt betrayed, thinking that Orion took his ideas but said it in a way that wouldn't upset the council and used their friendship for his personal gain. When Megatron gets tossed out by Ultra Magnus when he tries to speak up, he storms off, ignoring Orion's pleas to return, their friendship ended.
- Enemy Mine: The greedy Ratbat helps the Decepticons when the Council destroyed one of his main sources of profit (that being MacAddams) just to make a point by hacking the Temple to deny the Council any security measures or escape routes during Operation: Devastation.
- Eye Scream: Shadow Striker lost an optic when MacAddams was destroyed.
- False Flag Operation: To try and put an end to the Decepticons before they could be recognized as an official party, Ultra Magnus with a combination of Aerialbot and Protectobot forces destroy MacAddams late at night, tried to kill everyone that survived that, and blamed it on an 'alien attack'.
- First-Person Perspective: The story is written entirely from Megatron’s point of view.
- Gaining the Will to Kill: After Megatron starts a riot when a guard shoots E-13 and several guards proceed to kill him, Megatron watches as Straxus maims Decimus, and questions if violence is the right thing to do. Then he finds the guard that shot E-13, and his arm transforms into his Fusion Cannon for the first time. He then shoots him and tears him apart, loving it and feeling that actual justice was made.
- Gladiator Games: Feeling they have no other choice after losing their mining jobs, Megatron, Straxus, and Terminus, now joined with Delirious, participate in the Death Games at the Quintesson Gladiatorial Arena as a team called the Destrons. It's also here where Megatron would meet a future ally, Soundwave.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: As Megatron fights the Six Terrors, he grabs the stronger members of the team and batters the weaker members with their forms.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Megatron kills Wheelie by ripping him in half in the attack of the Temple. He later does the same to Elita-1 in the Battle for the AllSpark, right in front of Optimus Prime. Megatron admits that the latter cost him dearly, as it awakened the rage inside Optimus and nearly killed him.
- I Am the Noun: As Megatron tries to make peace with the citizens of Rott after landing in the middle of it in his tank mode, its village champion calls it big talk coming from a guy hiding in a tank. To which Megatron proclaims "...there is only one thing wrong with that statement." before transforming into his true form and quips "I AM the tank."
- As Megatron writes about the Decepticons planning Operation: Devastation, Megatron plans on attacking The Temple of Primus. He notes that the Deceptions claimed he needed a powerful weapon to survive its occupants inside, to which he boasts that he was the weapon.
- Irony: When the surviving Decepticons realize that Getaway sold out their base at MacAddams, Megatron notes how ironic it was that the Decepticons were deceived by an Autobot.
- Killed Offscreen: Everyone who was murdered when MacAddams was destroyed by Ultra Magnus and his forces posing as aliens.
- Kill It with Fire: Megatron kills several senators by engulfing them in pillars of fire he creates simply by punching the ground.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: For anyone that's new to this series, the summary straight up stating that Megatron won the first Arena in the first sentence.
- Last of Their Kind: Nightbird reveals to Megatron that she is the last of a race of reptilian beings, even outliving her own son. Her race would end up extinct when she's killed by getting shot down trying to stop Cybertronian ships from stealing the planet’s resources.
- Legally Dead: After MacAddams was blown up, it was deemed that 'the Decepticon scourge' was fully gone, with any Decepticons who survived its destruction being considered legally dead.
- Like a Son to Me: As Megatron made continual returns to Nightbird to chat and hunt with her, Nightbird began to view Megatron as another son of her's.
- Losing Your Head: Delirious was reduced to a functioning head after the destruction of MacAddams.
- Macross Missile Massacre: MacAddams is destroyed by a combination of Aerialbot and Protectobot forces raining a hail of missiles down on it trying to kill all of the Decepticons.
- Mercy Kill: Blackout was forced to put down Grindor after his brain module was permanently damaged when MacAddams was destroyed.
- The Mole: Discussed between the Decepticons; Megatron wanted Orion Pax to join the Decepticon cause, but the others considered him a threat as he worked directly under the Primes, and could report on what he sees to his superiors.
- The Decepticons would later end up having one on both ends of the tropes; several Autobots they recruited, mainly Getaway, sold out their secret base at MacAddams to Ultra Magnus and his forces, who then tried to kill every Decepticon. They would later get a mole on their side with Obsidian, who acted as the inside-mech for the group.
- Mood Whiplash: After a tender moment of Megatron falling asleep next to Nightbird as she sings a melody to him, they’re awakened by Cybertronian ships plundering the planet’s surface for resources and try to stop it, only for them to get shot down, resulting in Nightbird’s death.
- My Greatest Failure: Though Megatron admits it wouldn’t be the last of them, being unable to save Nightbird was this for him.
- Mythology Gag: Much of Megatron's backstory contains elements of his IDW incarnation.
- Nightbird's iteration here, being a dragon, might have something to do with Megatron having a draconic alt-mode in some continuities.
- The name of the plan the Decepticons came up with to attack the Primehood Parade is 'Operation:Devastation'.
- Megatron's response to Optimus Prime's attempt to save him from the vortex created by the AllSpark's destruction is to tell him "You don't even know when you've won.
- The Six Terrors are basically the Pretender Monsters, but as Nightmares rather than a subgroup of Decepticons.
- No Body Left Behind: The Mistress of Flame's whole body gets sucked into Megatron's anti-matter vortex, tearing her body into shreds.
- Off with His Head!: After Megatron rams into Springer’s helicopter mode, Megatron tears off his head when he transforms back.
- Parental Substitute: Megatron came to view Nightbird and Terminus as parental figures to him, which makes their deaths hit him all the more harder.
- Percussive Therapy: Following the disastrous meeting with the Primes, as soon as Megatron got to his quarters in MacAddams, he smashed almost everything that reminded him of Orion, feeling that he had betrayed him at that meeting.
- Police Brutality: During a trip to the city of Iacon, Megatron and several of his compatriots are thrown into jail cells after getting involved in a Bar Brawl that turned violent. When he comes to Whirl and several other guards beat them up violently, including 1-17 getting smashed with his own pickaxe. This would be the first of many red flags that Megatron saw that would convince him that the system needed to change.
- Blackout and Grindor were once security officers, but joined the Destrons after witnessing several of their own officers brutalizing an innocent mech.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: After busting the doors to the Temple open, Megatron mockingly tells the Primes "Happy Primehood Day!" before beginning his slaughter of them.
- Rage Breaking Point: Several days after Nightbird's death, a Senator named Decimus came down to Messatine to explain that the planet had undergone a ‘seismic catastrophe’, and that the mines would have to be automated, leaving the miners jobless. One miner, E-13, calls bullcrap and accuses him of using automation to drain the planet without paying the miners, and gets shot when he gets too close to Decimus. As Megatron watches the other guards kill him while he pleads for help, it reminds him of when he was beaten in a cell, defenseless. This, combined with all the accidents that happened in the mines and Nightbird’s death, causes him to fling a pickaxe at the arm of the guard that shot E-13, taking his arm off, which then escalated into a full on riot.
- The moment Megatron decides to make his revolution on Cybertron violent is when its populace cheers and celebrates over footage of Ultra Magnus and his forces destroying MacAddams and killing Decepticons, which makes him and most of the other Decepticons believe that violence will be the only way to bring any meaningful change to Cybertron.
- Quantity vs. Quality: How Megatron describes the Battle for the AllSpark; The Decepticons had the bigger numbers, but the Autobots had the better skills and strategies.
- Skyward Scream: Megatron roars to the sky in sorrow when Nightbird dies.
- Snow Means Death: This almost happens to Megatron who snuck out of the mines during a blizzard with very low energon supply, but is saved by Nightbird. This is played straight for Nightbird however, who dies in the frozen wasteland that it became when the Cybertronian ships destroyed it for resources.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: This story centers on telling Megatron's backstory, with how Cyberton's Functionism system causing corruption to seep into every corner of society, the deaths of his parental figures from their callous treatment of those they deemed beneath him, and the Decepticons' peaceful attempts to change the system was ignored and faced with increasing pushback. The Autobots pulling a false-flag operation to try and destroy the Decepticon cause before it could be recognized as a legitimate party being the catalyst that made the Decepticon group what they are today.
- Take a Third Option: After the destruction of MacAddams by Autobot forces, the surviving Decepticons were split on what to do next. One camp wanted to hijack an Ark and move to another planet, while another wanted to retaliate and get revenge for their fallen comrades. Megatron chose Soundwave's camp of exposing the event as the atrocity that it was.
- Take My Hand!: As the vortex caused from the AllSpark being destroyed is pulling Cybertronians into it, Optimus tells Megaton to grab on and catches his claw just as Megaton lost his grip. But Megatron, realizing that he would be taken as a prisoner, be tortured for everything he knew, and then executed, slaps his claw away and allows himself to be sucked into the vortex.
- This Cannot Be!: The Mistress of Flame stammers this phrase out when Megatron's Spark expands and generates an anti-matter vortex while she was trying to crush it.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Nightbird, who gave Megatron love and compassion and helped him realize the power that was inside him, is killed from Cybertronian ships shooting her down destroy the land for resources.
- Villain Episode: This episode is entirely focused on Megatron as he writes in a Data Scroll recounting his Start of Darkness and how it made him the Decepticon he is today.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Most of the episode is Megatron writing an autobiography onto a Date Scroll, from his early days as a slave miner on Messatine up to the Battle for the AllSpark. The only parts that take place in the present are when Megatron takes an intermission after writing about Nightbird’s death and discovering the inner workings of the society of Anduruna and him freeing the Six Terrors to kickstart the revolution of Anduruna.
- "Will Return" Caption: The story ends "Megatron Will Return along with the winners of season one...soon..."
- You Are Number 6: When Megatron was first created, the Council of Primes considered him more of an animal than a living Cybertronian and gave him the designation D-16. He later makes a friend with someone of a similar designation, 1-17, who would later name himself Straxius.
