"No!" The Fallen roared in fury, and after the anger came bitter frustration. The Star Harvester was destroyed, so even if he obtained the Matrix of Leadership now, it would be useless! His hope of extending his life had been completely shattered. He glared at Optimus Prime, hatred filling his scarlet electronic eyes.
Optimus Prime was a veteran of countless battles and possessed an unusually keen understanding and command of combat. His hidden class might have been librarian, yet he could often fight at Xiao Feng's level.
In terms of energy, speed, or attack power, he had never been the strongest. Megatron, for one, had more firepower than he did. Yet Optimus Prime had defeated stronger opponents countless times by relying on his grasp of timing.
He was the type with astonishing battle instincts. The entire sequence of movements flowed together without the slightest hesitation.
He kicked Devastator down, then opened fire on the Star Harvester. Finally, he even used the recoil from his cannon fire to grab The Fallen and drag him down from the pyramid with him.
"You destroyed our hope!" The Fallen bellowed furiously.
Optimus Prime immediately shot back, "What I destroyed was your ambition!"
He deliberately exposed an opening, luring The Fallen into attacking the wings and thrusters on his back. They were disposable gear anyway, so he would not care if they broke.
Controlled by rage, The Fallen fell for it exactly as expected. One wrong move led to another.
He swung his metal staff and smashed the thrusters off Optimus Prime's back, believing he had taken away his opponent's ability to fly. He never expected Optimus Prime to advance instead of retreat, driving the greatsword in his hand straight into The Fallen's body.
Optimus Prime attacked like a raging storm. He used the greatsword in his hand, the laser cannon on his wrist, his knees, elbows, and even headbutts. The relentless assault actually left The Fallen, who was stronger than him, dazed.
The Fallen possessed immense psychic power, and his status was extraordinarily exalted, which meant he rarely had to fight in close quarters. His melee experience was somewhat lacking. He preferred using psychic power, anti-gravity, and similar methods to toy with his opponents at will.
He disliked close combat. The ancient Prime rapidly backed away, trying to create distance.
He wanted to teleport farther away so he could create enough distance to use anti-gravity, but Optimus Prime had also gained Teleportation from Jetfire. Although the energy inside him was dropping every second, Optimus forcibly disrupted The Fallen's Teleportation, then seized The Fallen's staff and thrust it back toward his head.
"Get away from me!" The Fallen avoided the vital point and let the metal staff pierce his neck. He turned his palm over. This time, with too little energy left inside him, Optimus Prime could no longer resist his anti-gravity.
The towering Autobot leader was flung off his feet in an instant. Then psychic power as vast as an ocean slammed directly into his chest.
He felt as though a starship had struck him head-on. With a thunderous boom, more than half of Jetfire's armor shattered, and Optimus Prime was forcibly knocked back to his original form.
"Hmph! A mere youngster dares challenge me?" The Fallen pulled the metal staff out of his neck. Large quantities of metal fragments scattered across the ground. His own wound was extremely serious as well, and even the light in his eyes had dimmed.
But Optimus Prime was in even worse shape. All the energy he had received from Jetfire was gone. The poor guy was back to the condition he had been in when Bella first rescued him, swaying on his feet and looking ready to collapse at any moment.
Bella, who was fighting a group of Decepticon grunts, hurriedly used that legendary Pokémon move: "Optimus Prime, hang in there!"
With a tremendous thud, Optimus Prime toppled like a massive mountain.
Bella: "..."
The Fallen: "..."
Jazz and Ratchet looked at Bella with a hint of reproach in their eyes. She gave an awkward smile.
The words "Get back up" reached her lips, but she simply could not bring herself to shout them.
The Fallen looked toward Bella. He recognized this Earth woman and knew she was much stronger than an ordinary human, so he began calculating which move he should use to finish them off.
Wait—something was wrong! He suddenly snapped back to awareness and dispersed the Mind Mist Bella had cast on him. Why had he gotten distracted in the middle of a fight? There was still an enemy here he had not dealt with! He hurriedly turned around. His head moved first, but his body was a step too slow. An iron fist punched through his chest from behind.
"I won. You lost!" Relying on the last trace of energy inside him, Optimus Prime took advantage of The Fallen's moment of carelessness and punched straight through his chest. Then he crushed The Fallen's spark.
Even as one of the original Thirteen Primes, once the spark that represented the source of his life was destroyed, The Fallen's scarlet electronic eyes rapidly lost their power. His body pitched forward limply and fell into the dirt like a heap of scrap metal.
The Fallen's death terrified the Decepticons. They turned and ran. Just as the Autobots had plenty of experience being mobbed, the Decepticons had plenty of experience escaping. They fled in every direction. Apart from a small number stopped by Bella, Jazz, and Ratchet, the rest all got away...
"Thank you, Bella. You saved my life, and you saved the Autobots. History has brought our two races together. We will join hands to face the future. Today's battle is not the end, but the beginning..."
Standing on the shore of the Red Sea and facing the soon-to-rise sun, Optimus Prime followed his usual routine and delivered another half hour of pompous rambling.
Jazz and the others were long used to their leader's habit, and Bella was used to it too. This guy seemed to feel uncomfortable if he did not ramble for a while after every fight!
So she simply stood there and listened. Once he finished, we could get to what happened next.
Just as Optimus Prime had said, The Fallen's death was not the end. It was the beginning.
Even with Natasha and Arcee trying to stop them, the Pretenders still managed to win over several sufficiently influential members of Congress. They found Megatron's corpse, after which Starscream used every AllSpark shard he had, together with some advanced Cybertronian technology provided by The Fallen, to resurrect Megatron!
The AllSpark was destroyed, the Matrix of Leadership had not been obtained, and The Fallen was dead. Megatron had no interest at all in Earth now. On top of that, after being away from Cybertron for so long, many Decepticons no longer obeyed his orders. He had to return and consolidate his rule.
Megatron took Devastator, who had made it back, along with seventy or eighty new-generation Decepticons, and hurriedly returned to Titan. From there, they boarded a spacecraft and headed back to Cybertron.
Whatever the enemy is planning, we have to stop it! Optimus Prime knew his old opponent far too well. He intended to return and continue fighting the Decepticons, but a problem immediately appeared: the Autobots did not have a spacecraft!
Crossing space under their own power was not impossible, but it was slow and dangerous. When the few of them had first come to Earth, they had relied on their own bodies to descend because they had already been fairly close to the Solar System, so the distance was manageable. Now every second mattered. Flying through space under their own power again would simply be far too slow.