A fanfic series of what Season 4 of Transformers animated might have been like. While I got the idea to make this series a while ago, shortly after season 3 had ended, but after I had read the AllSpark Almanac Volume 2, which some of their ideas about season 4, I deceided to include some of info from book into the fic as well, to better try and make it fit what the real season 4 might have been like.

Thanks to Thunderstarwarp for beta reading the fic for any errors and corrections

The Trail of Megatron (part 1)

Optimus entered the hallways of Metroplex, heading to the council chamber. It had been two deca-cycles since they had defeated Megatron, and already so much had happened since their return to Cybertron.

Prowl had been named a hero for his sacrifice to restore the AllSpark and had been honoured by the newly rebuilt Cyber-Ninja dojo. Sari decided to learn more about her Cybertronian origin and began to take lessons from Arcee. Megatron had been sent to Kaon along with the rest of his Decepticon followers and is currently awaiting trail.

Optimus soon entered the council chamber, the High Council members stood waiting for him as he walked down to the stand in the centre of the chamber.

"Optimus Prime," Alpha Trion spoke as he looked towards the Prime, "We have called you here to discuses matters of great importance."

Optimus nodded. Looking around, Optimus saw that Sentinel wasn't among the gathered council members, making him wonder what this was about that they didn't want the acting Magnus to be apart of.

"As you may know, Sentinel Prime has made demands for the Magnus Hammer to be handed over to him." Alpha Trion continued, "However, we of the council feel that our acting Magnus has not shown the same qualities as you have shown."

"Same qualities as Optimus? You must be mistaken if you think I'd be a loser like Optimus."

Optimus turned at the sound of Sentinel's voice. He had not seen Sentinel in a while, but he couldn't believe what he was seeing, yet from the looks of distain from the High Council, they've apparently seen this before.

Sentinel was wearing a imperial looking cape, two claps in the shape of the Autobot insignia attaching the cape to his shoulder pads and on his head, the blue Autobot was wearing an extravagant version of Ultra Magnus' helmet but with piping similar to Sentinel's own antenna pipes.

"Sentinel…" Alpha Trion said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice calm, "Once again, I must state the council's disapproval of your new chosen attire."

"Whatever, I'm the Magnus now and I'll dress as I fell like." Sentinel said, walking up along side Optimus, "So what brings you here Optimus? Finally came to return the Magnus hammer your medic stole."

Before Optimus could reply, Alpha Trion spoke up, "It is because of the Magnus hammer that we have called this meeting. Optimus. In recognition of you're efforts in and returning the AllSpark and defeating Megatron, the High Council has decided to award you the Magnus hammer."

"What!" Sentinel shouted, "You can't do that! The Magnus Hammer belongs to the Magnus, not some low class grease cleaner!"

"The Council's decision is final Sentinel." Alpha Trion said sternly as he narrowed his optics at Sentinel, "And I must remind you, that you are only acting Magnus while Ultra Magnus is recovering. And I, for one, am looking forward to the solar cycle when Ultra Magnus resumes his position."

"I'm afraid that won't be happening." a new voice joined. Turning their attention towards the new voice, everyone in the chamber watched as the head of the Medical guild, First Aid, entered.

"First Aid," Botanica was the first to speak, "what do you mean?"

"I've just come straight from Ultra Magnus' side at Cybertron Central Infirmary." First Aid said, "His condition has worsen and Ultra Magnus has fallen into emergency stasis lock. We've managed to stabilized him at the moment, but unless we do something soon, Ultra Magnus will go offline… permanently."

OOOOOOOOOOO

Megatron sat in his cell, staring at the dark. Ever since he had been brought in, it was all the Decepticon tyrant did. It had begun to make the guards nervous.

"Sir." the two guards said, seeing their commanding officer approach them.

"Anything to report?" the officer asked as he stopped in front of the cell,

"Nothing new to report, sir." one of the guards answered, "Just been staring into the corners of his cell as he has been since we stuck him in there." the officer stepped closer to the bars of the cell and looked in.

"Enjoying your stay, Megatron? Well enjoy it while you can, cause your trial begins next solar cycle, what do you say to that?"

Turning his head to look at the guards, Megatron narrowed his optics at them, yet remained silent. The officer glared back. Megatron sneered slightly, yet it was obscured by the grilled faceplate coving his mouth like a muzzle. After a few moments, the officer turned to leave, "Keep an optic on him. That trail is going ahead as planned." In his cell, Megatron leaned back against the wall, a grin on his face,

"Indeed it will."

OOOOOOOOOOO

"Give it back!"

Blackarachnia looked over at Waspinator. Since their arrival to wherever it is. The Decepticon femme had began to work on a way to get out of this place. So far, her latest attempt seemed to be a lot closer to working then her pervious attempts. Using a multisynaptic phase relay she took from Waspinator to make a signal beacon in hopes that someone will detect the signal and come to get her off this rock. The only problem was that now she had to endure Waspinator's complaining about wanting his leg back, it being built into the beacon.

"Look Bugface. I need the multisynaptic phase relay to get this beacon to work. If you didn't want to hop about on one leg, you shouldn't have had it connected to your leg."

Waspinator narrowed his optics, but before he could say anything, the technorganic wasp heard the sound of rocket thrusters. Looking towards the source of the sound, the two soon spotted a shuttle coming in for a land.

"Hello there!" came the voice of the pilot called out using the ships' speakers, "I picked up you're signal beacon and I thought, maybe I could give you a hand… for a price."

Blackarachina's optics narrowed as she recognised the voice, "Swindle." she said with an irritated sigh, "Still, at least it'll get us out of here."

OOOOOOOOOOO

Optimus entered his quarters in a fowl mood, his thoughts kept returning to the council meeting. After First Aid had delivered his news about Ultra Magnus, Sentinel had immediately declared himself the new Magnus. Optimus knew that Sentinel was overly ambitious at times, but he would never had thought that the blue mech would be so coldsparked to care more about putting his career before the fact that a colleague of his is dying. Needless to say, the meeting soon erupted into much shouting and arguing and quickly came to an end there.

Optimus gave a sigh as he sat down. Today wasn't going as he thought it would. Turning his head, looked over at the corner of the room, where the Magnus Hammer rested. He still couldn't believe the council had giving ownership of the Stormbreaker hammer, the symbol of a Magnus' rank, to him. After awhile, Optimus stood up and headed for the door. He decided to go see how Sari was doing and see if it would help take his mind off of the events of today.

OOOOOOOOOOO

"What is it going to be this time?" Blackarachina asked, her arms crossed in front of her as she leaned against the wall. Swindle turned in is chair to faced the spider, his mouth already twisting into his usual businessman smile,

"Why Blackarachina, I'm shocked that you would think that I wouldn't be doing this out the kindness of my spark." Swindle said, "After all, I am taking you back to Detroit. You shouldn't be looking down at such an opportunity." Before Blackarachina could retort to Swindle's statement, a crash drew her attention to the back of the shuttle.

"This is mine! And this is mine and this as well. All this is mine!"

"No fair!" a identical voice said, "Just because you were made first, you get all this stuff. I want this stuff and I want the helmet with taller point."

Blackarachina looked at the two mechs. One was blue with bits of beige while the other was red with black, yet even with the different colours and the cone shaped helmets, there was no mistaking who they were.

"And where exactly did the Starscreams came from, may I ask?" the spider femme said.

"Them? Oh they're just a couple of clones. A while back, I happened to acquire some protoforms from a business transaction and then I got the idea of creating my own personal bodyguards. I had managed to get my servos on some of Starscream's CNA from two clones I encountered the same time I acquired this shuttle. Well after that, it was a simple matter of backtracking and figuring out how they were created then doing the process myself."

"I want it!" the red Starscream's statement to his brother clone drew Swindle and Blackarchina's attention again,

"NO! it's mine, all MINE!" the Blue Starscream answered back.

"Unfortunately…" Swindle continued, through clenched teeth, "they ended up being the most annoying parts of Starscream's personality. I've had to deal with Dirge's greed and Thrust's envy…."

"I want those, give me those!"

"NO! their MINE! All of them belong to me!"

"Hey! Those credits are mine," Swindle shouted over at the clones, "put those back now before I …" he quickly stopped talking as Blackarachnia pushed the arms dealer back into the chair, his optics focused on the pincer like spider leg inches away from his face.

"You better start giving me answers on what you want from me or I'll fill you more venom then a acid spitting insectiod."

"Okay, okay." Swindle said, waving his hands in surrender, "Look, a few solar cycles ago I happened across a fellow Decepticon, one of the Earth machines brought online by an AllSpark fragment. Seems he had the misfortune of crossing path with pair of organics with access to a space bridge and ended up left floating through space. Anyway, service to say, he gave me some info about Earth that earned him a free ride to a nearby inhabited planet and give me a new business opportunity, but I don't have the exact scientific skills required to take full adventure of it."

"And so you want me to help you." Blackarchina said, finally understand what Swindle wanted.

"Exactly, so what do you say, I help you in exchange of you helping me?"

The technorganic narrowed her optics, "What is this news that you learned?" she asked.

Swindle turned to her and smiled, "Oh, you will not believe it."

OOOOOOOOOOO

"Optimus!" Sari said, glad to see the fire truck bot again.

"Hello Sari," Optimus said, "how is your education going?"

"It's been alright," Sari answered, "I mean Arcee has been a great teacher and all, but some of the lessons can be boring sometimes, especially with Tutorbot doing the teaching."

As if on cue, the modified protocol bot Ratchet and Preceptor had made as a aid to Sari's lessons entered the room, "Pardon the interruption Sari, but a communication from your farther is waiting for you."

"A call from dad?" Sari's expression brighten at the news and hurried over to the communication panel, "Hold on a second, Optimus, I haven't heard from my dad in awhile, I gotta take this."

Optimus smiled and watched as the screen came to life and, after a brief amount of static, Professor Sumdac appeared.

"DAD!" Sari cheerfully said, seeing her farther.

"Oh Sari, it is good to see you again." Professor Sumdac said, "How are you doing? I've been so worried about you."

"Dad, relax." the technorganic girl smiled, "Everything has been fine, Ratchet's friend, Arcee, has been teaching about Cybertron and everything. What about you?" she asked, "How have things been back home?"

"Oh, things have been quiet lately," Sumdac said, "There had been a bit of trouble a week ago, involving a remaining AllSpark fragment and Powell's limo, but it has been taken care of, but what has really been keeping me busy lately has been the new discovery."

"New discovery?" Optimus asked, hearing Sumdac's statement. In answer to Optimus' question, Professor Sumdac lifted a metal box up in to view. Opening the box, Sumdac lifted a smell crystalline object out of the box. Optimus optics widened as he spotted the crystal.

"That's energon."

OOOOOOOOOOO

Detroit city dump had been very busy during the repairs to the city after the Autobot's final battle against the Decepticons. With the help of Wreak-Gar, Detroit was able to shift all the debris that littered the street, however, for the seeker femme known as Slipstream, she was interested in one particular item left behind among the junk and the rubble that had been moved here.

"Well, finally. I knew you had to be here some where with the rest of the trash, but you could had made it easier to find you." Slipstream said, shifting some of the trash off the remains of Starscream.

Looking down at the gray body, Slipstream reached down and slid open the cockpit canopy, revealing Starscream's empty spark chamber. Looking at the empty spark chamber for a moment, the female clone then produced an AllSpark fragment out of subspace, "It took me awhile to find a piece that the Autobots didn't take with them, but, as much as I hate to admit it, you're better needed online then dead." she then put the fragment into Starscream's spark chamber.

As soon as the shard was placed in the chamber, colour returned to Starscream's body as the formerly deceased Decepticon opened his optics.