Garfield released Sentinel Prime from his magical grip.
To be fair, the elder mech had been caught completely off guard, he never anticipated that electricity would prove so debilitating to silicon-based life forms.
Between the shock and the hammering, effective resistance had been impossible.
The moment Garfield's magic dissipated, Sentinel Prime's systems began rebooting.
His internal diagnostics whirred back to life, and his racial aptitude for self-repair quickly addressed the most critical damage from both the electrical assault and the... educational hammering.
Optics flickered, then blazed online. He rose to his full height.
Retreat, Sentinel Prime calculated.
Regroup and plan vengeance later.
He turned toward the exit~
And found Garfield already there, leaning against the doorframe, Cat Hammer resting casually across one paw.
Sentinel Prime's spark pulsed with something uncomfortably close to fear.
"Carbon-based organism," he managed, his vocoder steady despite everything.
"I acknowledge your strength. What do you intend now?"
"Since I'm your teacher and all, you could at least address me with some respect."
Despicable creature.
In all his vorns of existence, Sentinel Prime had never been so thoroughly humiliated.
Defeat was one thing, but this orange abomination dared to lecture him on propriety?
He drew his weapon, a captain's long knife, identical to the one he'd wielded in his prime, forged from purple-tinted cyber-metal.
The blade hummed to life as he leveled it at Garfield.
"I am Sentinel Prime! I fear nothing, especially not you!"
Garfield clutched his chest in exaggerated terror. "Oh my, such ferocity! Did that little attitude adjustment scramble your memory circuits?"
"Come here, let Papa fix you up again."
He took a step forward, Cat Hammer swinging gently.
Sentinel Prime moved with the speed of a mech whose survival instincts had abruptly overridden all pride.
He spun, drew his plasma cannon, and blasted a hole through the nearest wall, easily large enough for his disguised frame to escape through.
He charged forward.
And stopped.
Stuck.
In his haste to camouflage himself earlier, he had shortened his height and broadened his frame.
The hole was sized for his disguised dimensions, but he had reverted to his true form upon standing.
The opening that should have granted him freedom now held him fast.
He struggled and wriggled.
Garfield blinked at the sight before him…
Sentinel Prime of Cybertron, legendary leader, former mentor to Orion Pax himself, stuck halfway through a hole with his posterior protruding helplessly into the room.
Butt backward like desert goose trying to take flight.
The image triggered a cascade of memories, old Earth television, a show about in-laws growing ever more distant, a scene so perfectly mirrored here that Garfield almost laughed.
But he was a good orange cat. And good cats helped those in need.
He walked calmly to Sentinel Prime's exposed aft, studied the positioning, and with one paw drew a target on the most prominent plating.
A perfect red circle, dead center.
He hefted the Hammer, aimed carefully at his hand-drawn bullseye, and~
"FORE!"
FWOOOOOSH, CLANG!
Thor's hammer weighed hundreds of millions of tons. Garfield's version was considerably smaller, but still tipped the scales at over a million.
He carefully modulated the force, enough to propel and let fly.
The Cat Hammer struck true.
Sentinel Prime launched through the wall like a missile, trailing sparks and the occasional fragment of detached plating.
His internal diagnostics immediately began screaming, damage reports flooded his HUD, the most severe… his posterior region.
But he had no time to mourn his battered backside.
His sensors lit up with urgent warnings, hundreds of Transformers converging on his position at maximum speed.
Autobots. Decepticons. All apparently united in whatever new cause Orion Pax and Megatron had forged.
Survival first.
He transformed mid-flight, metal grinding and reassembling into the form of a battered garbage truck, and hit the ground running.
Through alleys. Past the incoming forces by mere seconds.
Down into the underground passage he had prepared for exactly this contingency.
Inside the tunnel, he didn't slow.
His systems worked feverishly as he moved, stripping away the disguise, deleting all incriminating data, purging nearby video footage from local networks.
By the time he emerged at the other end, he was a fire truck again.
Inside his secured residence, Sentinel Prime fed raw metal fragments into his intake, his internal forges working overtime to repair the damage Garfield had inflicted.
With each consumed piece, his frame knitted itself back together, though the memory of that humiliating defeat would take far longer to heal.
His processors ran constant threat assessments. Garfield's danger level was unprecedented.
Physical attacks were clearly ineffective.
Magical abilities disrupted his systems in ways conventional weapons couldn't. And that hammer...
I cannot defeat him alone.
The conclusion was inescapable. He needed reinforcements, other elders willing to join his cause.
Or perhaps something more elegant: a specialized weapon system designed specifically to counter this bizarre organic threat.
Requirements began formatting themselves in his memory core.
Teleportation capability~ Approach and retreat without warning
Stealth integration~ Strike from nowhere, leave no trace
Combatant transport~ Deploy multiple operatives simultaneously
One-hit kill potential~ No second chances, no recovery
Satisfied with the parameters, Sentinel Prime began his work.
✦••┈┈••✦••┈┈••✦
By the time Orion Pax and Megatron returned with their combined forces, Sentinel Prime was long gone.
Garfield offered no explanation about the elder's true identity, simply mentioning that a Transformer had come to... test his capabilities.
But Starscream had provided an unexpected development.
The seeker had witnessed everything. Every hammer blow and every electrical spasm.
Every moment of Sentinel Prime's comprehensive 'persuasion through virtue.'
And later, the unforgettable image of a Cybertronian elder launched through a wall by his posterior.
By sheer force of will, Starscream had walked, walked, out of Garfield's presence.
His legs had given out immediately afterward, depositing him on the ground for a considerable recharge before he could rise again.
Just now...
Every time he closed his optics, he saw Sentinel hanging upside down.
Being "educated." becoming a flat-sand falling goose with afterburner assistance.
His spark trembled and his gaze drifted downward, between his legs, and Starscream felt something he'd rarely experienced in four million years.
Obedience to superior power was practically instinct for Starscream.
His only real concern was performance, if he failed Garfield's task, would he end up like Sentinel?
As for the task Garfield had set for him, Starscream decided that honest compliance was his only viable course of action.
It wasn't even a difficult mission, just to recruit a squadron of Cybertronian military fighters.
Starscream himself was a Cybertronian military fighter, one of many mass-produced models on their homeworld, among the most famous being later-built Seekers like Thundercracker, Skywarp, and himself.
His original function, before he'd stumbled into Megatron's ranks, had been that of a geologist.
The Transformer who had attacked today, the one Garfield called "Sentinel Prime," was someone Starscream had only ever seen in historical records.
It was his first encounter with the real thing.
Initially, Starscream had considered fleeing. After all, if an elder as powerful as Sentinel Prime could be so effortlessly neutralized by Garfield, what chance did he have?
Obedience to a superior force was a concept Starscream understood well.
His primary concern was that failure might result in a similar, terrifying correction.
He decided honesty was the best policy.
Accessing his navigation system, he located the coordinates of Cybertron's aerial squadron.
His task now was to convince a pair of those mass-produced fighters to return with him.
And if there was one thing Starscream excelled at, it was deception.
A notorious smooth-talker and the very embodiment of cunning within the Transformers world, he arrived at the squadron's location and launched into an elaborate campaign of persuasion.
First, leveraging his background as a geologist, he began weaving elaborate theories involving Orion Pax and Megatron, carefully gauging the political leanings of each individual Seeker.
He was looking for those whose ideologies aligned closely enough to be exploitable.
His efforts bore fruit.
He quickly confirmed that over eighty percent of the fighter Transformers harbored some measure of agreement with the principles espoused by both Orion and Megatron.
Capitalizing on this, Starscream continued his charade, boldly invoking the names of the two faction leaders.
His efforts successfully swayed a young, impressionable Seeker named Terradive.
Naive and inexperienced, Terradive was easily convinced by Starscream's fabricated tales and agreed to accompany him for a preliminary meeting, though he remained uncertain about any permanent commitment.
Having successfully duped his first recruit, Starscream hurriedly made his way back to Garfield's location, the young Terradive following close behind.