Tacit Understanding

As though they had received some kind of notice, not long after the Golden Eagle Armed Transport Ships descended upon Cairo, the Autobots led by Optimus Prime entered the city once again.

Sun Cheng had received the news a little earlier. After all, several satellites they had launched were currently orbiting above Africa.

He instructed the Decepticons under his command to continue loading the batch of advanced Replica Soldiers they had selected beforehand, along with the relatively intact corpses of Quintesson soldiers.

Sun Cheng temporarily halted his processing of Sentinel Prime's memory data and, accompanied by Thunder and the others, waited for the Autobots' arrival.

"Lord Frenzy, it has been a long time."

Optimus Prime arrived even sooner than expected. He had probably begun returning to the city shortly after Hynix and the four arsenal ships ceased their bombardment of Cairo.

Sun Cheng nodded slightly in greeting. "We had no intention of interfering with the Autobots' control over Africa. It was only because the portal opened by your former leader brought in what appeared to be Quintesson soldiers, causing enormous unrest on Earth, that we had no choice but to act!"

Optimus Prime did not believe a single word of that.

But intelligent as he was, he did not expose the other's excuse.

After entering the city, Optimus Prime had already noticed that while many Autobots who had refused to evacuate had died in battle, and many more had been severely injured in the earlier bombardment, the fact that they had merely been knocked unconscious rather than killed showed that most of the fallen Autobots had likely died at the hands of the Decepticon Corps' Replica Soldiers or the Quintesson soldiers.

Although those Autobots did not obey him, as the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime still needed to display