Drex Valen had no intention of sitting around waiting for the Skrulls to make their move.
He had found a new project to occupy his attention.
A very interesting one.
Cybertronian chanical lifeforms.
While he'd already created Terror Spiders and chanical Octopi for the Black Queen, her chanical legions still lagged far behind the Queen's Zerg Swarm in terms of overall combat effectiveness.
That imbalance needed fixing.
And what better solution than Transforrs?
The AllSpark might once have seed like an impossibly advanced artifact.
Not anymore.
With Drex's current knowledge and the power of the Reality Stone, creating an artificial AllSpark was surprisingly straightforward.
In so respects, his version was arguably superior to the original.
"The fact that the AllSpark only creates Decepticons saves a lot of trouble."
Drex examined the glowing cube with satisfaction.
Unlike the Autobots, who valued peace and restraint, the Decepticons thrived on conquest, battle, and destruction.
Those traits made them ideal soldiers.
The Black Queen had already manufactured a new generation of space fighters constructed entirely from vibranium.
Each vessel was equipped with a miniature jump drive capable of traversing an entire light-year in a single jump.
As silicon-based lifeforms, the future Transforrs would possess a trendous advantage over biological pilots.
Organic beings suffered imnse strain during repeated jumps through space.
chanical lifeforms did not.
As long as their fras could endure the stress, they could jump indefinitely.
And vibranium ensured durability would never beco a problem.
Drex began by forging a prototype.
Using a blend of vibranium and adamantium, he created a starfighter whose design reflected the aggressive aesthetic of Cybertronian technology.
Then he activated the AllSpark.
A pulse of radiant energy erupted from the cube.
The beam struck the fighter.
tal groaned.
Armor shifted.
chanical components unfolded with a series of violent clicks and grinding sounds.
The starfighter transford.
A towering chanical giant erged from the wreckage of its previous form.
Ten ters tall.
Brutal.
nacing.
Built for war.
Drex looked up at the machine with genuine excitent.
There were so things that never changed.
No matter how powerful a man beca, giant robots remained cool.
"From this day forward," he said, "your na is gatron."
The newborn consciousness awakened almost instantly.
The AllSpark had already filled its mind with vast quantities of information.
Without hesitation, gatron dropped to one knee before his creator.
The artificial AllSpark had granted him far more than simple life.
Integrated energy weapons.
Advanced combat systems.
Powerful energy shields.
Combined with a body forged from vibranium and adamantium, gatron was absurdly durable.
If he ever encountered the original version of himself, he could probably defeat a hundred of them without breaking a sweat.
The other Cybertronians created afterward were noticeably weaker.
Most were ford from vibranium fighters manufactured by the Black Queen.
After exposure to the AllSpark's energy, they gained basic energy cannons.
Only a handful developed personal energy shields.
Their physical size was also significantly smaller.
Roughly five ters tall.
That wasn't an accident.
Drex simply disliked overly massive chanical lifeforms.
Even gatron had been downsized considerably compared to traditional Cybertronian standards.
One of the greatest strengths of Transforrs was their independence.
They didn't require constant refueling.
Their Sparks contained enough energy to sustain activity for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years.
Unless a Spark was damaged or depleted through severe injury, external power sources were largely unnecessary.
The original AllSpark occasionally evolved Transforrs even further after their creation.
Drex's version couldn't replicate that function yet.
At present, it could only repair Cybertronians and replenish their Spark energy.
Still, that was more than sufficient.
It didn't take long for the rest of the galaxy to notice sothing new within the Kryptonian Empire.
A chanical army.
An army that simply refused to die.
The Cybertronian Legion quickly earned a terrifying reputation.
Enemy weapons bounced harmlessly off their armored bodies.
Their energy shields absorbed punishnt that would have crippled conventional war machines.
Even those without shields could shrug off damage that would annihilate most soldiers.
Worse still, their weaponry was devastating.
Their energy cannons routinely breached defenses and eliminated targets with a single shot.
On countless battlefields, the Decepticons beca symbols of unstoppable destruction.
"For the glory of the Emperor!"
gatron led from the front.
His starfighter form accelerated to incredible speeds before smashing directly into enemy formations.
Behind him, thousands of Cybertronian fighters followed.
They functioned like living missiles.
Their armored bodies punched straight through energy shields and starship hulls.
Once inside, they transford and unleashed chaos from within.
Sabotage.
Massacres.
Total destruction.
Of course, not every Decepticon was entirely normal.
So were... unusual.
"Ha! Look at this guy!"
One Cybertronian burst through the hull of an enemy vessel and imdiately found himself inside a restroom.
An alien standing at a urinal froze in terror.
The unfortunate victim lost control of his bladder on the spot.
The Decepticon laughed.
"Scared him so badly he pissed himself!"
A blast from his energy cannon instantly vaporized the alien.
Then he struck a dramatic pose.
ssages imdiately flooded his display screen.
Lucky bastard got a Decepticon account.
Five million dollars for a Cybertronian character. Serious offer.
Steel and giant robots are peak masculinity.
I want to beco a Decepticon.
I want to kill Zerg.
I want to kill Kryptonians.
The Decepticon grinned.
Then he drew a high-frequency blade crackling with energy.
"You bug-lovers watch carefully."
He pointed the sword dramatically.
"This is what real n do."
That statent instantly started another argunt.
The Zerg players exploded in outrage.
Co to the Zerg howorld if you're so tough!
Let's see how your tal body handles acid!
We'll lt you into scrap!
The interstellar rivalry continued exactly as expected.
anwhile, the Kryptonian Empire resud its expansion.
Their ambitions had beco increasingly obvious.
They wanted control of the entire Milky Way.
Naturally, the Nova Corps objected.
The problem was that objecting and actually stopping them were two very different things.
The Cybertronian Legion.
The Zerg Swarm.
Together, they ford a military force that most civilizations couldn't hope to match.
Marvel's universe already contained horrors such as Xenomorphs and Zerg-like species.
Those races were feared throughout the galaxy.
The fact that the Kryptonian Empire not only controlled such creatures but actively deployed them in warfare was enough to terrify countless governnts.
The idea sounded impossible.
Yet it was reality.
While monitoring galactic developnts, Drex received an interesting intelligence report.
Sothing unusual was happening with Thanos.
The Mad Titan and his Black Order appeared to be facing serious financial difficulties.
Recently, Thanos had begun targeting both Skrull and Kree territories for raids.
That behavior revealed sothing important.
The Black Order was under pressure.
Losing the Chitauri expeditionary force shouldn't have been a major setback for soone like Thanos.
He was powerful enough to absorb losses.
And while he wasn't known for accepting defeat gracefully, he had never before provoked powers on the scale of the Kree Empire or the Skrull Empire.
Not directly.
The fact that he was doing so now suggested a deeper problem.
A resource shortage.
The Black Queen's surveillance network had been monitoring Thanos and the Black Order continuously at Drex's command.
Other galactic powers had long suspected that Thanos's ambitions extended far beyond the Centauri systems he controlled.
Now those suspicions appeared justified.
The truth was simple.
The worlds under Thanos's influence were running dry.
For years, the Black Order and its pirate fleets had extracted resources without restraint.
But pirates produced nothing.
They consud.
Armies consud.
Fleets consud.
The Black Order required a constant flow of wealth, materials, weapons, and supplies.
Without those resources, loyalty beca difficult to maintain.
And loyalty was the foundation of every empire.
Even Thanos's.
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