Megatron

Beast Form: Tyrannosaurus Rex/Dragon

It wasn't long after this that Megatron led his Predacon forces against the Maximal's in battle, and the five of them quickly overwhelmed the four Maximal's that made up the command crew of their ship. Having to end the battle due to Energon buildup, Megatron followed the Maximal's to their base, where they found Optimus Primal engaged in battle with non other then Dinobot. Seeing it as an opportunity to get rid of a formidable enemy as well as a traitor Megatron ordered the rest of the Predacon's to transform and attack. Thanks to some quick thinking on Optimus Primal's part the attack failed and he and Dinobot, Who had decided that his best course of action was to join the Maximal's, along with Cheetor, Rattrap, and Rhinox were able to get to safety. But Megatron's attention would soon be diverted away from the Maximal's when one of the stray missiles impacted with a mountain top revealing the mother of all Energon Crystals.

Both sides ended up arriving at the crystal at the same time, and, unable to transform, a true battle of the beasts began. After being bested by Optimus Primal, Megatron risked transforming and launched a missile at him, which Dinobot knocked off course right into the Energon which blew up in a spectacular explosion, thus starting the Beast Wars. Surviving the blast, Megatron went on to making his plans a reality, but he also had to deal with deception in his own ranks when Terrorsaur attempted to take command of the Predacon's on at least two occasions, the first time nearly costing Megatron his Spark, and the second time he had the help of a supposed Maximal traitor, Rattrap. not to mention when Megatron attempted to change Rhinox into a Predacon. The Effects of the transformation increased Rhinox's aggression program to its maximum capabilities, and as a result he nearly scrapped Megatron. Fortunately for Megatron, Rhinox also acquired the Predacon weakness of gloating too much that allowed him to reprogram the Maximal back to his old self.

Megatron was also the ultimate gambler, and rarely showed surprise by anything that happened in the Beast Wars, even if it did catch him off guard. One example of this is when Scorponok infected Optimus Primal with a virus that was supposed to turn him into a coward, but instead did the exact opposite and turned the Maximal leader into a heavily armed attack drone. When the two of them came face to face, Megatron expected Optimus Primal to do one of two things, either surrender or go offline. Optimus Primal surprised Megatron when he ripped off the Cyber Bee that Scorponok had used, which was rigged to explode if that happened, and threw it onto Megatron's back. The Cyber Bee then ended up blowing up in Megatron's Face. A similar event happened when Tarantulas infected Rhinox with an Energy Discharge virus. The end result was of Megatron getting a good look at Rhinox's backside just before, thanks in large part to some wild bean plants, he had the mother of all discharges, Resulting in Megatron's most humiliating defeat in the entire Beast Wars. Though neither of these instances compare to when the long dead Decepticon warrior Starscream took over Waspinator's body, and, after swearing his allegiance to the Predacon's, showed his true colors yet again and betrayed Megatron, just as he had done with the tyrants namesake during the great war. Fortunately in this case the Maximal's, along with Blackarachnia,  helped to stop the Decepticon, sending his spark back out into the void of space.

However a good many times Megatron's gambling received huge payouts. The most notable of these times was when the aliens, known as the Vok, were set to return to Prehistoric Earth. Having found a second Golden Disc, this one of Vok design, Megatron proceeded to make a truce with the Maximal's in order to give himself time to think of a plan. At the same time Tarantulas had also figured out that the aliens were returning, and was doing everything that he could to get off the planet. Meanwhile the Optimus Primal, who was suspicious of the truce, sent in Tigertron to try and learn what the Predacon's were up too, and after an incredible escape by Tigertron, the Maximal's began to prepare for the eminent arrival of the Vok.

When the Vok did finally show up and activated their orbital super weapon, Megatron had already placed all his cards on Tarantulas to finish his escape ship. When the ship was finally launched, he was presently surprised to see that Tarantulas was not at the controls of the pod, instead it was non other then Optimus Primal. Feeling a need to gloat about his victory, Megatron contacted Optimus Primal and reveled that, though they had both counted on the same plan to destroy the weapon, he had no plans for the pilot to survive. He then sat back and watched in glee as his old enemy blew up, along with the escape pod and the alien weapon.

Afterwards Megatron had little time to enjoy his upcoming victory over the Maximal's when it was learned that a Quantum wave was headed straight for them, sending him offline when it hit. When he woke up, Megatron barley noticed that he had lost Scorponok and Terrorsaur when they fell into one of the bases lava pits, instead all of his attention was on the new Transmetal body that the surge had given him, which had also given him the added bonus of flight. Thinking that he had the advantage, Megatron, along with Waspinator, staged an immediate attack on the Maximal base, not realizing that he was not the only one that had been given a new body, as both Cheetor and Rattrap had also been upgraded to Transmetal stasis by the wave. Needless to say that a combination of this oversight and lack of manpower forced him to fall back and regroup before the final assault.

Megatron's regroup didn't take him long as soon he came upon two downed stasis pods which had malfunctioned and created fused beast modes for the inhabitants. Using Inferno to distract the new transformers Megatron was able to access and reprogram their transformation activation codes, and convince them that they were both Predacon's. Though this story set well with one of them, who called himself Quickstrike, the other, Silverbolt, questioned the story, but accepted it all the same. With the two new warriors, plus the addition of both Tarantulas and Waspinator, Megatron launched what he planned to be his final attack on the Maximal's. Savoring his final victory Megaton was surprised when a new player entered the fight, Optimus Primal, who had been brought back by Rhinox and was not in a Transmetal body of his own. Like another Optimus before him Primal singlehandedly turned the tide of the battle, taking out all of Megatron's warriors with little problem, but Megatron himself was taken out by Silverbolt, who had decided that his true place was always with the Maximal's, and so the Beast Wars was continued, this time fiercer then ever before.

Megatron's mad ambitions continued to get bolder and bolder as the Beast Wars continued. When the Vok send another of their devices to Earth, Megatron, with the help of the alien disc took control of it and planed on taking it back to Cybertron. Fortunately this plan was stopped by the Maximal's, with some help from Tarantulas. He was also soon joined by al new warrior named Rampage, who was so powerful that Megatron was forced to cut out the essence of his spark to use in order to control him. He was also bold enough to try and rewrite history on at least two occasions. The first was when he attempted to destroy all of Humanity so that they could not help the Autobot's stop the Decepticon's during the Great War. This action failed when Dinobot singlehandedly, and at the cost of his own spark, stopped all of the Predacon's, and kept Megatron busy until the rest of the Maximal's could arrive to stop him. The second time was after the Tripredacus Council sent Covert agent Ravage to terminate Megatron. Fortunately for him he was able to turn the tables of the council when he showed Ravage, who had served with the first Megatron, a message he had implanted on the Golden disc, thus gaining the allegiance of the former Decepticon. Knowing that he was down to his last card, Megatron decided to invade the Ark and destroy non other then Optimus Prime himself.

Thankfully this plan failed thanks in part to some quick thinking by Blackarachnia who, having once been a Maximal Protoform, had everything to loose if Megatron's plan worked, and Optimus Primal who, upon learned that Primes spark would never survive the repair process, made what could have been the ultimate sacrifice and took Primes spark into his own body. During this time Megatron recalled all of his forces to attack not only the Ark, but also the Maximal base. Fortunately for the Maximal's it took so long for the Predacon's to regroup that by the time that they attacked Optimus Primal, thanks to the power of Prime's spark, had finished an extraordinary transformation, into a much more powerful Optimal Optimus Primal. Seeing first had the new powers that Primal had at his command Megatron opted for part two of his plan and had Rampage send the Maximal Base to the bottom of a lake that lay beneath it. Though in doing this he also did the Maximal's a favor as by eliminating the need to protect both the Ark and their base, they were able to move their entire operation to the Ark.

Now with the Ark as his primary target, Megatron became bolder in his plans to take it for his own purposes. Among his plans was to upgrade the Transmetal form to its next level. His first attempt was with the creation of the Cyber Raptors which he used to attack a tribe of early humans. After they were stopped by the Maximal's, Megatron determined that they needed a spark in order to take full advantage of their powers, and proceeded to used an alien device, which he had dubbed the Transmetal Driver, as well as a blank Protoform, and the half of Rampage's spark that he had cut out, to create a clone of Dinobot. Luckily Megatron didn't have a chance to duplicate this process on any of his Predacon's, as Cheetor, and the newest Maximal, Depth Charge arrived in time to stop him and steal the Driver. The resulting explosion also helped Cheetor to reach the second level of Transmetal himself, giving the maximal's a new weapon to use against Megatron's new Dinobot. Not long after this Blackarachnia was also upgraded to a Transmetal 2 after a failed attempt to reactivate her Maximal Programming.

See that the Beast Wars would soon be coming to an end, Megatron decided to make his biggest gamble yet, and take control of both the Maximal Base and the Ark. To that end he had Tarantulas come up with a way to take control of Optimus Primal's new body, which was done in two parts, a control platform where Quickstrike would be able to control the body, and second a burrowing spider drone that would attach itself to Primal's spark and assume control on the inside. For the most part the plan worked and the Predacon's were able to take over the base, with the exception of two hitches to the plan, Blackarachnia, who was on patrol, and Depth Charge, who was off repairing a maintenance station. After sending a signal for Blackarachnia to return and Dinobot to deal with Depth Charge, Megatron proceeded to enter the Ark, where, instead of heading for Optimus Prime again, he went straight to his namesake, the original Megatron, and proceeded to merge his own spark with that of his namesakes in the hopes of gaining the same power that Primal did when his spark mingled with Primes spark.

What Megatron didn't know what that Tarantulas, acting on orders from the Tripredacus Council, had made a deal with Quickstrike, and once he was at his weakest the two of them attempted to terminate Megatron by dumping him into one of the volcano's lava pools. But instead of killing Megatron, it only seemed to add to his new and much more powerful dragon beast form. Though he was driven off by the newly freed Optimus Primal and Maximal's, Megatron managed to escape with his predecessors spark still encased in his chasse, little did any of them know that this was the least of their problems, as they would soon be visited yet again by the emissary Vok, Tigerhawk, or that the final battle of the Beast Wars was just around the corner.

After loosing his base, not to mention almost loosing his life to Tigerhawk, Megatron sends half of his forces, namely Inferno, Quickstrike, and Waspinator, to secure a new base, while he, Rampage, and Dinobot tried to figure out what Tarantulas, who had been destroyed when he tried to take control of Tigerhawk, had been up to. When he learned, Megatron was certainly not disappointed, as it was nothing less then the Decepticon warship, The Nemesis. Making one final gambit to win not only the Beast Wars, but also give the Decepticon's a chance to win the Great War, Megatron used the full might of the Nemesis to first destroy a colony of early humans, though it was learned afterwards that all he managed to destroy was a vacant home, as well as Inferno and Quickstrike. He then proceeded onto the Ark, and nearly destroyed it as well if not for the timely actions of both Optimus Primal, who had flew up to the ship to stop Megatron, only to end up being used as a punching bag, and Dinobot, who, after Rampage was destroyed by Depth Charge a short time earlier, was begining to start to show the traits of the the old Dinobot, and thus sent the Maximal's information that not only allowed them to stop the Nemesis, but also gave them a way to get home after the battle, An Autobot Shuttle,, which Rhinox flew right through the command center of the Nemesis.

After forcing Megatron to return the Spark of the Original Megatron back to its rightful owner, Megatron was strapped down to the outside of the shuttle and taken for a ride back to Cybertron, thus ending the final chapter of the Beast Wars, but unfortunatly for the Maximal's that chapter was not the end of the story.

To be Continued in the Beast Machines Section!