In Hollywood, Thundercracker is rushing to complete the edit of his new movie, a biopic about the life of G.I. Joe agent Chuckles, before he responds to Marissa Faireborn's call for assistance, when he is interrupted by the frenzied barking of Buster. Looking out the window, it's impossible for Thundercracker to miss what she's barking at: the planet-sized robot mode of Unicron now hovers above the Earth, its gravity causing all sorts of havoc in the streets below. Editing can wait—Thundercracker's got people to help!

Out in space, the Peaceful Revolution approaches Earth. Prowl wonders why Unicron is only hovering, rather than immediately eating the planet as it has with all the worlds that came before it. Stardrive believes she has the answer; Unicron is waiting for all its enemies to gather on the planet, so it can kill them all at once.

At Mount Rushmore, news reporter Sof?a Orozco and her cameraman arrive on the scene to report on the Cybertronian battle that has just occurred there. Spike and Talon try to bar her way, but Jazz—despite his own bad past experiences with Orozco—suggests they let her through, as the media has a right to know what's going on. Jazz leads the new arrivals over to Marissa Faireborn, who is on the phone with the President learning about the arrival via Spacebridge of Optimus Prime and the entire remaining population of Cybertron and its colonies in Africa. Presently, Soundwave, Arcee, and Rom arrive as Prime's envoys, and each group quickly brings the other up to speed on recent events: Gimlet's death at the hands of Slug during Slide's attempt to rescue Jazz from the humans, and Unicron's consumption of Cybertron and all its colony worlds. A furious Flint doubts that the Transformers have any interest in saving Earth from this world-eating threat; Slug counters that the new generation of protoforms still in the process of coming online within Trypticon are now natives of Earth, so obviously they will fight to defend their new homeworld, but neither Flint nor Slide is convinced. Sensing that Flint's extreme anger is due to the loss of another life beyond that of Gimlet's, Soundwave is horrified to discover that his own human friend, Mainframe, also perished during the fight. Cradling the human's body, Soundwave is overcome with grief, and his psychoempathic powers run out of control, broadcasting his feelings and memories as an electronic "scream" of anguish. The "broadcast" spans the entire country—back in Hollywood, it even shows up on the phone of police officer Reggie Winslow's partner, as they work with Thundercracker to save lives during the Unicron-induced chaos—and serves as proof to many doubting humans that Cybertronians are just as much living, feeling beings as they are.

When the ground around Mount Rushmore suddenly begins to tremble beneath everyone's feet, Jazz fears the end has arrived... but it's not the end, it's just the Peaceful Revolution, which has accidentally warped underground thanks to Goldbug's dodgy piloting, and now bursts up out of the dirt. Jazz is not happy to see Prowl, based on what happened the last time he showed his face, but Prowl insists that they have to put their own animosities aside and stand togther if they are going to survive Unicron. The group agrees, and Jazz, Slide, and the colonists board the Peaceful Revolution so they can all rejoin Optimus in Africa.

Six hours later, at the Transformers' African camp, Slide recounts the events that went down at Mount Rushmore for Optimus Prime. Of course, Slide finds a way to turn every word out of Optimus's mouth back against him; she accuses him of not caring about Gimlet's death; chastizies him for not coming to Mount Rushmore himself; expresses her disgust at the way Soundwave's grief has been weaponized to benefit human/Cybertronian relations; and finally, concludes that the way Prime has, via proxies and mouthpieces rather than his own actions, united Cybertron, the colonies, and Earth against the com

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