The Crime

"The verdict is innocent. The sentence: Death."

"You dare question us? You have no right!"

"He does not understand, let us enlighten him before he dies."

"Why bother, Rhadamanthus? He is dead anyway."

"You were charged with the Theft of Cybertron and the murder of countless of our brethren."

"Yes, theft and murder! Have you savages so soon forgotten your betrayal?"

"The race now called 'Transformers', your race, we created. You owe your existence to us!"

"It is true. Cybertron is the rightful home of the Quintesson race. It was our world long before your kind even existed."

"And we brought you into existence, thankless child!"

"We once had a great civilization, we were known throughout the galaxy for our wisdom, arts and craftsmanship. And then... We created robots to labor for us, to serve us, protect us."

"But you rebelled! You turned upon us, slaughtered us, forced us from our rightful home, from our very world!"

"You called us cruel, evil, but you showed us no mercy! Do we not have a right to treat our own creations as we choose?"

"For eleven million years we have longed to breathe the air of our home world again, to feel its breeze upon our flesh. For eleven million years we have roamed the universe, seeking vengeance upon our rebellious creations."

"Do you have the right to question your creators?"

"Mad...? How dare...!"

"Obsessed, perhaps. You have taken our home, and we will have it back."

"Do you agree with him?!"

"No, Deliberata, I am merely..."

"Wasting time!"

"Quintessa? It was... A difficult decision indeed, to destroy our adopted home, but we had to ensure the Autobot leader could not escape. It was a necessary sacrifice. It is a pity that we failed..."

"Quintessa was never our home. Enough of this talk, Rhadamanthus! Execute him now!"

"Any last words?"

"You are full of questions, aren't you? Why do we execute the innocent as well as the guilty? No one is truly innocent. You may not have personally slain our brethren or stolen our world, but we're sure you've done something."

Finis

Notes:

Judge Deliberata is canon

Judge Rhadamanthus is not

The Quintessons are a strange people, twisted by eleven million years of bitterness and hate. When Judge Deliberata was captured by Autobots, his brethren sentenced him to death along with them, and he praised their judgment. They destroyed their adopted homeworld in a failed attemp to kill a few Autobots. They nearly destroyed the entire fabric of space and time trying to change the past. Still, I wanted to portray something of their point of view, they do have a legitimate reason for being angry, they're a people driven from their own world, and to me, that makes them somewhat sympathetic... Maybe there are good Quintessons, but we don't see them because they don't get involved in the fighting.

Who is the unlucky Transformer on trial? Whoever you want it to be! I'd like to be rid of some of those Autobots who always speak in rhyme...

Quintessons, Judge Deliberata, Transformers and Autobots belong to Hasbro