Are there any other Decepticons in the aligned continuity who were pardoned from their crimes like laserbeak?
Dear Redemption Researcher,
Indeed so—the Great War in that universe was a particularly destructive affair, and by the end of the long, long conflict many Decepticons had grown just as weary as their Autobot brethren. When Optimus Prime sacrificed himself to heal Cybertron, plenty of Decepticons landed in rusted warships and battered refugee vessels and promptly surrendered. As more and more Decepticon prisoners piled up, Ultra Magnus sought the services of the ex-Decepticon Tomb to establish a bipartisan commission to try and reintegrate what Decepticons they could into society. The Vehicons, for instance, had never been allowed to choose their side, and were acquitted of all crimes. Other pardoned Decepticons included Hotwire, Hoverbolt, Ursa Major, and Doomwings, who publicly renounced the Decepticon cause before settling into peaceful civilian lives.
Not all Decepticons could be so easily dealt with, however—in the weeks that followed Bulkhead and Arcee worked together to crack down on armed splinter cells, fanatic remnants of the Decepticon military who refused to believe that Megatron had surrendered, and bizarre underground cults that venerated Megatron as a living god. For those Decepticons who refused to lay down arms, the Autobots were forced to repurpose a number of civilian transport vessels into heavily-armed prison ships, intended to transport them to a distant prison colony in the Elba system—the worst of the worst, irredeemable ‘bots like Tarn, Turmoil, Heretech, Demolishor, or Deathsaurus.
Unfortunately, like so many other Autobot plans, this institution would be hijacked by Cyclonus; once he’d infiltrated the provisional government and launched his coup that saw the Autobot ousted from the system they’d sought to build, the new High Council promptly began targeting and imprisoning all ‘bots who had ever worn the Decepticon badge, regardless of whether or not they’d renounced Decepticonism, loading them up onto prison ships and taking them off Cybertron… while also removing Cyclonus’s would-be rival Steeljaw from power. Common gangsters and street criminals would be scooped up and rebranded as “Decepticons”, overexaggerating the degree by which the Decepticons had infiltrated their society to keep the citizens of Cybertron paranoid.
Those “prison ships” would be sent to the distant world of Pyrovar, a staging ground where Cyclonus could weed out those Decepticons who had not abandoned the cause, recruit newly-arrested ‘bots, then ship them back to Cybertron’s new “Trypticon Prison” to prepare for the birth of his neo-Decepticon empire. Of course, when the prison ship Alchemor suffered mechanical troubles over the planet Earth... well, you know the rest of that story.
