Proteus's Promise

Prior to the outbreak of the Great War when the Decepticons were but a fledgeling movement, Senator Proteus made them a promise.

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

After calling for the Clampdown to weed out potential terrorists, Proteus instigated the Decepticon Registration Act and made a public statement that if 10,000 Decepticons signed up he would recognise the movement as a formal political party, which came to be known as "Proteus's Promise". However, Proteus never had any intention of keeping his word. First, he secretly arranged for the Decepticon-sympathising Senators Sherma and Momus to be murdered and the assassins to be publicly caught, making him appear trustworthy in the eyes of potential Decepticon registrants, whose details were passed on to the Institute as candidates for Shadowplay. Post Hoc Patternism

Proteus and Sentinel then plotted to kill thousands at the Primal Basilica with a bomb hidden inside Nominus Prime's corpse, which they would brand a Decepticon terrorist act, allowing them to capture and brainwash all those who had registered under the Act. This plan was foiled when the Rodion police captain Orion Pax and a group of outliers from Senator Shockwave's Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology discovered the bomb and removed it, leading Proteus to ultimately break his Promise. An Intimate Beheading

Around four million years later, Swerve, Tailgate, Pipes and First Aid watched the public information film "Proteus's Promise" in Rewind's hab-suite. Who's Afraid of the DJD?