Belly of the Beast (issue)

	"Belly of the Beast"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	July 31, 2013
Story by	Chris Metzen &; Flint Dille
Art by	Livio Ramondelli
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	John Barber
Continuity	IDW continuity
Chronology	Early in the war

This article is about the comic issue. For the Transformers Legends event, see Belly of the Beast (Legends).

Grimlock and Megatron join forces to fight Trypticon from within.

Synopsis

Swallowed whole by Trypticon, Megatron and Grimlock find themselves alive within the beast and get ready to finish their battle in spite of the circumstances. However, upon being attacked by more of the beast's dragon minions, they realize they must temporarily set their differences aside and team up to have a chance at escaping. Outside, the Autobots are alarmed to see Trypticon change course towards Iacon, having felt the presence of his old enemy, Metroplex. With their resources spent, Optimus Prime close to death and Grimlock devoured, Snarl begins to lose hope, but Bumblebee urges him to keep believing in his leader. Slag agrees, assuring everybody that Grimlock must be alive and looking for a way to destroy Trypticon from the inside.

After Megatron saves Grimlock's life by pulling him up from a pit, the two locate the monster's power core, a massive device powered by the same rage-inducing corrupted energon found in the underground caverns. Grimlock sets out to destroy the core while Megatron keeps the dragons at bay, but is splattered with the energon in the process and begins to lose control of himself again. Like Optimus Prime before him, Megatron urges the Dynobot to remember who he is, and he responds with a mighty shout of "I am Grimlock!" as he tears the power core apart, finally felling Trypticon.

In the aftermath, Megatron approaches the weakened Autobots, expressing his disappointment at Optimus Prime's reliance on the Matrix rather than true strength but allowing him and his troops to live—for now—out of respect for their efforts to save Cybertron from Trypticon. Grimlock accepts his demand that they leave the defeated monster in Decepticon hands, claiming it to be useless without its "rage-juice" anyway, but warns Megatron that someday he'll settle things between them. After the Autobots depart to repair Prime and find a cure to the Dynobots' condition, however, Megatron returns to the dormant Trypticon and feeds Pentius's spark into the core of the monster, who reawakens... as a Decepticon.