#the Autobot administration system is shit they didn't even think to send reports

[singingcicadas]

Idw Rodimus is so high up the chain of command that even Prowl doesn't outrank him. Prowl even admits to not outranking him, and this was back when he was still Hot Rod.

Which makes the Overlord incident worse because he wasn't ever under the remotest pressure to follow Prowl's orders, Prowl has no authority over him and likely never did.

Autobot High Command members, as of Chaos Theory:

Optimus, Ultra Magnus, Prowl, Rodimus, Xaaron, Bumblebee.

Two are his subordinates on the Lost Light, two are people he regularly argues with. Optimus is the only one who can technically give him orders and expect them to be followed, and I say technically because he only actually follows them about half the time. The other half is divided between 15% screaming accusation, 15% passive aggressive attitude, 25% outright disagreement, 35% I heard you but I'm gonna do my own thing (with a healthy mix of yeah I know my own thing is insane but I'm gonna do it anyway), and 10% silent ghosting.

Then once he gets aboard the Lost Light it's 98% ghosting with 1% awarded to his (albeit minimal) effort to restablish radio contact with Cybertron after take-off. The other 1% goes to picking up Optimus' facetime call when Optimus wanted him to come back for Caminus' intergration ceremony, even if it was just to say no and complain about the co-captain arrangement.

That was the last time he saw Optimus alive, I think.