16 - Motorvational Theory or When Transformers Get Silly

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

8. LUBEDASH AND REVAWAY

Allegiance: Autobot
Functions: Stunt driver (Lubedash), ambassador to Nebulos (Revaway)
Sub-group: Ex-Powermasters
First appearance (as Slapdash and Getaway): Marvel's Transformers #41 ('Totaled')
First appearance (as Lube and Rev): Marvel's Transformers #42 ('People Power')
First appearance (as themselves): Prelude to the Predator War: Who is Skyquake?

"Sometimes, if you wait long enough, problems solve themselves." (Lubedash)

"Run hot, but always keep your cool." (Revaway)


Image source: botchthecrab.com/archive/

Lubedash is the permanently merged entity formed as a result of the original Powermaster process being allowed to run its full course, after the Last Autobot used his temporal powers to restore Slapdash and his Nebulan partner Lube following the Battle of Klo. Revaway is a similar hybrid being resulting from the permanent union of Getaway and Rev.

Lubedash and Revaway live on Nebulos in the year 2021 (as do the three Headmasters - Chromedome, Nightbeat and Siren). But in the year 2036, Lubedash evidently uses the time-jump device created by Minerva Witwicky to travel back in time fifteen years, to Earth, displacing the forewarned Protectobot First Aid to Limbo, to find out why the pocket dimension is leaking monsters in the years to come.

Lubedash hung around Avengers Tower with Ultra Magnus, Skids and the remaining Protectobots for a few hours, shooting the breeze and trying not to reveal too many spoilers about the future - though all were aware that the revelations about the impending Limbo crisis would inevitably create a branching of the timeline. Nothing he and his two friends on Cybertron did in the year 2021 would affect their own future. They were simply here to gather intelligence to enable them to combat the threat upon their return to 2036. On the other hand, the Autobots of 2021 now had an opportunity to prevent that future from ever coming to pass.

This all gave the Protectobot Blades something of a headache, so he changed the subject and started dropping unsubtle hints that Lubedash could do better when it came to his choice of name, suggesting that something cooler like Road King might earn him greater respect.

Eventually, it was time for Lubedash to activate his time-jump trigger device and return to the future. First Aid promptly returned, alive and well, with news, first that Wraithworld was still securely locked away in that fortified portion of Limbo to which it had been banished by the Spaceknight Rom, and clearly had nothing to do with the problem at hand, and second that there were a lot more Transformers mass-displaced to Limbo than they had been previously led to believe.

The positive consequence of this news was that while the Autobots had no hope of identifying the visitors from the future who had displaced Blue Backlash and Metrobomb on the crowded surface of Derut Four, the facts that Black Shadow and Sixshot had been taken from a largely deserted area of Cybertron, and that the eleven dinosaurs had been transported from the relatively robot-free Savage Land, gave them hope that satellite surveillance recorded at the time of their departure might allow the Autobots to spot the new arrivals, and track their movements.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

9. TYRANNITRON

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Enhanced firepower
Sub-group: Dinobot
First appearance: The Last Days of the Transformers War: Unicron

"Tyrannitron is a tiny, temperamental terror who'd rather sink his teeth into his opponent's ankle assembly than convert into Snarl's metal-rending shrapnel rifle."



From the memory banks of Prowl:

After First Aid had departed, I thought that rather than just hang around and wait, we should take stock and see if there was anything useful we could do to resolve the situation from within Limbo. After all, this could well be our only chance.

"Excluding me and Blaster, what do the rest of those present have in common?" I wondered out loud. "What do we know about the circumstances under which they were transported to Limbo? Snarl?"

"We were engaged in the latest in a series of battles with these dinosaur things," replied the sullen Dinobot. "Swoop suspected they may actually be Decepticon Pretenders, and we figured that if we captured one we could settle the matter."

"According to the information First Aid passed on to us from our future allies, so-called mass-displacement time-travel technology requires a Matrixed Transformer as the subject - even if it's a non-Transformer like Death's Head doing the time-jump," I said. "It's not really about mass at all. So I think you can consider Swoop's theory proven."

"So you eleven were fighting when you were taken," said Blaster. "And First Aid told us that these other two, Blue Backlash and Metrobomb, were taking part in a series of duels to the death in a popular gladiatorial contest on Derut Four, cheered on by a crowd of thousands. Blue Backlash had just destroyed the Robo Machine called Dart in the first round, while the Micromaster, Metrobomb, killed a Nebulan called 'Mandora the Evil Chaser'. They were just getting psyched up for the second round when they got whisked away to Limbo."

"Another violent situation," I observed. "Coincidence? Unlikely. It's as if whoever is carrying out these time-jumps is deliberately targeting subjects who will be susceptible to the Limbo creatures' appetite for violent emotion, which translates into the generation of physical monsters. What about Sixshot and Black Shadow?"

"Dunno. They could have been fighting someone, or thinking about it."

"Then we're relying on those on the outside to track down the new arrivals from the future and force them to return to their own time before these Transformers spend too long here and start manifesting their dreams in reality like Skids did in 1989."

"It's a long shot," said Blaster. "Maybe they can use satellites to track the time-travellers who arrived in the Savage Land and wherever Black Shadow and Sixshot were when they were taken, but that won't work for these other two. The Murderpits of Derut Four are far too densely populated at tournament time. And remember, we don't even know for sure that the time-travellers are Transformers."

"So what then?" I said. "Blue Backlash and Metrobomb stay here indefinitely, until they have generated an army of monsters ready to unleash on the Milky Way Galaxy?"

"There is another way," muttered Snarl. "Those two were outside the protection of our laws and peace treaties when they were taken, weren't they?"

"That's one way to describe Derut Four, yes," I confirmed.

Snarl was within arm's reach of his partner, Tyrannitron, former semi-sentient drone slave of Gutcruncher, liberated and Matrixed by Katy Witwicky in the year 2014, who earnt himself a place in the ranks of the Dinobots four years later when he helped them restore Snarl's mind to a robot body after more than two decades trapped inside a real Stegosaurus in the Savage Land.

Calmly, deliberately, Snarl took hold of Tyrannitron, careful not to disturb the Limbo parasite attached to his head, and manually transformed him into shrapnel rifle mode. Pushing himself off his other fellow Dinobots, he floated over to Metrobomb and raised Tyrannitron's barrel to point at the Decepticon's head.

"Can't take the chance that the rest of us will make it back to the real world, leaving these two here dreaming up monsters for years to come."

Blaster looked as if he was about to object, but checked himself. I said nothing.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

10. REFLECTOR

Allegiance: Decepticon
Function: Intelligence
First appearance: Marvel's Transformers #4 ('The Last Stand')

"See and you can know, know and you can destroy."


Image source: botchthecrab.com/archive/

The Reflector trio - Spectro, Spyglass and Viewfinder - love to observe things: alien life, architecture, topography, and particularly their comrades' mistakes. They like to blackmail their associates and are impressed with their own ability. They have highly developed infra-red vision that can record images in darkness, through camouflage and at very great distances. In their combined camera mode, they can emit a powerful flash explosion that leaves the enemy blind and disoriented for up to 15 seconds. In robot mode, each of the three carries a laser rifle.

Although part of the original Decepticon boarding party on the Ark, and revived by Auntie in 1984 along with Megatron, Soundwave and the rest, as far as we know the Reflector trio played only a minor role in events on Earth. Their function on that planet was reconnaissance, and it is understood that at one point they reconnoitred territory they shouldn't have reconnoitred and crossed paths with Doctor Doom, leading to gruesome consequences for them that they don't like to talk about. They fought for Bludgeon in the Battle of Klo and went on the run for a number of years, but were eventually captured by the Motorvators, tried, and found not guilty of war crimes. They now serve as part of Kickback's Decepticon intelligence network, alongside Bombshell, Pounce and Wingspan.

When the Titanmasters from 2036 had learnt all they could, they returned to their own time, and Blaster and Prowl were returned safe and well to Iacon. The Autobots quickly informed the Decepticons, via Hopper and Swindle, that Blue Backlash and Metrobomb were out of the picture, permanently, but that there were still eleven Earth-based Transformers and two Cybertron-based Decepticons alive in Limbo, all but one of them in the mental parasites' thrall, dreaming up who-knew-what horrors to unleash on the world upon their release if they remained in there for too long.

The Decepticons were advised that Jetfire's Autobots and their Avenger allies would find and deal with the eleven interlopers on Earth, but that the two on Cybertron were believed to have landed in the vicinity of Fortress Scorponok, assuming that was where Black Shadow and Sixshot were when they were mass-displaced. This was deep in Decepticon territory, and it was the Decepticons who had the best satellite coverage of the area. The Autobots therefore asked the Decepticons to take ownership of the problem, and the Decepticons eagerly accepted the challenge.

Axer, Gutcruncher and Slicer headed out to the area in question in their armoured vehicles, carrying their fellow Action Masters - Banzai-Tron, Charger, Double Punch and Take-Off - along as passengers. The helicopter Turbo Master flew there under his own power. Meanwhile, back in Tyrest, the Reflector trio were scouring satellite imagery for any sign of two intruders appearing as if from nowhere. Before the Action Masters could get into position and start pestering them for a target location, they found what they were looking for - two unknown Transformers, on the move.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

11. GODMASTER DARKWING

Allegiance: N/A
Function: Space gangster
Sub-group: Godmaster
Asgardian/Olympian component: Hydra
First appearance (as Darkwing): Marvel's Transformers #42 ('People Power')
First appearance (as himself): Right here

"If a head is cut off, two more shall take its place."


Image source: botchthecrab.com/archive/

The Powermaster Darkwing was one of many Decepticons killed (together with his Nebulan partner, Throttle) in the year 1991 in the Battle of Hydrus Four, and, like many of his comrades, his body, largely intact, was put on display in the Hydrus Four Transformers Museum, the proceeds of which went towards the rebuilding of the medical facilities destroyed in that great battle.

Fast-forward three decades to the year 2021, and the bodies of both Darkwing and his fellow Powermaster, Dreadwind, were now in the hands of a private collector, who received an unexpected visit from a pair of mysterious humanoids, apparently of Asgardian or Olympian descent, who made the collector 'an offer he couldn't refuse' for the two Decepticons. As far as anyone can tell, violence was unnecessary - it is rumoured that the collector was compensated in the form of interstellar market predictions that only visitors from the future could make. There is no hard evidence that the immortals, codenamed Hydra and Bust-Up, are the pair from the future who mass-displaced the size-changing Pretender Blue Backlash and the Micromaster Hydrobomb to Limbo, but nor are there any records of them to prove that they are native to this timeline. If they are the guilty couple, then they may be said to be indirectly responsible for the deaths of Blue Backlash and Metrobomb, who the Dinobot Snarl executed whilst in Limbo to prevent them from potentially spawning a race of nightmare-born monsters.

Like the Godmaster Doubleclouder, binary-bonded to the Asgardian God of Mischief, Loki, the Godmaster versions of Darkwing and Dreadwind are not sentient in the Creation Matrix sense, and are controlled entirely by their humanoid pilots/engines. Their strength, speed and endurance with their engines locked in place are far greater than those of their former Powermaster selves, reflecting how much more powerful their immortal humanoid partners are than the mortal Nebulans, Throttle and Hi-Test.

In his somewhat antiquated but still very cool Panavia Tornado GR1 swing-wing fighter jet disguise mode, powered by his high-performance Godmaster engine, Darkwing can reach speeds of up to Mach 7.8, and is able to climb to sub-orbital altitudes. He is laden with weaponry, the most deadly of which are his two laser-guided electro-kinetic blasters, which turn an enemy's power against its owner. The more powerful the foe, the more Darkwing can hurt him. Unlike Dreadwind, he is mobile and lethal in robot mode, specialising in hand-to-hand combat.

Little is known of Hydra, but his name suggests reverence for both the Lernaean Hydra who gave Hercules such a hard time and the terrorist organisation (itself named after the Lernaean Hydra) suspected of stealing the blueprints for mass-displacement time-travel technology from the encrypted database of SHIELD - which in turn acquired those plans during the dissection of the brain module of the fallen future Decepticon Leader, Galvatron.

FILE ENDS

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

12. GODMASTER DREADWIND

Allegiance: N/A
Function: Space gangster
Sub-group: Godmaster
Asgardian/Olympian component: Bust-Up
First appearance (as Dreadwind): Marvel's Transformers #42 ('People Power')
First appearance (as himself): Right here

"You won't like how this is going to end."

Image source: botchthecrab.com/archive/

Even less is known of the being codenamed Bust-Up, who now controls the body of Dreadwind, than is known of his colleague (brother?) Hydra, though like Hydra his powers suggest an Asgardian or Olympian heritage. If they are indeed the pair that travelled back from the future to 2021 to land in the midst of a crowded Galaxy Kombat tournament on Derut Four, permanently displacing Blue Backlash and Metrobomb to temporal Limbo, it was a shrewd - or at least fortuitous - move on their part. Unlike their Cybertronian allies who displaced the Dinobots and Dinoforce Pretenders from the Savage Land, and Black Shadow and Sixshot from Fortress Scorponok, counting on their isolation to prevent anyone noticing their disappearance until the time-travellers were no longer in the vicinity, the pair blinking into existence on Derut Four displaced their subjects in the most public way imaginable, but in a densely populated, lawless, cosmopolitan city where it was impossible to spot two new and unspecified visitors from the future. So while the Earthen Autobots and Avengers tracked the intruders in the Savage Land and prepared to engage them and force them to return to their own time, and the Decepticon Action Masters closed in on the pair spotted in the area around Fortress Scorponok, the two on Derut Four slipped quietly away into the rioting throng protesting at the cowardly disappearance of two of the fighters they had travelled light-years to see duel one another to the death. The facts that one of the combatants 'killed' in the first round, a mutant from Earth, was apparently now back on his feet, and that one of the Thunderian fighters had exposed and killed the high-tech controller of Scare Glow, the supposed ghost of Skeletor, thereby rendering him/it defunct, only added to the chaos and made it that much easier for them to steal a ship and get away - stopping only to vaporise their time-jump trigger device at a convenient waste disposer.

In his General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon jet mode, powered by his high-performance Godmaster engine, Dreadwind can reach speeds of up to Mach 7.8, and is able to climb to sub-orbital altitudes. His jet mode is armed with air-to-air missiles, thermal melters, rapid-fire machine guns and lasers. In short, he's a flying armoury with a vast capacity for devastation. In robot mode he's more cumbersome and less effective, presenting an easy target. But at close quarters, his bulky strength (far greater than that which he possessed as a Powermaster) and multi-shot wrist guns give him an advantage. Like Darkwing, the resurrected Godmaster Dreadwind is not living in the sense of the Creation Matrix, and is controlled entirely by the thoughts and commands of his pilot/engine, Bust-Up.

Hydra and Bust-Up are blessed with good fortune and a seeming ability to predict events to their advantage. If this is due to knowledge gained in the future, then it may be expected that these skills will diminish over time, as their presence in this timeline changes the course of history from the one of which they possess memories.

FILE ENDS

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

13. GODMASTER DREADWING

Allegiance: N/A
Function: Spaceship
Sub-group: Double Godmaster
Asgardian/Olympian components: Bust-Up, Hydra
First appearance (as Dreadwing): Marvel's Transformers #42 ('People Power')
First appearance (as himself): Right here


Image source: botchthecrab.com/archive/

Dreadwing remains the combined form of Darkwing and Dreadwind, each of whom contains half of a working hyperdrive, the whole becoming functional only when the two jets unite into one. As well as traversing the stars, Dreadwing is fully capable of space combat, retaining the use of all the weapons of his two component Godmasters - laser-guided electro-kinetic blasters, air-to-air missiles, thermal melters, rapid-fire machine guns and lasers.

Despite Dreadwing's new red paint job, he remains sufficiently similar to his Powermaster form to make him a target for grudge-bearing Autobots - and Mecannibals.

FILE ENDS

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

14. CLENCH AND THE FUTURECONS

Allegiance: Decepticon
Functions: Decepticon Leader (Clench), battle analyst (Calcar), attack specialist (Fearswoop)
Sub-groups: Obliterator, Skyscorchers, Stormtroopers, Trakkons
First appearance: Right here

"I will not rest until the last Autobot is crushed to nothing and Decepticons rule." (Clench)

"It doesn't matter who suffers, it only matters that evil wins the day." (Calcar)

"Let terror and evil reign in the skies - and show no Autobot mercy." (Fearswoop)


Image source: botchthecrab.com/archive/

Eleven Decepticons from an unspecified point in the future arrived in the Savage Land in 2021, displacing the Dinobots and Dinoforce Pretenders to temporal Limbo. The intervention of three friendly visitors from 2036 enabled the Autobots to establish the number and approximate location of the hostile time-travellers, and satellite tracking did the rest. The opposition consisted of the Obliterator Clench, the Trakkons Calcar and Fearswoop, the Skyscorchers Hawk, Snipe, Terradive and Tornado, and the Stormtroopers Aquablast, Drench, Hydradread and Rage. The task facing the Earthen Autobots and their Avenger allies was a simple one - 'persuade' Clench and his cronies to go back where they came from and stay there.

A vehicle of terrifying power and pure evil, Clench combines a keen brain with diabolical cruelty. His whole being is dedicated to vengeance, and he is a nightmare opponent powered by pure hate and the thought of ultimate victory. He overwhelms, flattens and throws aside anyone foolish enough to get in his way. In truck mode, he launches powerful weapon attacks from all sides and does terrible damage with his vicious, rear-mounted grabbing claw. He is menacing in his intermediate mode as a multi-purpose battle station, and as a gigantic robot he towers terrifyingly above all his followers.

Calcar is cold and calculating, a single-minded walking computer who carries in his photographic memory every step of every Decepticon battle ever fought. He uses his vast knowledge to blood-curdling effect. As a tough, all-terrain Cabriolet buggy, he defends himself with roof-mounted, quadruple-barrel, visible-tracer missile fire. His weapons form a devastating free-standing missile launcher system in robot mode.

Fearswoop is cunning, gifted and completely evil. When his vile shadow falls, even the bravest must shudder. He is brilliant in his use of the most advanced in stealth technology. Disguised as a Lockheed-Martin YF-22 fighter jet, he swoops down, attacking with wing-mounted, visible-tracer missiles. As a robot, his weapons form a powerful free-standing missile launcher.

Having learnt lessons from the 1986 'Galvatron incident', Earth Defence Commander Jetfire decided to use Omega Supreme from the outset. A surprise Space Bridge drop of himself, Omega, the Aerialbots, the Protectobots, Brawn, Carnivac, Chainclaw, Inferno, Ironhide, Jazz, Powerglide, Smokescreen, Tracks, Ultra Magnus, Iron Man, the Valkyrie and the Vision should be sufficient to get the job done - shouldn't it?

FILE ENDS

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TARGET: 2036

15. THE OUTCOME

Yes. But only just.

FILE ENDS