3 - A Stopped Clock

[Grand Moff Muffin]

TIME WARRIOR

in

'A STOPPED CLOCK'

PART 1

Earth. New Year's Day, 2009.

Twenty-seven minutes to midnight.

Kup: "Prime? Is that really you?"

Rodimus Prime: "Yes... Yes, it's really me. Our enemy only existed within the Matrix itself. Tearing it free... closed the door. Sadly, it also means that we missed a chance of destroying him and cleansing the Matrix. Eventually, I'll have to go back into the Matrix to face him again, and destroy him for good. But next time... he'll be ready for me."

Scattershot (transforming to battle station mode): "Alternatively..."

Rodimus Prime (shot by a 700-megavolt pulse cannon): "AAAAACK-!"

Scattershot (transforming back to robot mode): "...we can just put you on ice until we've figured out exactly what is going on around here."

Red Alert: "Okay..."

Scattershot: "Perceptor?"

Perceptor: "I'm sorry, Scattershot. Strafe's dead."

Rewind: "It looks like almost everyone here is dead. How many Autobots were on this ship?"

Arcee: "Over four hundred... All of them."

Afterburner: "And apart from you three, it seems that all those who weren't deactivated in the crash have been destroyed by our great leader."

Arcee: "That wasn't him. He was possessed by Unicron."

Afterburner: "Whatever..."

Kup: "It's been a bloody long day."

Red Alert: "I've never known one quite like it."

Nosecone: "Could someone please tell me what this all means?"

Kup: "..."

Arcee: "Ummm."

Red Alert: "Well... You remember that rift in time and space that destroyed the Quintesson homeworld?"

Blaster: "No, what rift?"

Kup: "But you know how we went back in time this morning to the year 1989 to recapture Galvatron?"

Lightspeed: "Are you feeling all right?"

Scattershot: "Are you telling us that scientists on Cybertron have finally cracked the secrets of time-travel?"

Arcee: "No, not Cybertron - we used the time portal here in Autobot City: Earth, remember?"

Perceptor: "But you haven't been to Earth in over six months."

Kup: "All right, we need to think this through carefully. But first let's get Prime into the city and stabilised."

Scattershot: "But keep him powered down until further notice. He's killed enough Autobots for one day."

Afterburner: "Damn right. And I don't think we should take our optics off these three lucky survivors until we know what their role in all this really is."

Kup: "Now, wait just a minute. Prime made me his second-in-command."

Lightspeed: "Yeah, and Prime has now killed a friend of ours. His decisions no longer stand."

Scattershot: "I'm the highest-ranking Autobot here, so I'll be calling the shots until further notice."

Perceptor: "I'm sorry, Kup. Your words haven't been making much sense, and your survival and close association with Rodimus mean we must ask you to stand down, at least on a temporary basis."

Blaster: "I have to agree. All those in favour of making Scattershot acting leader?"

Nosecone: "That's seven votes to three."

Afterburner: "Of the ten Autobots who your friend hasn't killed."

Scattershot: "Enough. Let's go. Technobots - gather up all weapons. Blaster, Kup - bring Rodimus into the city. Rewind, Perceptor - conduct a search to see if anyone else has survived the crash."
___

Twenty-one minutes to midnight.

Arcee: "Something isn't right."

Red Alert: "Nothing about this is right. Galvatron should be dead, torn apart by the rift twenty years ago. Instead, he rules Cybertron, nobody remembers us going back in time this morning, nobody remembers us being on Earth this morning, and apparently time-travel hasn't been invented."

Arcee: "But if time-travel hasn't been invented, where have we come from? Have we really been to the past, or have our memories of the last three years been corrupted? And if our memories, beginning from when Galvatron first time-jumped, have all been a fiction, how did Unicron come to be trapped inside the Matrix?"

Red Alert: "Oh, we've been to the past all right."

Arcee: "How can you be so certain, when the world around us says otherwise?"

Red Alert: "Because I brought something back with me. Now be quiet... we're coming into the city."
___

Twelve minutes to midnight.

Red Alert: "It's vitally important that I speak with Rodimus Prime."

Nosecone: "Forget it. Prime stays shut down and nobody gets to see him until Scattershot says otherwise."

Arcee: "Come on, Red. Leave it. Let's go."

Kup: "I don't know why you bothered. You knew they weren't going to let you in there."

Red Alert: "I know, but I needed to see the security set-up. They've got Prime in an isolation ward, hooked up to a variable voltage harness. Any spark of mental activity, and they'll shock him back into unconsciousness. And he's under constant watch. They're not taking any chances."

Arcee: "I hate to say it, but I can't exactly blame them. Besides, supposing they did let you wake him up. What's to stop Unicron taking possession again and killing us all?"

Kup: "At least none of them have been stupid enough to try to take the Matrix away from him. If they break the link, so that Prime reverts to Hot Rod, Unicron will have free reign of the Matrix, and nothing will stop him."

Red Alert: "Nevertheless, I believe making contact with Unicron is the only way to untangle the time stream and reverse this madness."

Arcee: "How can you make contact with Unicron without risking his attacking us again?"

Red Alert: "By ensuring that he has no time to attack us."

Kup: "Huh?"

Red Alert: "He won't have time to do anything. I'm going to walk into that room, past the Technobot guards, and have a long conversation with both Rodimus Prime and Unicron. I'm going to get to the bottom of this whole damn temporal mess."

Arcee: "How?"

Red Alert: "With this."

Time Warrior: "Hello."

Kup: "What..."

Arcee: "Did that Autobot insignia on your wrist just talk?"

Kup: "It's just a radio."

Time Warrior: "I'm not."

Red Alert: "He's not."

Arcee: "He?"

Red Alert: "While you guys were fighting Galvatron and Megatron, I met the Time Warrior. Optimus Prime summoned him from Cybertron to join the effort to return Galvatron to the future. The plan was for him to send Galvatron back to 2009 once the Wreckers and Mayhems had subdued him. Things didn't quite work out that way in the end, and he asked instead if he could come back to the future with me."

Kup: "Why? Why would anyone want to travel twenty years into the future rather than just wait for it to come along?"

Red Alert: "Because if you wait for the future to come along, then it becomes your present. The Time Warrior wanted to come to 2009 with me so that he could see the future and then return to his own time without it causing the cosmic imbalance that comes from travelling back to a time where you don't belong."

Arcee: "So he's the first Transformer to make an excursion forward in time, rather than back."

Time Warrior: "Exactly. People who visit the past risk changing history, causing paradoxes and destroying the universe. People who visit the future just get to see what might be, and can then use that information to shape events in the present, so that a better future might come to pass."

Kup: "Well, with the Autobots almost extinct, the Matrix corrupted and Galvatron ruling Cybertron, you can't make things much worse than they are now. But I still don't understand how you're going to talk safely to Rodimus and Unicron."

Time Warrior: "Simple. I'm going to pause time."

Arcee: "Give me a break."

Time Warrior: "That's the plan. Are you ready?"

Red Alert: "Ready's my... first name... Scratch that. Yes, I'm ready."

Time Warrior: "Then open me up and press the stop button next to my digital display."

Red Alert: "How very eighties. Okay, here goes."

Red Alert pressed the button, and the blinking colon between the hour and the minute stopped, so that Time Warrior's display simply read "2356".

Red Alert: "Kup? Arcee? They're frozen in time! Just like you said they'd be!"

Time Warrior: "Time has been paused. Now press the next button up to activate the hologram field. Neither Rodimus nor Unicron must know who they're talking to, or we won't learn what we need to learn from them."

Red Alert: "I'm green! Guess I'll need a new name."

Time Warrior: "Just say you're a student. And remember, we need to bring out his dark side. Don't worry, Unicron won't be able to act against us while time is on pause, and the V.V.H. will kick in as soon as time resumes."

Red Alert: "All right, I'll try to stay in character. The guards aren't moving. Let's go in."

New Year's Day, 2009. Autobot City: Earth, 2356. Four minutes to midnight.

TO BE CONTINUED

[Grand Moff Muffin]

TIME WARRIOR

in

'A STOPPED CLOCK'

PART 2

Earth. New Year's Day, 2009.

2356 hours. Four minutes to midnight.

Rodimus Prime: "Perceptor? Is that you?"

Red Alert: "No, it's me. The... Junkion student. Wreck-Gar sent me, remember?"

Rodimus Prime: "Oh... yes. Remind me why you wanted to speak with me?"

Red Alert: "I'm doing a dissertation on the nature of evil in the war of the Transformers. I was hoping to hear about some of your experiences with the worst of the worst, from 1989 to the present day. Unless you'd prefer me to come back when you're feeling better...?"

Rodimus Prime: "No, I could really use the company right now. I've known so many evil beings in my time, and the past seems such a fluid thing. It's hard to know where to begin."

Red Alert: "Why don't we begin with Thunderwing?"

Rodimus Prime: "Hmmm? Oh, yes, the Decepticon war-lord who stole the Micromaster process from us and then went looking for the lost Creation Matrix, which the Autobots unwittingly blasted into space with Optimus Prime's original body. We had also been prompted to look for it after a Deathbringer that came in contact with it showed up on Earth. But Thunderwing beat us to it..."
___

2356 hours. Four minutes to midnight.

Rodimus Prime: "...and so Thunderwing's evil obsession destroyed him, and Optimus Prime restored the purity of the Matrix, which was fortunate for us all, as we needed its power when Unicron showed up on Cybertron at the start of 2006."

Red Alert: "Thunderwing was a failed contender for the supreme Decepticon leadership, but there were others, were there not?"

Rodimus Prime: "Yes. At one point we thought Bludgeon might make a bid to become leader, but he would never go up against Megatron. Scorponok, on the other hand..."

Red Alert: "Tell me about Scorponok."

Rodimus Prime: "I wasn't present when Megatron killed him. The last time I saw him, it was 1991, I think. Yes - that was it... near to the end of the Decepticon civil war!"
___

2356 hours. Four minutes to midnight.

Red Alert: "Tell me more, Prime... I wish to learn the nature of the beast! Tell me of... Galvatron!"

Rodimus Prime: "Soon, student... soon. Leave me now. I am weary. The long years of battle have taken their toll."

Time Warrior (to Red Alert): "I can sense the struggle of two souls within this one body."

Red Alert: "He's managing to keep Unicron contained?"

Time Warrior: "I don't think so. Unicron is too powerful, but I think he is... amused by our exchange on the subject of evil. We must attempt to draw him out further, in order to learn the truth."

Red Alert: "All right. Let's go back in to him."
___

2356 hours. Four minutes to midnight.

Rodimus Prime: "Though at the time I enjoyed the attention, now - older and wiser - I live in terror of Shockwave's evil god, logic! Though it has to be said, we have much to thank for the illogicality of humans... and some Autobots!"

Red Alert: "Yes, yes... very fascinating, Rodimus Prime. But what about-?"

Rodimus Prime: "I know, student, I know. But before I tell you of him, you must learn of the coldest, most ruthless Decepticon of all... Starscream!"
___

2356 hours. Four minutes to midnight.

Rodimus Prime: "There you have it, student - pure, undistilled evil. Thunderwing. Scorponok. Galvatron. Shockwave. Starscream. Megatron. Have you learnt enough of the nature of the beast, or do you wish more?"

Red Alert: "Yes, Rodimus Prime - more! Tell me... of him!"

Rodimus Prime: "Uuh... Very well. Hear not of an evil being... but of evil itself!"
___

Red Alert (to Time Warrior): "How is this possible? It's New Year's Day, 2009, but Rodimus is talking about the third coming of Unicron in the year 2010. How can he be aware of events that have yet to transpire?"

Time Warrior: "It's Unicron, not Rodimus, who remembers future events. It's as I feared... Unicron can access possible futures, just as I am doing. From what I've seen, he's grown too powerful in this era. You'll never be able to stop him."

Red Alert: "So what are we going to do?"

Time Warrior: "I'll see that he's stopped in another time and place. He must never become one with the Matrix, and it will take a mightier Prime than Rodimus to wield it so as to destroy him utterly. Now listen carefully... Here's what I need you to do."

Red Alert (to Rodimus Prime): "Hah! You're making it up as you go along! How could one such as you have bested Unicron? Senile old fool! Your memory's playing tricks on you! I come here to find out about Unicron and I get a lecture on some evil has-beens and a work of fiction! Well, get this, Autobot fool! I'm going to find Unicron for myself, and when I do, you'll really understand the meaning of evil!"

Red Alert ripped Time Warrior from his wrist and hurled him to the floor. As he strode out of the ward, his holographic disguise faded and he became himself once more.

As Time Warrior hit the floor, his pause button was depressed, allowing time to resume its natural course. The Technobot guards grabbed Red Alert. Within Prime, a chilling voice chuckled. The computer sensed that Rodimus was awake, and triggered the variable voltage harness. The chuckle was cut short.

Unicron/Prime: "NOOOO!"

The electricity surged through both Rodimus Prime and Time Warrior, shutting Prime down and kick-starting Time Warrior's temporal circuits. The elastic connecting Time Warrior to his own time, 1989, snapped back into shape, yanking him back through time to where he belonged.

As Time Warrior hurtled through time and space, he dissipated the excess energy he had absorbed by broadcasting his recording of Rodimus Prime's lecture on the subject of evil to all and sundry. It would be picked up eventually by the Junkions, who would pass it on to others via their television network.

Time Warrior returned to where he had started out from, the site of the last battle of the Time Wars on Earth. Less than a day had passed.

The colon on his digital display was flashing again, and the time showed midnight, "00:00".

Time to reset history, thought Time Warrior, spreading his ladybird-like wings and fluttering away on the cool night breeze.

THE END

[Grand Moff Muffin]

EPILOGUE

Earth. New Year's Day, 2006.

Brawn, Smokescreen, Tracks, Ultra Magnus and Jetfire (Autobot Commander: Earth) stood together in a barren crater in Northern Oregon, on the exact same spot where they had previously gathered more than nineteen years earlier in the aftermath of the first Galvatron incident.

Smokescreen: "Thanks for coming here, guys. Ever since we last stood here, I have been convinced that the first Autobot City on Earth would be built on this spot... and that it would be here by the end of the year 2005. I don't know what could have put the idea into my head, but it's been driving me crazy. I just wanted you to be with me today so that I could exorcise that demon once and for all."

Jetfire: "Well, I can assure you there is no Autobot City here or anywhere else on planet Earth. The humans have allowed us to live amongst them, but a city of our own? Not a chance!"

Brawn: "Is that you beeping, Magnus?"

Tracks: "Don't tell me you've still got that same digital timepiece on your wrist that you had when you were counting down to Operation: Volcano!"

Ultra Magnus: "No, I'm afraid he's long gone from my side. This is just the all-clear from the fleet at Lithone."

Jetfire: "I can't believe they sent Sky Lynx, Countdown and warships from half a dozen worlds just to ensure that a long-dead planet-eater didn't make a miraculous return and devour a peaceful colony world on a certain day of a certain year."

Smokescreen: "I guess I'm not the only false prophet getting jumpy today."

Brawn: "Come on, guys. Let's get out of here. This place has me spooked."

Tracks: "I don't think Smokescreen's crazy. After all, Unicron wasn't a myth, he just came a decade and a half too early. We did build Metroplex, but we built him on Cybertron. Megatron is dead and Hot Rod's still Hot Rod, but Wreck-Gar and the Junkions have indeed become our allies. There was enough truth in the stories of time-travellers to make them worth taking seriously."

Jetfire: "That may be, but let the history books take them seriously. And let them remain there."

THE END

[Fortmax2020]

Time Warrior did it!

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jul 22, 2018 21:53:39 GMT Fortmax2020 said:

Time Warrior did it!

And he's very grateful to Simon Furman for not setting 'Aspects of Evil' explicitly in the YEAR 2356, and for not picking a number higher than 2359, which would have made everything fall over.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

FACT-FILE INTERFACE

TIME WARRIOR

Allegiance: Autobot
Function: Scientist
First appearance (as digital watch): Transformers UK #80 ('Target: 2006')
First appearance (as Time Warrior): Transformers UK #227 ('Aspects of Evil')
First appearance (allegedly, as Last Autobot): Transformers #79 ('The Last Autobot?')

"I have seen the future and it is digital."



When Optimus Prime, Prowl and Ratchet mysteriously disappeared and the Matrix Flame on Cybertron died, Ultra Magnus travelled to Earth to investigate. He didn't go alone. Attached to his arm, in the form of a digital watch - due to a cultural misunderstanding, they thought this would help Magnus blend in on Earth - was one of the Cybertronian Autobots' greatest scientific minds. During his mission, Magnus could often be heard seeming to talk to himself. He was, in fact, talking to his sentient timepiece. It soon became apparent that Prime's disappearance was the result of Galvatron travelling back from the year 2006. The implications of this fascinated Ultra Magnus's more cerebral companion. On his return to Cybertron, he dedicated his life to temporal engineering and became... Time Warrior!

Time Warrior failed in his attempts to create a time-jump device like Galvatron's, but after two years of intensive concentration on the problem he acquired the ability to freeze time from his own perspective and that of those close by. Within weeks of making this breakthrough, he was summoned back to Earth as one of the reinforcements from Cybertron to combat Galvatron once more in what became known as the Time Wars. During the course of this mission, Time Warrior met a future version of Red Alert, who agreed to take him back with him upon his return to the year 2009.

Time Warrior spent less than a day in the future, freezing time at four minutes to midnight in order to help Red Alert interrogate the ailing Rodimus Prime, who had been possessed by the spirit of Unicron. He also downloaded the blueprints of Autobot City: Earth, before returning to the year 1989. Time Warrior used his knowledge of that dark future to prevent it from coming to pass, although this meant bringing Unicron to Cybertron in the year 1991.

When the war ended, Time Warrior altered his form to take the likeness of a digital watch small enough to be worn by humans, and made his way once more to Earth. No-one knows his future, but there is a theory that he becomes the Last Autobot, whose face he shares, and who also has powers to control time on a localised basis, bringing recently deceased Autobots and Nebulans back to life on Klo as if nothing had happened. Some say that the Last Autobot's alternative name, the Ultimate Warrior, is a distortion of the name Time Warrior. If indeed the Last Autobot is a future incarnation of Time Warrior, he's not admitting it.

Time Warrior can detach from his wrist strap and fly short distances, using the two halves of his face like a ladybird's wings. As well as freezing time, he can change the appearance of his wearer for short periods of time.

FILE ENDS

[Fortmax2020]

The ultimate revelation!

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Jul 22, 2018 21:53:39 GMT Fortmax2020 said:

Time Warrior did it!

But how, exactly?

A STOPPED CLOCK: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Jazz: "I'm sorry, where are my manners? Wall - meet Stranglehold. Stranglehold - meet the wall!"

Bumblebee: "Yay! Three down! And not so much as a twitch from Primus!"

Three down, yes. But three out?

Octopunch: "Grimlock!"

Grimlock: "Huh?"

The blast from Octopunch's acetylene torch gun was not powerful enough to penetrate Grimlock's titanium steel armour plating. Instead, it ricocheted off and hit the face of Primus squarely on the nose. Grimlock jumped down to Octopunch's level and finished the Decepticon with a straight right.

Grimlock: "Now what?"

Damn it, thought Time Warrior, buzzing around in the workings behind Primus's visage. That would have been the perfect moment. Still, it's not too late for a slightly delayed reaction from our sleeping 'god'.

He concentrated, and froze time for all ten unsuspecting combatants in the Primal Chamber. That's better, he thought. Now I can hear myself think. According to the future Red Alert, the Autobots here would explore the area for a few more minutes, until Emirate Xaaron was ready to transport them and the Decepticons to Earth. And Primus would sleep on, until Unicron arrived soon after midnight, New Year's Day, 2006, when Optimus Prime was dead and Bombshell, who possessed a copy of the Matrix's life-giving software, had been purged and transformed into Cyclonus. That led to no good. But if Time Warrior intervened at this point in history, connected this power supply to that synapse, and closed this switch, then maybe...

Yes! He let time resume its natural course for Grimlock and the others.

The end of a slumber of eons was heralded by a scream that shattered audio sensors and rocked Cybertron itself. Beyond the fringes of known space... it heard!

THE END

[Andy Turnbull]

Nice.

Does make the waking up a tad more plausible. The shot couldn't dent Grimlock so how is it going to disturb Primus?

Andy

[Fortmax2020]

Now it all makes sense.

And a good way for Time Traveler to bring forward Unicron's arrival.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Sept 15, 2018 13:20:35 GMT Andy Turnbull said:

Does make the waking up a tad more plausible. The shot couldn't dent Grimlock so how is it going to disturb Primus?

Cheers. My thinking exactly. If a war raging on the planet that is his body didn't wake him up, why would one shot?

Martin