#barricade643sg

Is he RID 2001 Springload?

Dear Frog Foister,

No, that's Spittor—his first Transmetal form, specifically. I can see why you might not have recognised him, as in that timeline, he was transformed to a much lesser extent than many other Transmetals; when the quantum surge reached Earth, he was deep underwater, with most of the energy being absorbed by the lake, giving him only superficial cyber-circuitry (similar to the early stages of the Vehicon virus). Unlike Claw Jaw, who was sanguine on the changes, Spittor envied the new forms of his teammates, which later led him to steal the Transmetal driver for himself, and make some shocking discoveries about the true nature of the device and its alien—

In Armada it is said that Transformers are born to fight, but is this really true? If so, why do they have "feelings" that get in the way of their actions?

Dear War Weary,

It is true we were born to fight. After all, Primus created us to be his final defense against Unicron.

Nevertheless... we have feelings and emotions because we were not made only to fight—but to love, to laugh, to compete, to travel, to challenge, to build, to entertain, and to...

How did Tyran cluster's Howlback fight Bumblebee? What kind of mission was she on?

Dear Retro Reconnaissance,

Following the battle at Half Dome, Soundwave and Bumblebee clashed several more times throughout the early ‘90s. During that time, Soundwave disguised himself as a van, and was experimenting with subtler means of manipulating human minds than direct blackmail. In Detroit, together with his Pretender partner, Doombox, he infiltrated the techno scene, promoting his shows on the nascent worldwide web, and using a combination of music, psychedelics, and hypnosis to influence the behaviour of club goers. From there, he began distributing mini-cassettes to susceptible individuals with government connections, hoping to gain access to isolated federal networks. Bumblebee was able to uncover and dismantle the scheme, thanks to the help of Dairu and Zauru—but with exception of Garboil, all of Soundwave’s minions were able to escape, amongst the dozens of tapes being copied and circulated within the subculture.

Bumblebee finally settled the score with Soundwave during the Battle of Chicago, turning the tables right as the Decepticon was about to execute him. In the aftermath, the Autobots were forced back into hiding, but Bumblebee nevertheless continued to protect humanity from the shadows. While on the road, the Autobots tracked a Decepticon energy signature to Silicon Valley. There, Doombox had leveraged his Princeton connections to get in on the ground floor of a music streaming startup, and had secured a small data centre. It turned out that, before his death, Soundwave had spent years seeding the internet with viruses, tiny shell scripts that each contained some fraction of his own programming. And in a data center at the heart of the Bay Area, industrial servers were collecting and processing petabytes of concert recordings, music reviews, playlists, listening data, mashups, and the lingering consciousness of a digital ghost. Disguised as smartphones, Howlback, Buzzsaw, and Frenzy (who had escaped Seymour Simmons’ basement after the ex-agent’s rather hasty emigration to Cuba) were able to totally control the actions of the company’s founders, and Bumblebee had no way of reaching them without breaking cover. But when it became clear that they intended to turn the entire city into a new body for their master, he convinced Ratchet to help him destroy the data using an EMP blast. It was during this altercation that Howlback fought Bumblebee one-on-one, seeking revenge for Garboil, Ravage, Laserbeak, and of course Soundwave—in her UAV mode, she had him effectively pinned down, until a reckless dive-bomb brought her within reach of his new energon axe. After that, he was able to keep Frenzy and Buzzsaw busy just long enough for Ratchet to wipe the last traces of Soundwave from existence.

How did Astrotrain end up with such a small and skeletal body?

Dear Astrological Anatomist,

In the universe where one might encounter this particular Astrotrain, the Great War had been going on for so long that energon supplies were running dangerously low. Many Cybertronians on both sides were forced to undergo the Micromaster downsizing procedure, and Astrotrain was no exception, giving up his locomotive form to do so.

Is there a universe where Starscream or Thundercracker instead of Skywarp has the ability to teleport?

Dear Vanishing Villain,

Sideswipe, who was supposed to have died in the battle on Earth in IDWSG, has come back to life as new body with partner. Could you tell us what happened to him?

Dear Sideswipe Searcher,

Fresh from their victory over Megatron, the maniacal Optimus Prime and his army of Autobots rampaged across the planet, looting whatever resources they could find and funneling them into the construction of an Ark II that would take them home to Cybertron. Their rampage was thorough; within a matter of months, the victorious Autobots had obliterated most major population centers and crushed the remnants of the world’s various armed forces—as they launched the Ark, Prime gave the order to salt the earth by having Blaster hack into the planet’s various defense systems and authorize the indiscriminate launch of hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Many weeks later, Megatron awoke, seemingly the last sentient being on Earth. As the critically damaged Decepticon limped through the graveyard that had once been Los Angeles, he discovered that the Autobots had simply left their dead and dying to rust where’d they’d fallen. Megatron was instinctually repulsed by the notion of desecrating the dead, but realized that he needed repairs—and that the bodies of his former friends and enemies might be the only way to source Cybertronian parts until he could make it offworld. As Megatron lifted the body of one such downed Autobot, whispering a brief apology for what he was about to do, he suddenly found a pair of hands wrapped around his neck! As it turned out, Sideswipe had also survived the battle of Los Angeles, but had been abandoned by his comrades and left to die—even his spark-brother Sunstreaker had turned his back on his critically wounded sibling, with a parting sneer that Sideswipe had always been the ugly one.

Initially, Sideswipe wanted nothing more than to return to Cybertron and exact brutal revenge on everyone who’d abandoned him; in his current condition he could barely stand, let alone fight his way across millions of miles of interplanetary space back to Cybertron. After salvaging whatever they could from the battlefield to patch themselves up, the pair decamped to the nearby city of San Francisco, where they established a base camp on the burned out remains of the Golden Gate Bridge. Not long after, they discovered a Cybertronian Decepticon warship and the prone body of a tiny stasis-locked Decepticon named Whisper. It didn’t take much energon to jump-start Whisper’s systems, and the three set about slowly repairing the downed warship over a period of many months. As they worked, Megatron and Sideswipe had a long time to reflect on their past mistakes and come to some kind of understanding—in time, even Sideswipe’s once-legendary bloodlust faded into a resolute determination to atone for his past misdeeds.

However, when the time came to finally launch the ship, Sideswipe made a shocking discovery—a small group of human survivors had established a small village on the outskirts of the city. It quickly became clear that they would not survive on their own—they would need access to Cybertronian technology and someone with the knowledge of how to properly use it. That night, by the feeble light of the human’s campfire, Sideswipe told Megatron that he should go on without them, and wished him luck in his mission to rebuild the Decepticons.  Touched by the gesture, Megatron bade his new friend farewell—but not without first declaring him an honorary Decepticon. 

Are there any other Cybertronians named "Transit" besides Primax, Uniend and Tyran?

Dear Bus Busybody,

Of course, but they're mostly alike. Transit is little more than a low-level thug, rarely involved in matters of consequence. On Earth, he likes to hide in populated areas, where the threat of collateral damage is enough to keep Autobots from picking a fight with him.

Even amongst the Decepticons, Transit is one of the most sadistic of them all. When approaching a traffic light, he will deliberately slow down just enough for it to change to red. At a bus stop, he'll surreptitiously angle his rear-view mirrors so the driver can't see people running to the doors before they close. He swaps out his route number and destination when in motion. He declines most contactless payments. He drops most luggage from his compartment. Once a month or so, he'll pretend to break down for no reason at all. And worst of all, he isn't wheelchair accessible. There is simply nothing in life that brings Transit greater satisfaction than making people late, and so despite what he may report to the Decepticon leadership, Transit is such a miserably ineffective soldier in the "war on cars" that he may as well be a double agent.

The one incarnation of Transit I can think of who ever did anything of note did so entirely involuntarily. One of the largest Maximals ever sparked, Transit ferried Micromasters and proto-formers around Damaxus, together with his driver, Arrowbolt. With budget slashes, a standard Class-H energon ration wasn't enough to power Transit's frame, and so he was stuck in vehicle mode indefinitely—not unlike many of the Builders.

Now, Damaxus, as you may know, was one of the first cities to be overrun by Vehicons, with most of the population just trying to go about their lives in the unstable climate of the time when the infection began to spread. Transit was on his usual route, when his passengers saw the chaos begin to unfold outside the windows. Fleeing from the drones, a Cyberdroid, Omega, ran alongside the bus, banging on the door—and Arrowbolt ignored the protests of Socket, one of the Micromasters on board, to stop and let him in. One of the motorcycle drones was right behind him, and it was only the quick action of Major Mayhem, a Predacon in one of the front seats, that stopped the Vehicon getting aboard. Major asked Arrowbolt to take Socket's advice: to not stop again for any reason.

Transit's energon-starved chassis turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as his body had such poor internal conductivity that the virus wasn't immediately transmitted to his spark from his exterior. He thundered through the growing mob, as the Vehicons pounded on his windows and piled onto his roof. Major Mayhem ordered everyone to barricade the entrances as the Vehicons began to break in, and they were able to fend off the attackers for a time—but in the claustrophobic interior, their hostility soon turned to the other passengers.

The other riders were Rockbuster and Bound Rogue, both Maximals; and Yardarm, a Decepticon laborer who bristled at the idea of taking orders from a Predacon. Making matters worse, Rockbuster suggested that the Vehicons were the Builders' doing, blaming Socket and Yardarm. From the driver's seat, Arrowbolt tried to keep the peace, but Major Mayhem accused her of condescension and cowardice he saw as typical in Maximals—which in turn led Bound Rogue to brand him a bigot.

Why is this BWII Skywarp body not combinable with Magnaboss?

Dear Boss Baby,