#overthinking about robots

LOST LIGHTERS

In general, a Lost Light crew member would not want to have a child, as that sort of bums out the whole "gay space yacht adventure" thing. They could probably handle A baby IF if they passed it around between all 230-something of them. Maybe. Not really something we ought to test, though.

LOST LIGHT HIGH COMMAND

RODIMUS once unknowingly self-terminated a pregnancy by slamming into the surface of a planet at terminal velocity while meteor surfing. He spent a good chunk of time during the Nyon days making sure people could get medical help, going over city-state lines if needed. Would absolutely make taking his abortion medication into a long weekend staycation. He is uninterested in having children, preferring the role of "cool uncle". You saw how he was spacing out during the fecund moon bullshit, he doesn't have the right mentality for fatherhood.

MEGATRON got his uterus shot out by Optimus Prime roughly 2.3 million years ago. Even if he still had it, he certainly wasn't going to wear a BabyBjörn to the battlefield. More recently, feels really fucking weird about his own coming into the world, and doesn't want to ever think about procreation again.

ULTRA MAGNUS is a suit of armor that was not built with childbirth in mind.

MINIMUS AMBUS is too work-focused to entertain the idea of having a child. Would time taking his abortion pills so perfectly he'd pass a little gacha machine prize along with the blood clots. Actively writing work emails while in the stirrups. Let's hurry this up, he's got a meeting in an hour.

DRIFT had a lot of missed meals and heavy drug use in his early life, which put a lot of strain on his body and fear in him over the idea of bringing someone into the world. He had his tubes tied at some point during the Deadlock days. Would probably be very into Big Brother programs, but enjoys surrounding himself with grown adults that don't solely depend on him for survival.

LOST LIGHT MEDICAL DOCTORS

RATCHET has performed abortions on roughly 45% of the Autobot forces, including every member of Autobot high command. He would not only get an abortion, but depending on how busy the clinic is that day, he might just say fuck it and do it himself. Loves kids, doesn't want them in his house.

FIRST AID would abort, though not with quite the gusto Ratchet has. He'd have slightly more gusto after the Combiner Wars bullshit; no need to add to the number of weirdos he's obligated to care for.

VELOCITY is an avid supporter of sexual education and health. She keeps medical abortion tablets on her person at all times to pass out to anyone who asks. She's not opposed to the idea of having children, but is uncommitted beyond a vague "maybe someday". Would abort currently, given that her medical career has only just begun. All of this should be viewed through the lens of someone who grew up in a society that demanded one's closest relationships be chosen and finalized by an incredibly early age.

LOST LIGHT MISCELLANEOUS CREW MEMBERS

CHROMEDOME would invent Cybertronian baby-trapping out of fear that Rewind might leave him. However, his poor health and frequent mental health spirals would make carrying to term incredibly difficult. Miscarriages Georg.

REWIND is postmenopausal. If he were capable of getting pregnant, he would abort, as a child would not fit his high energy lifestyle, and this guy loves having bodily autonomy so fucking much. Has performed the galaxy's first gun-assisted late-term abortion, despite not having a medical doctorate.

BRAINSTORM might have hidden a baby in his torso for research purposes, but that was more akin to him stealing one of those frozen nitrogen thermos tubes they put embryos in for IVF. Invented an abortion gun while on Kimia and Trailbreaker nearly tackled him to the ground during that ethics committee hearing about it. Would only maintain a pregnancy if he thought it would help him one-up Perceptor, and even that would end up being a test tube baby that grew soundly OUTSIDE of his body.

PERCEPTOR has too much going on to have time for a child. It's for the best, really; with how intense Perceptor is, that kid would grow up burnt out and completely disinterested in the sciences and military combat.

SWERVE wouldn't be actively trying, but if he wound up pregnant he'd probably keep it. He says he's fine with others making the choice to terminate for themselves, but secretly kind of judges them for it. Would be one of those people who has their kid running around their place of business at all hours of the day/night. You wanna color with me, sad, drunk man? I got extra crayons and paper.

TEN is a Legislator, and as such was probably not built with a uterus. He would consider the lack of choice in the matter a bit of a loss, but ultimately has no interest in becoming a parent. His preferred method of creation is artistic, not paternal.

WHIRL does not believe himself capable of being a good person, let alone a good parent. He would terminate, and then get into a fist fight in the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood to cope with any feelings he might get about it. Besides, he already has a lovely adopted daughter who is actually a pile of murderous parasites that he's willing to kill himself over.

CYCLONUS is postmenopausal. He holds a lot of reverence and respect for caretakers and child-rearing as a practice, but he's lived far too much life to ever take it on himself. If anyone else on the ship had a kid, he'd be happy to fund their education with his real estate money, but he's going to stand over there, looking mildly terrifying, holding hands with his roommate-turned-lover.

TAILGATE is postmenopausal. If he weren't, he would abort due to the stress. Don't tie him down with a kid, he just got around to living!

NAUTICA has got too much shit to do to get locked down with a child; too many books to read, classes to attend, adventure to go on, close friends to brain with her wrench. A member of the Nexplanon Nation. If she did somehow manage to wind up pregnant, she won't be for long. All of this should be viewed through the lens of someone who grew up in a society that demanded one's closest relationships be chosen and finalized by an incredibly early age.

SKIDS wouldn't realize something was up until it was pretty late in the game, simply because he has so much shit going on at all times. Would have someone can-open him in the middle of a shootout behind cover, then do several unnecessary flips after the fact.

NIGHTBEAT would terminate simply because it would get in the way of his detective work. Don't ask him to babysit, either, it'll all go to hell. He is not good with children.

RIPTIDE was built without a uterus and has zero interest in having one added on. Don't do that to him. Why would you hurt him like that? Isn't there enough pain in the world?

FORT MAX would not enjoy the biological process that has a separate entity inhabit for body for the better part of a year, hijacking your hormones, blood, and the calcium in your bones to help itself grow. Full hysterectomy once he's out of his post-Garrus 9 coma. Not taking any chances.

RED ALERT has taken a Plan B every single day for the last 4 million years, because somehow the fear of immaculate conception is a universal constant.

LUG is a backpack, which is pretty good for carrying things, but babies and trowels don't really mix. She and Anode would be most comfortable adopting children that are old enough to understand how to run from the cops.

ANODE has a decent amount of baggage regarding the birthing process, and isn't comfortable putting either herself or Lug through it.

RAVAGE already has the best son, why would he want any more?

THUNDERCLASH adores children, and would provide a loving, enriching home for any youngster. He's better than your dad; yes, quite specifically you, the reader. He is better than YOUR dad. Alas, any ward who finds themself under his proverbial wing will not be his own flesh and blood (er, metal and energon?) as his protracted spark problems would make for far too risky a pregnancy. He would terminate, not for lack of want, but so that he wouldn't have to spend another pre-wake organizing innermost energon offerings.

GETAWAY is too busy scheming for a kid. Hopefully he didn't need any procedures done after he sent the last remaining medical doctors to die at the hands of the DJD. Maybe the nudge gun could get the job done, in a pinch.

BADDIES AND DECEPTICONS

THE SCAVENGERS

As a whole, none of these men should be fathers. They literally tried to go to Garrus 9 with the intent to abort the Firstborn via spark extraction.

KROK had his uterus removed at the same time as his t-cog.

CRANKCASE was present for the events of Stormbringer, and got so messed up by all the Thunderwinging that it sterilized him. This is also a man who nearly vomits at the thought of being gainfully employed, parenthood would be a death sentence.

SPINISTER was also present for Stormbringer, though he got out of it way better off than Crankcase. A proud member of Nexplanon Nation (he placed it himself). Favorite place to shop for medical supplies is any local family planning clinic, using his five-finger discount. Has a collection of abortion medicines from several different species. Whether or not these actually work on Cybertronian physiology is unknown, but he's not had any issues so far, and nobody really cares enough to try to stop him.

FULCRUM'S payload was sitting right in front of his uterus, and Spinister wasn't really paying attention on Clemency, so it's not really an issue. He's too in love with the funemployment lifestyle anyway to be a terribly good parent.

MISFIRE would be the one who had to go on a whole shenanigan and a half to get his abortion pills, and IDW would be like "James I know we let you get away with a lot, but this one simply can't go to print". But it wouldn't be JRo, because he would never allow a robot to go un-impregnated, it would be me. What am I doing with my life?

NICKEL has a habit of adopting massive, violent idiots, which are a pretty decent substitute for babies. Menopausal.

GRIMLOCK doesn't like this question and won't be answering it.

THE DECEPTICON JUSTICE DIVISION

Part of on-boarding for the DJD is getting a copper Decepticon badge inserted through your cervix. We also know that Tarn has never once fucked, so he has never once been at risk of being pregnant.

SCORPONOK... well, I mean, c'mon. His plan is now mainly just about spreading disinformation about birth control to the Decepticon ranks. He and Velocity are mortal enemies, and she's actually the one who kills him at the end of LL.

PHARMA got his tubes tied prior to going to Delphi, because he's a fucking professional.

STARSABER would never get an abortion, but he would also never have premarital sex or get married, seeing as all marriage on Cybertron up until, like, last week was gay marriage. It simply isn't something that's going to be of concern to him.

THE GUIDING HAND

All of these bastards are old as hell and would turn to dust within their first trimester, if they could even manage such a thing. For their health, abortion would be the best option.

ADAPTUS is postmenopausal. Too much of a schemer to put up with a kid.

TYREST got any desire for procreation out during the Matrix experimentation days, and look where it got him: convinced that every cold constructed bot was ontologically evil. Some folks just shouldn't have kids. Also postmenopausal.

CENSURE is a hermit living on a dead world, who has a hobby that requires a ton of travel and working with heavy materials. A child would not fit his lifestyle. Postmenopausal, which is good, considering his hermitage would probably prevent him from seeking out medical assistance. If childbirth didn't kill him, he'd warp the thing to the closest fire station he could find and get back to his life.

THE MAGNIFICENCE is a ball with an eye on it, and as such should be incapable of reproduction. There is insufficient data for Epistemus's lifestyle and personality to make any crackpot judgement calls regarding his stance on abortion.

And the biggest question of all...

RUNG

During MTMTE, Rung missed the train on having a family due to being devoted to his patients. Would have aborted during the war, since he was stationed in an area with the highest density of medical professionals in the galaxy. A bit weirded out by not having hit menopause yet.

During LL, he would mostly be questioning just why the fuck he did this to himself. It may not be physically possible to keep this man from making babies. He effectively dies during childbirth during LL #24, because as we all know:

I know, it's crazy.

The Pet takes the opportunity presented by our recently returned newlyweds being too busy flirting to pay attention to the fight at hand, leaping to chew on Ratchet's head. Luckily, Ten is an ally, even when he’s been beat to shit, and punches the shitty little Pomeranian into the air. Kaon, card-carrying freak and dog dad, takes this abject display of animal abuse about as well as he can.

Ratchet, having his gun eaten by the mouth pervert, is beginning to worry that he, his rich boytoy, and a mostly out of commission Ten might be sliiiiiiiiightly outnumbered against a dozen Decepticons, two of whom belong to the Super Murder Death Squad. Drift, after a bit of needling, heelies a dude’s face off, jumps into the air, does a bunch of sick flips, blocks a laser with a sword in such a way that it looks like he got shot in the dick, and then lands, like, 70 feet away to scoop up the Pet and threaten to chop its head off if Helex doesn’t stop trying to vore his boyfriend.

Kaon, #1 dog dad, orders everyone to fall back. Helex, who has Ratchet like 70% inside his smelting chamber by this point, can’t believe that Kaon’s ruining the fun. Helex releases Ratchet, letting him crowd onto Drama Point with Drift and most of Ten, as the Decepticons circle them. Drift, unfortunately, didn’t think past doing sweet flips to show off after his sabbatical from the comic run, and they’re back in the same situation they arrived to, but now one of them is holding a crusty little dog.

Then a platform descends from the sky, and we see what Ravage has been up to.

Grand theft auto!

Yes, it turns out that this cat can drive, and well enough to get the boys up and out of danger, though Ten’s size means that the lovebirds have to dangle off of his remaining arm. Drift still hasn’t put down the Pet. Sure hope that thing’s been socialized to cats.

Oh, who am I kidding? Kaon wouldn’t have bothered.

Speaking of Kaon, he looks like he’s about to cry, because someone’s kidnapped his princess baby angel, and Helex doesn’t even CARE, the heartless bastard, as he orders the other Decepticons to fire on the shuttle. They, of course, hit it, as there’s at least ten of these guys firing, and they’re all decently tall. The shuttle begins to lose altitude, and Ravage, who does not have traditional hands and is currently using his tail to man the control stick, attempts to crash as close to the “fortress” as possible.

Meanwhile, over at Megatron’s plinth, we get back to that whole thing where he surrendered himself to Tarn. Tarn, feeling an excuse to monologue coming on, says that he’s well aware of Megatron’s new schtick, and he’s not a huge fan of it. Megatron clarifies that he wishes to give himself up so that the rest of the Lost Light crew stranded on this planet might live, because this is his fault to begin with. Tarn agrees, reminding him that he paid for Tarn’s plastic surgery. Megatron states that he only brought Tarn to his side to hurt “someone”.

Three guesses who Megatron could have possibly hurting by bringing Tarn over to the Decepticons, and the first two don’t count.

Megatron thinks that by bumming around space on a borderline vacation, he’s returned to who he used to be (maybe he got his teaching license, who knows) and that the war was a waste of time. Tarn gets kind of intense here, because if Megatron wasted his life, what does that make Tarn? Tarn, who has decorated his home with nothing but Decepticon symbols? Tarn, who has had corpses nailed to his wall for the last couple million years? Tarn, who wears a fuckoff stupid mask every single day of his life, even while eating and trying to kill himself with space meth cut with time travel and gas station dick pills? Also, what about all the other guys who died trying to realize Megatron's ideals? What about the little guys, the cogs that made the machine run? What about Steve from accounting, whose husband left him, because he was too busy trying to balance the budget on Megatron's body remodels and Optimus Prime punching bags that also doubled as body pillows to come home? What about Steve, huh?

Megatron basically regrets everything he’s ever done, not that Tarn cares. Megatron then reveals that whole thing where Rewind tried to retroactively kill him as an infant, and how he sort of wished it had worked.

Tarn starts beating the shit out of Megatron before the guy can start going on about how his parents are Brainstorm and Whirl, though Tarn promises that this is just a healthy dose of tough love, as surely the wimp before him isn’t actually who Megatron is. Megatron doesn’t fight back, instead just staring sadly at the Autobot badge Tarn slapped off of him. This is really starting to piss Tarn off, as he was really hoping to beat some of the fire back into his former mentor and idol. This is when he starts trying to choke Megatron, even though their species doesn’t breathe. Still, I’m sure Tarn’s stiletto nails hurt something fierce.

Megatron then recalls his conversation with Velocity, and states that if the fool’s energon DID alter his personality, it was probably for the best, and he wouldn’t want to go back. Tarn, who has based his entire selfhood on the thing that Megatron threw away to live out his probation on a cruise ship, takes this statement with all the tact and level-headedness we’ve come to know him for.

Tarn is just one more double fusion cannon blast to the chest away from smiting Megatron utterly, and he’s fully committed to doing so. However, he gets distracted by the sound of Elton John’s “The Bitch is Back” coming from across the field.

WHO LET THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUT OF HELL

Anyway, it looks like Ravage can, in fact, drive pretty well, as the shuttle did crash pretty close to the “fortress”. Swerve, who still really wants to make up for his shitty boss behaviors and also accidentally dragging Ten into a microcosm of hell, lets Ten know that they saw his floor graffiti, and that it might actually work. Magnus, who still has his arm off, does his best to not kick Swerve across the room as he scurries underfoot, as he drags Ten inside the building.

Skids intercepts Ratchet to welcome him back, and also ask how the hell he knew to come to Necroworld. Apparently he and Drift had received a call from the handy dandy phone that he had given First Aid, who First Aid had then regifted to Velocity, just in case some bullshit happened. Velocity’s introduction to Ratchet is rough, as she manages to call him grumpy, old, and stubborn as a mule in the span of about fifteen seconds. Ratchet is mostly concerned with the fact that the Lost Light replaced him so soon after his return. Nobody tell him about Velocity’s track record with the medical exams, he might just shoot off into space to beat First Aid to a pulp for leaving her by herself.

Over in what might be a closet, Rodimus runs across Drift sitting in the dark and sharpening one of his swords. Drift seems to have used his exile to remember that he does, in fact, have some semblance of self-respect, as he doesn’t immediately forgive Rodimus for throwing him off the ship that he paid for, only to have given himself up as the real culprit behind the Overlordening, like, a week later, thus negating Drift’s sacrifice, and then never coming to find him, despite the fact that they’re supposedly friends, and, again, the ship is in Drift’s name, as was the crew’s allowance money. How the Lost Light has survived financially without Drift is unknown.

Rodimus knows that he sucks and is the worst, but he was really worried that Drift wouldn’t like him anymore, so he’d sort of been kicking the issue of “finding my ex-TIC to tell him he got publicly humiliated for nothing” down the road, to the point where Ratchet had gotten sick of it and went to solve the problem himself.

Of course, the meta reason for Drift not being found was so that Shane McCarthy could have his OC back, as well as Ratchet, for the miniseries Transformers: Drift— Empire of Stone, well known for being sort of silly and introducing the phrase “be shoosh” to Drift’s lexicon. In it, Ratchet found Drift traipsing around the edge of the galaxy being a neutral (in terms of war) hero to organic species affected by Decepticon aggressions, before crashing on a planet where Drift, back when he was “Deadlock”, had found a mystical stone army, one that Gigatron (a dude who totally isn’t anime Megatron) wanted to harness the power of, so that the Decepticons might claim victory over their enemies. Hellbat, Gigatron’s second in command, had gone mad doing nothing but killing over millions of years, and had been modifying the stone army in secret to do his bidding so he could "kill everything". Then the stone army woke up, Hellbat died, Gigatron died, and Ratchet went to take Drift to get detailed, because he looked like he'd been ridden hard and put away wet.

Also, if you think about it, having two former high-ranking Decepticons turning to the Autobot side being on the Lost Light’s high command might have been too many redundancies to make Megatron’s arc stand out. Perhaps, had Megatron not been added to MTMTE’s roster so late in the game, Rodimus WOULD have gone looking for Drift, finding him just in time for the DJD to catch wind that they hadn’t actually super nightmare death murdered Deadlock after all.

Drift, who can’t say no to Rodimus's puppydog face, lets Rodimus sit with him on the floor, as he apologizes for the fact that by coming here, Drift and Ratchet have unwittingly signed up for Tarn’s Political Theory and Dismemberment Slam Poetry Night, but he mega-promises that they’ll come up with something together to get through this. Drift appreciates the sentiment, but knows that Rodimus is just saying this to make him feel better.

Back at the worst fan club meetup in the galaxy, Tarn elbows Overlord in the throat and tells him to fuck off. Overlord tells him that he knows Tarn never finished his degree and only acts like an academic for the aesthetic. Tarn transforms to shoot him while reminding Overlord that at least Megatron’s spoken to him in the last few thousand years. The two duke it out with their tank modes, Overlord KRUMPing all over Tarn, before the theatre kid kicks him off and questions why exactly Overlord is even alive, given that he chainsawed his head off last year. No word on if he’s bothered to ask this same question about 75% of the people he’s here to super murder.

Overlord simply states that someone found him floating out in space and fixed him up, because it turns out that they both wanted to go after Megatron and kill his ass dead, because Overlord is sort of sick of not getting the attention he so obviously deserves. When Tarn, ever the opportunist, attempts to make a team up deal, Overlord tells him to shut up.

And then they realize they lost the old man they were fighting over.

Great work, fellas.

Over with the Autobots (and Cyclonus), Rewind’s outside, looking at that memorial to the disappeared and trying to figure out why the Necrobot laid out the names in the way that he did. He’s currently near the top, where you can see most of Roller’s name, someone whose name ends in “gator”, and Dreamwave Production’s smoldering corpse, which makes me wonder if Alex Milne ever did get all the money he was owed from his work with them. Rewind, who last dealt with the DJD not even a year ago, is trying really, really hard to not think about how many needles they’re going to jam into Chromedome’s eyes this go around.

Of course, Nautica, who has come out to find Rewind, doesn’t give a shit about Rewind’s PTSD. She wants relationship advice! She’d ask Chromedome, but apparently he’s taking a nap, still worn out from stabbing Tailgate in the brain after he rainbow-exploded all over the ship. Which happened months ago.

You know, at the rate he’s been going, Chromedome probably wouldn’t have lived too far past sunset anyhow.

Anyway, Nautica wants to know if, on Cybertron, you have to be besties before you can get hitched, because that’s how it works on some of the other colonies. She specifies that this ISN'T how it works on Caminus, which is good, given how problematic that would be, considering you need to be best friends with someone by the time you're five weeks old, and there's no telling if they're cool with platonic polyamory. Rewind informs her that it’s either one or the other on Cybertron, no double-dipping, and god help you if it’s a situationship. Nautica is asking this because she’s realized that she can’t waffle about on committing anymore, seeing as she’s probably going to die in the next hour or so, and she’d rather use that time to enter a queer-platonic partnership than get her face fixed.

Back at the Peaceful Tyranny, Tarn has, in fact, managed to bring Overlord to reason, much to Deathsaurus’s confusion and derision, if his squiggle face is anything to go by. Overlord, smug as fuck, informs Deathsaurus that in exchange for his compliance, Tarn has agreed to let him personally murder Megatron while everyone watches, because surely Tarn couldn’t actually kill his idealogical idol, because he’s a pussy. Tarn is being very brave about this, only letting the spot blacking on his linework show on his face, as his fists shake with rage.

Then Kaon shows up, begging they pull back their forces until the Pet has been returned, and the spot blacking gets a little heavier.

Tarn, who has had a very long day of tactical meetings, phone calls, facing his fallen idol, having a very unsatisfying beatdown with said idol, and dealing with known freak Overlord, handles Kaon’s inability to be a big boy about misplacing his shitty little dog with all of the tact and decorum we’ve come to know him for— he gives Kaon a big, beefy hug, acknowledges just how much Kaon loves that shitty little dog, and then makes sure that Kaon never has to worry about a thing ever again.

That’s a series wrap on Kaon! Let’s give him a hand, folks!

Tarn, who has had just about enough of Overlord in the last half hour, smashes Kaon’s head onto Overlord’s tits, covering him in viscera, as he demands he be treated with respect, because this is HIS house, where HE’S paying the bills and calling the shots, so help him god. Nickel is very displeased that Tarn’s killed one of the Twinksome Twosome. No word on how Deathsaurus feels about this, considering that a big reason he’s working with Tarn is because he refused to kill the rest of the DJD when demanded to do so, thus showing his dedication to his men. Also no word on how the rest of the DJD are going to handle Tarn decapitating their weed man.

Tarn tells everyone to pony up, as they’re about to go over and handle all the silly little bastards hiding out in the Necrobot’s “fortress”.

Speaking of which, it looks like Megatron made it home, despite Tarn blowing his tits clean off with that cannon blast. Rodimus and Ratchet carry him inside, as Magnus is probably too busy not getting his arm put back on to help, and Megatron is using the last of his energy to hold the Autobot badge Tarn slapped off his chest earlier.

Three weeks prior, on the planet of Miliarium, action is happening:

Being on your headset in the middle of a battle seems rather rude, but I suppose sacrifices to politeness have to be made, when one of your co-captains is effectively forbidden from stepping foot on any planet that’s aware of Cybertron’s existence, given that he, y’know, is the face of a cause that slaughtered billions over the course of millions of years.

(No, don’t ask Optimus how relations with Earth are going.)

Megatron, continuing to command from orbit, tells Whirl to go help Cyclonus and Crossblades with the Rust Giants’ longship, asking for no casualties. Which is sort of like asking a horse on cocaine to not freak out and kick someone in the head, if that horse also had guns tied to 30% of its body.

Rodimus asks Megatron if he’s enjoying himself, playing a pacifist run of a wartime strategy game with their lives, and Megatron says that he’s “rumbled”; which I’m not sure if I’m search-engining wrong, but I don’t know that even the British are saying that to mean they’re right chuffed or tallywackered about a situation, or whatever. Rodimus is suddenly faced with a Rust Giant that he doesn’t even come up to the knee of, but luckily we have a new superhero to save the day, by way of incredible violence.

Looks like we’re still workshopping the battle-cries.

Tailgate punched this guy so hard it caused a jump-cut to the post-battle celebration, where Rodimus shows off his multi-typefacial abilities, Megatron perpetrates his bigotry towards organics, the Cybertronians make galactic news for a not-awful reason for once, and Swerve is also here! For some reason! It looks like it’s gonna be all peaches and cream from here on, so long as we ignore the first three pages of this issue!

Hey, Cyclonus, you have to wait for him to call you, you're not an Autobot. Just because the little white guy you're Sufjan Stevens-level attached to is going, doesn't mean— Cyclonus, hey. Hey, Cyclonus. Cyclonus. Cycl—

Later, back on the Lost Light, class is in session. We finally get a look at those course Megatron’s been teaching, only briefly mentioned by Riptide in issue #29. The current course track is on the Knights of Cybertron, Megatron having assigned those in attendance to write essays tackling “pre-Functionist folklore and contested heritage”.

Today’s class consists of:

Minimus (old as balls, former high society)

Skids (the best at everything)

Brainstorm (literal genius)

Perceptor (slightly-less-literal genius)

Nautica (jack-of-all-trades brainiac and bibliophile)

Crosscut (former senator, current playwright, therefore probably has at least some sort of degree)

Nightbeat (nosy as fuck, loves to figure shit out)

Hound (former Primal Vanguard)

Thunderclash (perfect student, researcher, friend, confidante, and maybe even lover)

Grapple (not much to say here, other than he’s fucking jacked in IDW)

Xaaron (chief legal advisor for the Autobots)

And Riptide (created during the war and therefore has the least connection to Cybertron's folklore, canonically not a good test-taker)

Poor Riptide's grades don’t stand a snowball's chance in hell against his peers', but good on him for sticking with the classes regardless.

This essay was assigned to help students establish context for the Knights within a world where they have not existed for millions of years, having disappeared since they embarked on their quest to Cyberutopia; a world where information creep, the slow degradation of memory as time passes, has made them into mythological figures. Megatron posits that the only thing we really know about the Knights is that they failed to do what they set out to do, as the universe is not a peaceful place, himself arguably being exhibit A of that failure. Still, he intends to use this course to help the Lost Light’s crew understand the Knights to the best of their current, modernity-biased ability, prior to potentially meeting them. Considering that the Knights will be deciding Megatron’s fate, perhaps this is also for him to grapple with understanding his own end.

Anyway, let’s look at a plot device.

The last time we saw this symbol was during issue #46, both drawn by Grimlock on his walls, paired with the words “prepare confront repel”, and then on some mysterious fellows who were working with Krok’s nasty little friend Demus and someone called "The Grand Architect". However, the first time we saw it was with Skids in #21, after he went through Tyrest’s space bridge and talked to a giant technicolor ball of light.

Seeing this image kickstarts Skids’s memory, enough so that he interrupts class over it. Nautica has also seen this symbol, at an exhibit on Troja Major (a planet that Roberts will use as a dumping ground for many plot points in the sequel series to MTMTE) where it was claimed to be some sort of coat of arms. Thunderclash also knows this symbol, having seen it with his beautiful mind and kind heart in his visions, the same visions that were leading him to the Knights and allowing him to create a map to Cyberutopia. Nautica asks Skids to write out the symbol that he “heard” phonetically into her space phone, in a move that will prove HIGHLY useful later on. Perceptor adds in his two cents, showing off that he’s wearing the “feminine” nose-type today, stating that he had talked to one of the Circle of Light members back in Season 1, who had theorized that the Knights of Cybertron was either originally made up of OR broke down into clans, and that the symbol/map Rodimus and Thunderclash were drawing is merely connected to part of the Knights, and that there could be others floating around.

Nightbeat thinks that all this brainstorming (which hasn’t involved Brainstorm, oddly enough) is super cool and great, showing off his anime thumb in approval. When Minimus tries to give Megatron props for bringing everyone together to figure this out, he finds that Megatron is having some troubles, hunched over his podium as far as his fucked up old man toy articulation will allow. When Minimus approaches to see what’s wrong, he gets punched clear across the room for his troubles. Then this happens:

Look, I don’t care if 99.9% of the Cybertronian population can reclaim, you shouldn’t just limp your wrist at your first officer in the middle of class.

No, what Megatron is actually doing is pointing the fusion cannon he doesn’t have anymore, but had attached to his arm for roughly 4 million years, directly at Minimus’s tiny little skull. Quickly coming back to himself, Megatron is both horrified and mortified by what he’s done, offering nothing more but a quick apology before he dismisses the class and bolts, not even helping Minimus off of the floor.

The following day, Velocity’s paying a visit to Megatron’s room, which is STILL as barren as the most dire of single male living spaces. Velocity’s here because Megatron missed his appointment yesterday, after whatever happened in the classroom. Megatron reminds her that the weekly appointment is for him receiving his ration of “fool’s energon” which is meant to keep him in a weakened state, which arguably shouldn’t make it medicine in the traditional sense. Velocity reminds him that he nearly knocked Minimus Ambus’s (yeah, she uses his full name, guess she’s not been around long enough to get “just Minimus” privileges) block off, and that if Megatron had been at full strength, we might be dealing with a murder situation instead.

Though Minimus IS a load bearer, who regularly slings around a body three times his size, on top of weapons, so maybe not. Also, there’s an even smaller guy inside the first mustached guy, so honestly it’d probably be fine.

Does Velocity even know about the irreducible Minimus? Is that in his medical history? Does she even know that Ultra Magnus and Minimus Ambus are the same person? Because Megatron didn’t even know until they found that corpse on the quantum duplicate Lost Light, and Magnus was his lawyer for the trial as well as being his SIC. Really, what are the legal ramifications of Minimus having assumed the identity of a dead man, now that Tyrest isn’t there to keep up the charade and the secret is a bit more open? Does Minimus have legal claim to Magnus’s identity, or at least ownership of the armor? Can Minimus lay claim to any property he purchased as Magnus, or that the previous Magnuses had purchased prior to their deaths? Was Minimus legally declared dead prior to undertaking the role of Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, if only to make things easier in terms of paperwork? Can Minimus sign off on things, and if so, does he use his own signature, or Magnus’s? If he signed something as Magnus, would any contract bearing it be rendered temporarily void whenever he’s not wearing his work pants? How much of Minimus’s existence makes him cry late into the night with how legally dubious it is? Does Delta Magnus know about Ultra Magnus being a skin suit? I feel like we don’t focus on how fucked up this whole situation is nearly enough.

Anyway, Velocity asks after Megatron’s medicine, probably because First Aid’s medical note-taking skills often get usurped by his need to write SpringerxReader fanfiction. She mentions that what they’ve been feeding Megatron over the last year have some side effects, which Megatron seems surprised by. Considering he’s felt sickly and crampy this whole time, the side effects are likely meant to be the intent of the medication.

Velocity then takes a gander at the dents Megatron put into his head when he had his little freakout, stating that “chemo-sedatives” can change one’s whole personality in extreme cases, as well as increased stress levels, as Megatron admits that the reason he crushed his head with his hands is that he heard voices screaming. However, Megatron doesn’t think stress caused such a thing.

To recap how the last year has gone for Megatron: he was forced to renounce the cause he had led for the last 4 million years, became co-captain of a fucking Carnival cruise ship, had 95% of his crew disappear from reality, found a bunch of corpses, got slapped in the face by Soundwave’s dad, had to lie to Rewind’s face to make him okay with killing himself so that everyone else might live, got shot as an infant, gaining anywhere from three-to-five fathers as a result, visited the most passive-aggressive garden in the galaxy, got stabbed in the chest and brained with a flat-screen television and then had to apologize for it, and was non-consensually hugged by a swarm of flesh-eating insects parading around in his SIC’s skin suit.

Velocity gets a call on her smart watch, Swerve on the other end demanding her presence at the medibay, seeing as she’s the only doctor on the ship now, and there are multiple people having a crisis.

Smash cut to Swerve, Cyclonus, Tailgate, Chromedome, Rewind, Rung, and Megatron standing on the bridge, their colors looking super fucked up and light bloomed out, because this is a 40-page issue with a shit-ton of detail and characters, so we’ve got three colorists, two artists, and an extra inker on for this one. They’re meeting with Rodimus, whose fingers have shrunk down to the size of shoestring potato fries, because Swerve, Tailgate, Rewind, Rung, and Megatron heard some sort of awful noise in their brains at the exact same time. Chromedome is here to support his husband, because he loves him so, so much, kissy-noise kissy-noise. Cyclonus is here mainly to clarify that he’s a badass who no one has ever heard cry, because emotional vulnerability and expressing pain are for pussies, unless you’re doing it by way of self-harming directly onto your face meat.

Only Tailgate and Rewind actually admit to what they heard, Tailgate hearing Cyclonus berate him for falling for Getaway’s tricks and Rewind hearing Dominus berate him for not doing enough to find him. I’d imagine both Rung and Swerve were hearing things relating to their professionalism, given that Rung fucking sucks at his job, and Swerve’s gonna fry the moment Ten gets a union sorted out. Megatron, is well, Megatron, so there’s a litany of awful things that he could have heard.

Rodimus has Blaster reveal that the ship received a signal at the exact same time that these people had their little brain event. Brainstorm hypothesizes that what happened was some sort of psychological assault, perhaps of Galactic Council origin, as a means of testing a new brain weapon. Magnus, who has been up on an upper level with a clipboard up to this point, notes that they could trace the signal. Mainframe informs him that they have, but the origin doesn’t seem to correspond to any known location in the navigation, and they’d have to physically go there to see what’s up. Which isn’t sketchy in the slightest.

Rodimus wants to load up on his big, beautiful Rodpod with everyone, so they can find who did this and make them stop. When Magnus questions if this is a wise course of action, Rodimus uses American grammar to trip up Magnus’s British-based spellcheck, so he gets to do whatever he wants. This is a trick he’s picked up since Drift left, as the old game of “pitting my people-pleaser hippy dippy boytoy and my no-nonsense stick-up-the-ass sentient rulebook against one another, so whatever I wanted to do from the start can seem like a pleasantly centralized option” doesn’t work very well when you replace the boytoy with a grumpy old man who tried to murder everything with a heartbeat.

Velocity wants to join the trip alongside Team Rodimus, but Mainframe has his reservations. I don’t blame him, considering she is, again, the only medical doctor currently on board this ship. He suggests she take along some personal protection, just in case.

…I mean, he’ll definitely make sure any bad guys who come her way will die horribly, if nothing else. Also, apparently the Rodpod's artificial gravity goes all the way around.

Nautica’s spent the last few weeks tricking out the Rodpod with a fancy schmancy new teleport drive, because Rodimus was annoying her to the point where if she didn’t give him what he was moaning about she might have had to kill him. Megatron is hesitant to use the drive, but after being informed that there are safety perimeters in place that’ll keep the ol’ Rodimus Podimus from teleporting inside a asteroid or whatever, he pulls the level and they end up in the dark.

No, not space dark, don’t be funny. That’s my job, and they don’t pay me for it, which should tell you how dire the situation is. This is a special sort of dark. The sort of dark that leads to panic and lethal levels of quipping. Rodimus cuts the lights on, but it does very little to offset the absolutely suffocating darkness outside. Rewind notes that there aren’t any stars, and Tailgate admits that he doesn’t know how space works. That’s alright Tailgate, neither do any of the people who draw or color this comic. You’re amongst (created by?) friends here.

The scanners reveal that there’s something 3000 miles in front of them. And behind them. And to the left, to the right, 12 o'clock, three o'clock, six o'clock, nine o'clock, rock around the clock tonight— that is to say, they’re surrounded by something the size of a planet. After disabling the safety protocols on the Rodimus Podimus, the gang find themselves on the surface of Necroworld, where the Necrobot Censere lives and operates his many plinths to the living and dead. Megatron isn’t exactly thrilled to be back here. Nightbeat on the other hand, is overdosing on mystery, and he couldn’t be happier. Nobody’s sure what the fuck is going on. There’s no time to theorize, however, as half the gang just got blown sky high.

Everyone books it back to the Rodpod to escape the dozen attack craft coming after them, but there’s more trouble here— the teleport drive is dead. Which is weird, because they should have had enough juice to get to and from their little trip. When Rodimus tries to contact the Lost Light, there’s no response. They’re not responding. Megatron tells him that those are two different things, mirroring the same thing Optimus said about trying to contact the Lost Light after he and Jetfire viewed the will tapes. Everyone else is busy trying to figure out who the hell could be firing on them, all of them roughly coming to the same conclusion that Cybertronians as a whole aren’t terribly well liked, and the Lost Lighters have made a bit of a name (derogatory) for themselves, since they insulted the Galactic Council, caused the end of the 16-million year Stentarian war, and have ruined at least one bar with physical violence over home movies.

Rodimus tells Megatron to park the Rodpod at the Necrobot’s citadel, just in time for a missile to hit the ass-end of the shuttle, blowing off Magnus’s arm, shredding off roughly half of Nautica’s face, and giving Cyclonus an excuse to hold Tailgate in his arms. Everyone bolts to get inside, Nautica being carried by Skids so we can further solidify the straightest pairing in the series. Once they’re all inside, their attackers retreat, and we see where Censere’s gotten to in all this.

Let’s give him a hand, folks!

While Velocity looks over the body, Nightbeat deals with his personal Santa Claus being dead by way of trying to figure out what happened. Megatron, meanwhile, noticed that the craft that attacked them were of Decepticon design, and he tells Ravage to go check it out. Honestly, I doubt he was the only one to notice, given that all but three of the people on this trip were dealing with the Decepticons in some form or fashion all throughout the war, and could therefore identify the make of the crafts, if not the model, so I’m not sure what the deal is with this secrecy.

Brainstorm is brought over to Nightbeat to help solve this mystery, and he promptly identifies that some of Censere’s equipment is very similar to the stuff Tyrest used for the Aequitas trials, likely used to figure out what sparkflowers to plant where. Rewind, having popped his sparkliest nipple pasties on, because he hates Censere and wants to get glitter all over his house, asks the boys to scootch on over so he can try to call the Lost Light. Nightbeat thinks that Censere tried to sabotage a signal someone else had sent in an attempt to lure Team Rodimus (and friends) to the planet, and that resulted in the brain attack that had happened earlier in the day. Unfortunately, Censere didn’t spend any time with Rodimus the last time the Lost Light visited, so he didn’t get a taste of the ridiculous way Rodimus likes to live his life, and why the psychic attack wouldn’t work.

Rewind gets the phone working, calling Rodimus over to get on the horn. Magnus stands in the background, showing off his grievous amputation. After a bit of fiddling with the settings on their end, the Lost Light makes official contact with Team Rodimus.

Getaway, last we saw him, was very much in prison, but Rodimus isn’t going to focus on that niggling little detail right now, as he asks for the Lost Light to swing by to pick up the team so they don’t all die. Getaway sort of DOES want to focus on that detail, however, as he very much didn’t appreciate being fetish fuel throughout the holiday season, and, despite his name, didn’t actually escape that setup. No, Getaway had help.

Man, guess Megatron should’ve reconsidered failing Riptide on his essay.

Speaking of Megatron, he walks up about now to see what all the hubbub’s about. Rodimus, looking like he’s about to cry, realizes that Mainframe lied to them about not being able to track the signal. Getaway gives him points for getting that right, but really, he wants to drive home the point that the entirety of the crew wanted Megatron’s little pals off the ship. And that’s what it’s really about, at the end of the day. Getaway hates that high command gave Megatron a party cruise to live out his last days on, last days that might not even happen, with the track record of this goddamned quest. He’s sick of Rodimus and pals acting like this whole arrangement isn’t an affront to every single life that’s been snuffed out because of Megatron’s actions.

Everyone other than Whirl seems pretty bummed out by these accusations. Swerve pipes up, enraged that he’s been doomed to die alongside everyone else— he doesn’t even LIKE Megatron. Getaway reveals that at some point or another, he and Atomizer (the interior designer turned bowman, you’ll recall) approached every single crew member and asked if they thought Megatron deserved to have a second chance and also, completely unrelated, but what would you do in the event of a coup? Anyone who didn’t provide a desirable answer got visited by the nudge gun fairy— that gun that can fire thought into your brain, or just erase memories if fired dry. The collection of headaches main cast have been experiencing over the last several issues? The side effect of being shot. Skids especially does not like this reveal.

Of course, Getaway isn’t just upset with Megatron’s leadership— he’s also mad as hell what’s supposed to be a trip to find their ancestors, who will guide them back onto the straight and narrow, has, in actuality, been Rodimus’s midlife crisis road trip. Getaway wasn’t even here for Rodimus and Drift’s ass-slapping contests and insulting galactic officials who want the Cybertronians dead, but he didn’t need to be. He took one look at the Rodpod and decided he needed to kill Rodimus right then and there.

Rodimus, at this point, remembers the list Atomizer had offered him back during the trial. Magnus, biting his lip at the idea of a list existing, asks what that’s all about, and Rodimus explains. Getaway really was hoping that Rodimus would take the bait, so he could’ve blackmailed Rodimus into stepping down and letting literally anyone else take over. Probably Magnus, at that point in the timeline, given that he hadn’t gotten buddy-buddy with Megatron yet. Unless Getaway considers acting as someone’s lawyer under order of the space pope as being too close to an individual.

Getaway decides that this conversation has reached its natural conclusion, as he’s got questing to get done, and it should be moving at a pretty even clip now, since he’s excised all the distractions. Rodimus swears to come after him, but Getaway doubts it’ll happen, given what’s happening next.

While this debacle has been happening, Ravage has been busy searching a crash site, trying to uncover the identity of who the hell’s decided to attack them. Tarn commits a microagression at him, before firing his twin fusion cannons.

The call ends, Getaway cutting off the comm to all contact.

Ravage shows back up at this point, to give everyone the bad news.

Nightbeat, honey, the tragedy is in the opposite direction.

Now, that’s technically the finale of the main story, but there’s a little bonus comic attached to the end, acting as a sort of sideways epilogue to hint at what Getaway and his merry band of mutineers will be getting up to, since we aren’t seeing them again for a bit.

Our little backup strip begins right before the original launch of the Lost Light, where we see some guys we haven’t seen since the 2012 Annual issue. Shock and Ore wander around what will one day become Swerve’s, Shock convinced that this ship is actually the ship they lost 5 million years prior, the Unitrex-1. Ore isn’t so sure, but as the readers, we saw the exact moment that Unitrex-1 disappeared in issue #38, after Rodimus forgot to wash his hands while putting the quantum engine together. Shock, wanting to prove that he’s right, fumbles around in the dark, looking for the graffiti he carved into the underside of a table. Ore gets a call on his space Blackberry while he’s doing this, and we finally get the other half of that call Prowl made in issue #1, after he failed to get Chromedome to stay on Cybertron. The Duobots have 20 minutes to get Overlord’s massive, lippy ass on the ship. Knowing that that isn’t a ton of time, the two quickly book it out of the bar, leaving the spectral form of Skids to look really bummed out.

Later, at Swerve’s grand (secret) opening, we see some more old faces.

Whoa now, Drift, you’re not supposed to be back until next issue!

Pipes thinks he’s been cursed to not have friends, since Hubcap is still at his dead-end job with the Wreckers, and Riptide was too busy being in a coma to come say goodbye. How rude!

Drift doesn’t seem to particularly want Pipes around more than necessary, pushing him to be friends with Rewind, who he describes as having kind eyes. Whether Drift is doing this to keep Pipes safe from overhearing any Overlord-related secrets, keeping his ass-slapping and sexually-tense sword training time with Rodimus safe, or just because he finds Pipes to be mildly annoying isn’t clear. Pipes, however, is looking for more than friendship— he’s looking to bone down.

Pipes’s ideal partner is wide as they are tall, with tits to match and at least one alt-mode that he can use as a yacht. Drift tells him he can introduce him to Tailgate, though something tells me Pipes isn’t really Tailgate’s type, given that he can actually say what he means and doesn’t have some fucked-up facial situation.

It’s really too bad that Pipes died, because I bet he would have loved Nautica, and he would have REALLY loved Nickel.

Later still, we see all of our doctors together— even Ambulon is there! In one piece, even! Ambulon wants to tell First Aid something, and First Aid automatically tries to make it a cosmetic thing, because of COURSE Ambulon would be insecure about his bad skin, and what he really needs is a better cleanser. What Ambulon actually wants to talk about, though, is his alt mode, and the fact that the puns involved with being part of a Combiner make him want to die. First Aid understands, but Swerve, known menace to society, might not be so compassionate, as he throws a grenade into the back of Ambulon’s head, triggering his transformation. Ambulon is mortified, and Swerve does the thing that Ambulon literally just said he hates. First Aid continues to rip flakes of paint off of Ambulon, as the specter of Velocity watches, looking pretty bummed about the fact that she never got to be part of banter like this.

Later on than that, Rewind and a wheelchair-bound Rung are in the currently-empty Swerve’s, as Rewind calls Chromedome to gather up one of the groups for those storytelling circles Rewind organized to try to fix Rung’s brain. He hangs up, then tells Rung that once his brain works again, they’re going to have a goddamned chat about Dominus Ambus, which is only mildly hampered in its threat by the fact that Rewind standing is barely the same height as Rung sitting down.

Rewind then gets to work writing out the story map for when the “Shadowplay” group gets there, as the specter of Chromedome reaches out longingly for the dead version of his husband. He laments that this Rewind died without closure, but the ghostly specter of Rung reminds him that there are rules to this, and they have to leave now. Not sure why Rung’s here to watch himself be threatened by Pipsqueak McGee. Is he actually doing his job for once, helping guide someone through their grief? I doubt it, since Chromedome isn’t a hottie bo-body like Skids, and his problems haven’t (directly, at least) caused the sort of trouble that make entire star systems hate you like Megatron.

Later, during the Overlord disaster, Perceptor sprints into Swerve’s, shouting for a medic, as the rest of the battered and beaten watch. Hoist, himself hooked up to the wall by some sort of cable, while wearing his extra-special Rodimus Star, offers to help, though he’s technically an engineer, and whatever he’s gonna do probably won’t have any consideration for the soul or ability to feel pain. Perceptor was using Tripodeca— sweet, beloved, friend to all, who was the star of the post-Overlord mass funeral Tripodeca— as a, uh, tripod for his rifle, when Overlord probably noticed that the ol’ science sniper looked sort of familiar and did a lil’ grabbing with his big nasty hands. Hoist asks if Perceptor is going to stop Overlord, and considering how things went the last time Overlord was the star of the show, I doubt Perceptor thought he was gonna get lucky twice in terms of survival, especially when Overlord is riGHT BEHIND HIM OH GOD LORDY JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH

How Perceptor survived this isn't clear, but we know he did, as he continued to show up in the story past issue #15 in a decidedly alive, non-paste form. His specter watches this scene unfold, expression unreadable.

Post-Luna 1, Swerve stands in his ruined bar dejectedly, when he realizes that quite a few people have shown up to help him clean up the mess, as long as he promises to reward their hard work with reopening once it’s done. As everyone works to get things back in order, Swerve tells them to keep an eye out for a non-trashed Legislator that he could use as a bouncer, once he fucks around with its head enough to make it do what he wants. Ten’s specter watches as his shitty boss and arguable father is gifted the body that would become him, making a note to get his union going with a bit more urgency.

Later, on the day of the “Fuck Off Megatron 2-for-1 Drink Deal”, Crosscut leads Riptide, Mirage, and Nautica on a tour of the ship. Mirage notes that Swerve’s is a bit of a dive, not suited to his refined tastes in the slightest. In a booth, Getaway and Atomizer have boxed Mainframe in on either side to have a little chat. Swerve and Bluestreak talk television, Bluestreak making a little jab at MTMTE’s second season not being quite as well-received by fans as the first. Over at the bar, Highbrow and Perceptor talk about Quark, while Brainstorm watches while having his briefcase, which he is NOT supposed to have in here.

Crosscut goes on about this bar being where all things happen and where bittersweet is the most often-felt emotion, then calls Trailcutter/blazer an alcoholic as he dances on the ceiling. The specters of just about everyone on the ship watch their fallen friend, enjoying the moment and missing him terribly, as Perceptor brings them back to the here and now of the story, which turns out to be just after the holiday special, judging by the Christmas lights.

Minimus asks if this is safe, and Perceptor says that it is, as nobody can actually interact with the past, because Brainstorm is the only one who’s ever actually perfected that tech, not that this isn’t his fault either. It turns out that when you try to fly against the stream of time as it naturally occurs, you tear a few thousand itty bitty holes on the way to perfecting the process. Perceptor’s found a way to let others view the past, at least for a little while. Minimus is fine with it, as long as everyone continues to behave, and it seems like they are, as everyone mingles in Swerve’s.

The two of them sit down, Megatron handing Minimus what I’m sure is a mocktail, and Perceptor explains that while the window into the past is closing for now, it may open back up in the future. When Rodimus asks when that might be, he then immediately decides that he doesn’t want to know, instead wanting to have a fun little surprise for later. They don’t get very many of those, fun surprises.

As everyone toasts to the dead and to future adventures, the specter of Getaway watches on, smug as hell.

That’s the end of “No Guns, No Swords, No Briefcases” but that is STILL not the end of the issue! It never ends, this thing! Because the number 50 is very big and impressive, obviously this is a double-sized spectacular, and has to cap off with a note from the man himself— James Roberts.

The funny thing is, we don’t really know all that much about Getaway. We know he’s cold constructed, that he used to work for Prowl and alongside Skids, that he’s got an interest in Tailgate that he expresses in… dubious fashion, and that he’s got an unfortunate habit of standing in lighting that makes him look like a murderer.

But who is Getaway, really? What made him the man he is today?

Well, you see, it all started the day he was born.

Getaway of the Corcapsia Incursion is an MTO, who had his frozen spark ripped out of a cooler and stuffed into the lifeless husk that would become his body a few minutes before he got tossed out of the plane that was his birthplace. He didn’t want to fight, or do any of the shit he’d been told to do, so he high-tailed it out of there.

I suppose this is certainly a topic of discussion for a date. If you wanted the date to suck, anyhow.

Getaway and Tailgate are once again hanging out and drinking, because apparently they can’t have fun without being inebriated and talking trash about people who aren’t there to defend themselves. This little moment of vulnerability was in the middle of Getaway teaching Tailgate to speak chirolinguistics, because Tailgate is “disarming” and “easy to talk to” and “so much nicer and sweeter than his shitty roommate Cyclonus, who totally eats babies and no that’s not a euphemism”. Tailgate’s a little weirded out by the random diversion in conversation, but lets it go, since he is getting free sign language lessons out of this deal.

Tailgate tells Getaway about how Cyclonus held his hand and sang to him while he was dying, which reminds him how he never got those Old Cybertronian lessons from the big purple space jet. Getaway doesn’t seem to enjoy being compared to Cyclonus, or perhaps even the mention of him at all.

Then things get a little disjointed, as Getaway is revealed to have Nautica’s wrench, which he uses to uncover a hiding Ravage— except Ravage isn’t hiding, because this is a public venue and he’s a fucking adult who can drink if he wants to. Getaway asks Tailgate to come with him, so he can give him something. Most of these panels have the backgrounds blacked out. I’m sure it’s fine, and not symbolic of some shitfuckery going on.

Over in habitation suite 14, Cyclonus wakes up from his nap to find that Tailgate isn’t there. It is presumably late in the evening, though I’m guessing at this, since space is dark no matter what. Cyclonus heads over to Swerve’s, where he catches the grave sin of PDA.

Yeah, I know, you wanna hold hands too, you emotionally-constipated sap.

Cyclonus sits down at the bar, where Swerve seems to know exactly what’s on his mind. Letting Cyclonus know that Tailgate’s with another man, our barkeep gives him a free drink to nurse his wounds with. Cyclonus takes a shot, then goes to do something that appears to make him nervous.

Over in Getaway’s room, it would appear that Tailgate’s gift was a pair of clip-on mnemo-needles. Tailgate, while not wanting to seem ungrateful, is utterly baffled as to why Getaway would think he wanted surgical equipment, not even remembering the conversation they had about how cool Chromedome’s needles are. But I’m sure that’s fine, and certainly not something to worry about.

Getaway’s gift comes with strings attached, however, as the man stumbles through asking Tailgate a very important question. See, in order to become Conjunx Endura, you have to go through the Conjunx Ritus, which is broken down into four parts, which take place in a location that holds fond memories for all parties involved:

The Act of Intimacy — usually physical contact. Yes, getting your dick wet probably counts.

The Act of Disclosure — the initiator of the ritual reveals a secret or deeply personal information, which doesn’t exactly make them look good, showing trust in all other involved parties.

The Act of Profference — a present. Pretty straight-forward, despite the fancy name.

The Act of Devotion — I’ll let Getaway explain this one.

So where exactly does the consent come into the ritual, Getaway? Because it sort of seems like you’ve sprung a massive life change on Tailgate without any sort of input from him! Hell, you literally just told him what the ritual is! You two haven’t even lived together you absolute goon.

Tailgate, who seems to be feeling a lot of pressure to say “yes” to all this immediately, asks what exactly Getaway wants him to do.

While this sketchy shit is going down, we see where Cyclonus has gotten to. He knocks on a door, and is greeted by Whirl and a gun. Whirl lets him in, showing off his surprisingly nice room and collection of alarm clocks. When Cyclonus asks why he’s got roughly 300 clocks, Whirl tells him to fuck off and get to the point.

Cyclonus takes a seat and admits that he misses spending time with Tailgate. Well, “admits” in his own, Cyclonus-y way. He worries that Getaway is eating up all of Tailgate’s time, and also treating him in ways that maybe aren’t very good for him. Which he would be correct about, but it’s not like Cyclonus would ever stoop so low as to actually voice his concerns to Tailgate himself. That would be too close to admitting that he’s got feelings that can be hurt.

Whirl lets Cyclonus finish before laughing in his face at his audacity to think that Tailgate gives a shit about him or owes him any of his time, just because they share a room and did a spark transfusion. Which while harsh, is true. Cyclonus sort of talks around the real point of the matter, going so far as to say he cares about Tailgate, which for Cyclonus is equivalent to saying he’s madly in love and can’t live without him. But again, Tailgate doesn’t actually owe Cyclonus anything, especially since Cyclonus has refused to voice any actual concern about their relationship status, or Getaway’s whole deal.

That, and Getaway’s apparently hot. I don’t see it, but maybe Tailgate does. He’s allowed to want to fool around with a hot guy.

Cyclonus seems to have gotten what he came for, and decides to leave, thanking Whirl as he does. When Whirl asks why the hell he’s being thanked, or why Cyclonus sought him out in the first place, Cyclonus tells him that Whirl was the only one he trusted to give him the truth and not coddle him. With that, he leaves, leaving Whirl to think. Whirl, who has never had a positive relationship with anyone for more than two minutes without it all going to shit, is starting to feel something for Cyclonus.

The feeling is friendship. And maybe a little pity.

As such, he holds a meeting with his co-conspirators.

Oh, this can only mean good things, surely!

Whirl thinks that using Tailgate as a weapon is a bad idea, and Atomizer blames this whole situation on Whirl not dying at the hands of Megatron back in issue #28. So that confirms that Whirl didn’t steal that bow, but was rather loaned it for the purposes of suicide for the greater good. How does Getaway feel about Whirl’s sudden change of heart?

Well, considering he’s been literally grooming Tailgate for the role of sacrificial lamb, so they could get Megatron sent back to Cybertron/killed, I’d say his opinion doesn’t really matter all that much.

Yes, the entire relationship has been a farce, meant to get Tailgate to do whatever Getaway needs him to do.

We get a flashback to complete their conversation from earlier, where Getaway explained that Tailgate’s mnemo-needles would inject Megatron with an “anti-villain” virus, removing his bad thoughts and keeping him from ever returning to his evil ways! Wow! How convenient!

When Tailgate didn’t seem totally on-board with this plan, Getaway laid it on thick, appealing to Tailgate’s desire to protect the people he cares about. He also gave Tailgate the wrench to detect Ravage with, for the sake of protection. Tailgate is (quite reasonably) terrified by the idea of going to defile a former warlord’s brain all by himself, but Getaway understands! And if Tailgate is too much of a crybaby bitch to keep everyone he’s ever loved from being murdered, that fine! They just won’t get space married. Oh, but wouldn’t this stunt be just the thing to finally earn Cyclonus’s approval, at long, long last?

That last point is what finally cinches it for Tailgate, as Getaway knew it would. Given what he’s about to put Tailgate through, I hope it burns him up all even after all that work, he had to lean on Tailgate’s desire for Cyclonus to be proud of him than any love he might hold for Getaway himself.

Getaway explains to Whirl that the Ravage-detector on the wrench has been disabled, and Tailgate being beat to death by Megatron in a needle-induced panic will be a small price to pay for a genocidal maniac to finally be brought to justice. Atomizer stands in the foreground wearing some highly fashionable ominous shadows on his gun-toting arm. Whirl messes with his clocks while they converse, as if he knows what’s about to happen to him. Atomizer blasts him in the back of the head with the nudge gun while Getaway makes a bad joke, and the two leave Whirl on the floor to pass out.

Whirl, however, is much smarter than most give him credit for, and prior to succumbing to memory erasure, he pops on his holoform program, bouncing his avatar around the ship until he reaches the one guy who can and will go absolutely berserk to keep Tailgate safe.

With only a moment before she fades out of existence, Cyclonus gets the idea that something’s wrong and bolts for Whirl’s room. He passes by Getaway and Atomizer as he does, and Getaway has the gall to be cheeky about it. When he gets to Whirl’s room, Cyclonus finds the guy on the floor with a killer headache, and roughly twenty clocks that all read the same, incorrect time— 1:13.

Tailgate enters Megatron’s room at this point, not seeing Ravage on the floor by the recharge slab. Cyclonus sprints down, sword in hand, as Megatron is woken by Ravage and panics when he finds a guy with needles trying to poke him in the brain. Cyclonus rushes in before too much murder can happen, however, javelin-tossing his sword into Megatron’s chest and spin kicking Ravage into oblivion, before beating Megatron into unconsciousness with a flat screen television.

When will YOUR man do this much for you and look good doing it?

Tailgate takes Cyclonus’s hand and they book it from the scene of the crime. As they do, Tailgate realizes that Getaway’s gift and the anti-villain virus were both bullshit. However, we can’t fix the past, so now Cyclonus is taking them to the shuttles to run away from their problems, which is sad, because this is their home. As they’re running down the hall, the alarms sound, and Tailgate realizes something about his and Cyclonus’s relationship.

Tailgate, I know this is very poignant and sweet, but, again, marriage is a mutually agreed-upon decision, that happens after you two can actually have conversations about feelings that don’t require one of you dying.

The pair reach the shuttle bay, but Cyclonus is given a warning shot in the back by the security team, one of which has a machine gun. Typical wannabe cops. Cyclonus reaches for his sword, and this is all it takes for the entire team to fire on him, as well as Tailgate. Hey fuckers, swords are waaaaaay slower than gunfire!

Cyclonus scoops Tailgate up to his chest to protect him from the guns, his back getting blasted to pieces as he does. He tells Tailgate goodbye, then falls to the ground, presumably dead. The security team ceases fire, giving Tailgate time to cry over his dead not-boyfriend. Then this happens.

Of course, we’ll see that there are other conspiracies going on that involve Red Alert, but that will have to wait for the "Titans Return” comic to reveal itself. In the meantime, it would seem that Fort Max has seen the WAP crushed into the side of that mountain from last issue. Red Alert informs him that the ship, while originally an Autobot vessel, currently belongs to the Scavengers, labeling them as “deserters”. Fort Max resolves to deal with them after Demus, even though, as Red Alert points out, they haven’t actually done anything, as far as either of them know. However, it would seem that Max is throwing due process to the wind today, as he’s going off of the name “Scavengers” as an admission of guilt to selling Cybertronian tech to lesser beings. Which they haven’t done, and there’s no proof that they have, but they might! And Fort Max is going to preemptively arrest them for this crime, because they’re Decepticons.

Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me that this guy used to be a prison warden.

Fort Max wants the rundown on the Scavengers, since he’s now committed to making their lives hell. Red Alert provides him with the skinny via Autopedia.

Hmmm, Autopedia might want to look into employing some moderators.

Going off of this absolutely bonkers information, Fort Max enters the fray, armed to the teeth for what might be the battle of a lifetime, as far as he’s concerned. Oh, and he’s got Red Alert on speaker for this, so I sure hope the guy likes hearing police brutality over the phone.

With that, we’re back in the present, reestablishing the fact that Fort Max murdered Demus instead of walking slightly faster to catch the guy who was at most literally half his size, or even just shooting him in his tiny legs so he could have been captured alive.

Spinister, stop staring at the issue title, the fourth wall is barely holding up as is.

Fort Max waves his stupidly large gun at the Scavengers, stating that Demus was the lowest of the low, and pretending otherwise isn’t going to win them any points with him. Fort Max tells them that they’re being arrested for trafficking Cybertronian tech, and Misfire informs him that Cybertronian tech sucks, because they spent the last 4 million years killing each other, which left very little room for innovation. Which, uh, nobody tell him about Kimia. Or Brainstorm’s whole deal, who the Scavengers were literally providing parts for.

I guess because the Scavengers are stupid, they didn’t really consider how wartime is the best time for innovating ways to murder people. Killmaster gets name dropped, blueprints under his name having contributed to something called a geobomb, which can vaporize planets despite its small size.

We’re getting away from the point though, as is par for the course with the Scavengers. Krok steers things back on track, asking what exactly Fort Max plans on doing with them. Misfire doesn’t like the sound of Fort Max’s plan, however, and pulls the double distraction trick, ending with Crankcase blasting Max with his backpack laser guns. The Scavengers split up and book it out of Demus’s office, Crankcase and Spinister bickering like an old married couple as they run.

Things quickly turn into the galaxy’s shittiest game of Marco Polo, as Fort Max stalks through the scrapyard hunting for the Scavengers. Krok seems on the verge of a panic attack, clicking his communicator until Misfire snaps and dumps Krok’s baggage for him.

The two then struggle, as Misfire attempts to wrest the communicator out of Krok’s grasp, while Fulcrum tells them to shut the fuck up so they don’t get Tyrest Enforced. Fort Max, who I suppose can’t quite hear this nonsense going on, tries to get a rise out of his prey, saying he’ll let them in on Demus’s whole deal if they come out.

Then Misfire finally gets ahold of Krok’s communicator.

I’m not gonna lie, Krokky-baby, this is a little hard to defend

This is the catalyst for finally, finally learning why the fuck Krok is the way he is. Before he was a Scavenger, Krok headed a squad of Decepticons who had the rotten fucking luck of running into the Wreckers. Everyone but Krok died horribly, including his beloved pet (Gatoraider, though the name isn’t stated) and Radar, a guy who turned into a portable telecoms system. After the carnage, Krok took what was left, which was apparently a single finger and the concept of being named after the crocodilia order of reptiles.

Clicking Radar’s finger lets Krok know if there are other Decepticons nearby, by detecting spark signatures that carry Decepticon markers. Clicking the finger morphed into a way of soothing himself when anxious, as it would allow him to call for help if needed. Because he’s pretty anxious right now— being chased by the cops tends to do that— he checks the counter, not hoping for much, as they usually don’t run into their peers while out scavenging.

However, it would appear that today is a rather atypical day, because Radar tells him that he’s absolutely surrounded by ‘Cons.

It’s quickly revealed that this isn’t actually a good thing, as it turns out that Demus was a fucking vile little man— his Roboids™ were made out of Cybertronians.

Horrifying, thank you Max!

Krok, who really hasn’t endeared himself to his crew today, is questioned on whether he was aware of this questionable business practice. He was not. Fort Max then makes a lot of claims on Demus’s character, which, while I don’t exactly doubt them, can’t really be corroborated by the man, as his head was turned into chunky salsa a couple minutes ago. 

Crankcase picks this moment in time to call Misfire on their unsecured network, saying that he’s worried Fort Max will find out about Grimlock. Red Alert immediately picks this up, and tells Max exactly where to find everyone’s favorite Dinobot. Fort Max shifts gears, leaving the Scavengers unfound so he can go arrest Grimlock.

With Fort Max having high-tailed it out of the scrapyard, we can now return to the shamble that is Krok’s mental health. Fulcrum’s a little put off about Krok not telling him about his tragic backstory until Misfire quite literally ripped it out of his hands. Why Fulcrum never asked about the communicator, even after being directly told that he probably should, isn’t addressed. Krok doesn’t find this easy to talk about, traumatized to the point that previously he’d convinced himself that his squad hadn’t in fact died horribly, and were somewhere out in the universe, safe and sound. This is why he told Fulcrum just as much back in issue #7, and told Misfire that his old squad would come to save them when the DJD were on their way in issue #8.

Of course, Krok’s species has been at war for millions of years and everyone is awful to each other, so being mentally ill hasn’t been terribly fun, Crankcase having labeled him as cuckoo bananas over this literal delusion in the past. Krok himself thinks that just because his mental illness is more visible than some, doesn’t mean that other folks are actually better off than he is. Crankcase himself will prove this later in the More Than Meets the Eye: Revolution issue, when he’s inadvertently exposed to something that triggers his PTSD over the event of the Stormbringer miniseries.

Oh my god, is Cybertron about to get a third mental health specialist? Also, I would like to point out that since the reveal of Krok’s communicator actually being a finger, Radar has slowly been changing in color, going from green to gray, as if to signify Krok’s acceptance of his squad being dead.

Of course, the green comes back later, so this might just be a coloring error, but you’ll have to pull the symbolism from my cold, dead hands.

Fulcrum calls Krok out on being a massive fucking hypocrite, considering he was going to sell Grimlock, who is mentally unwell to the point of near-complete aphasia and extreme reactive violence, for the half-billion that would pay for that clinic he wants so badly. Krok at least has the good sense to feel gross with himself over his behavior.

Crankcase and Spinister show up at this point, Crankcase patting himself on the back for having gotten Fort Max off their back with that call to Misfire earlier. It would appear that Misfire is the only one who bothered to do his homework however, ragefully reminding Crankcase that Grimlock was a prisoner at Garrus 9, and Fort Max was his literal warden and a current cop on the prowl for people to arrest. If he gets his hands on Grimlock, Grimlock isn’t going to just take it, and then things are going to go south very quickly.

Krok agrees with Misfire that they need to go help Grimlock, admitting that he’s been a shithead the last couple hours, and that he’s putting together a plan. Unfortunately, affiliating with Demus has bitten them in the ass once again, as their inhibitor chips haven’t yet worn off, and there doesn’t seem to be a vehicle around that can carry all of them. However, Crankcase gets an idea, pointing at something off-panel.

We cut over to the WAP, where Grimlock is in his alt-mode, holding a marker with his dinky little t-rex arm. He hears Fort Max rolling through the halls on his hovercraft, looking for someone to crump with. Luckily, Grimlock is happy to oblige.

Fort Max and Grimlock get into it, and it interferes with Max’s call with Red Alert, as Grimlock headbutts him. It’s getting nasty very quickly, to the point where Red Alert reminds Fort Max to not kill Grimlock so he can be brought in. Fort Max, however, seems to be channeling some hurt over how Grimlock got out of being Overlord’s plaything for years while Max got turned into a blind doorstop, stating that Grimlock is a ‘Con now, and certainly isn’t going to give Max the courtesy of letting him live.

Guys, I’m beginning to think that maybe Fort Max is a bit biased against Decepticons.

The Scavengers  manage to get to the WAP by this point, having opened the boxes of several Roboids™ and ridden the horsies inside back to the ship. While I do wonder about the ethics of this, it does give us this sick-ass panel of Krok riding a horse while it kicks a gun out of Fortress Maximus’s hand.

Friendship is magic, bitch!

Having disarmed Fort Max, Krok demands parley. Unfortunately, he’s talking to Fortress “Guns in His Legs” Maximus, who was at Simanzi and did a rootin’-tootin’ good job there, who laughs at the Scavengers trying to work out a deal. Krok clarifies their relation to Grimlock, and how he came into their fray. Fort Max is doubtful of this, as he— as has been made painfully clear by this point— has trust issues when it comes to Decepticons. He tells Misfire that he wants to take Grimlock so Cerebros can take a look at him.

Cerebros is a very rare type of Cybertronian, as he’s a mental health specialist. That’s right, there’s another one! This is actually his foray into the IDW run, though he’s been in other Transformers media. Currently, he works on Luna 1 with Red Alert and Fort Max— whether he’s working with them is unstated, but it seems likely, given their collective past needing psychiatric help.

Misfire is willing to let Grimlock go, if it might help him, though it clearly looks like it kills him to do so. This is when Spinister, in a rare moment of brilliance, says that they’ve completely forgotten Grimlock’s opinion in all this. He asks Grimlock if he wants to stay with the guys who resort to cannibalism regularly, or go with his former jailer. Grimlock answers, in his own fashion.

Misfire, who looks like he’s about to friggin’ cry, says that it’s settled, but Fort Max was gonna just take all of them into custody anyway, so this doesn’t really change much on his end. This is when Krok reveals that the Scavengers have a bomb.

No, not Fulcrum.

Well, yes Fulcrum, but also another, different bomb, that actually works. He’s talking about that one.

Fort Max is dubious about this, but Krok stands his ground, arming the detonator with a click.

The neon green detonator, that totally isn’t a severed finger. Honest.

Fort Max has thirty minutes to go disarm the bomb that’s planted in the late Demus’s office, surrounded by loads of helpless domesticated Cybertronians. When Fort Max asks them where the hell they got a bomb, Krok says that Fulcrum made it, because that’s his thing. Autopedia backs this up, calling Fulcrum the bravest, sexiest explosives expert in the universe, whose meat is huge and whose supply of bitches is never-ending.

Fort Max tries to grab the detonator from Krok, but Krok tosses it over to Crankcase, who can and will set the damn thing off now if Fort Max doesn’t buzz off. He then death-stares Max until he decides that maybe this isn’t a bluff, and asks if he can borrow a pony to get back to the scrapyard.

I haven’t mentioned it, but the Scavengers have been extremely British these past issues. Like, real tea and crumpets-sounding sons of guns.

Later, in the WAP, Crankcase is commended for his steely visage, only for it to be revealed that his face had stopped working at some point during the ride over. Fulcrum starts passing out compliments, just like a good project manager should, while Krok starts futzing around with the ship’s navigation. Plugging Radar into the terminal, the finger’s ability to locate Decepticon sparks is amplified, going to a galactic scale.

Wow, the real success was the friends he made along the way! That’s beautiful, Krok.

Crankcase asks if this means that they’re going to actually be doing shit now, which Krok thinks that yeah, they are. They’re going to help folks, and they might even be good at it. Of course, "helping people” is a really nebulous goal, and this is the Scavengers we’re talking about, so Misfire almost immediately derails the moment by pulling out his SNERF (space NERF) gun, so they can complete their game from earlier.

Misfire, he’s the sole survivor of an attack by the Wreckers. He went toe to toe with Springer, you will show some goddamned respect!

Misfire, remembering that Grimlock’s room was completely totaled a few hours ago, promises to get the behemoth a new door, one that only locks from the inside. Grimlock tells him that he appreciates it, which stops Misfire in his tracks, as that’s the most Grimlock’s said since they found him. When Misfire tries to get him to repeat it, however, Grimlock stays quiet. Misfire compares him to Spinister, in that sometimes he’ll do some shit that’ll remind everyone that he’s far more capable than they think he is.

Like this ominous symbol Grimlock’s drawn on his whiteboard!

Wow, I’m sure that won’t be plot-relevant later on!

Later, we check in on Fort Max, flying back to Luna 1 while on another call. Fucking hell, this guy just loves to talk. This time, his conversational partner is none other than Rung. They’re talking about how the Scavengers weren’t what Fort Max was expecting, and how he’s reconsidering his approach to being the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord. Rung agrees that this might be a good idea, as the approach of “murder any Decepticon who so much as voices displeasure at being shot and chased” is a little yikes!

Obviously, when Fort Max went back to the scrapyard, there was no bomb. At least, not in the traditional sense.

Spinister, please don’t blow kisses at the cop who tried to arrest you, especially on the instructions for how to fix horrific forced body modification.

Of course, because it turned out that the Roboids™ are, in fact, mutilated Cybertronians, Fort Max had to bring them back to Luna 1, so that they could try out Spinister’s instructions. Everyone’s favorite current Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord is absolutely plastered in fluffy little animals as he flies back to base, and it looks like all’s well that ends well!

Oh, goddammit.

So this ship is connected to the folks who were working with Demus, who were supposed to be protecting him from the law and whatnot. Obviously, that didn’t happen, so these guys are down a guy to hide their weird bullet-tubes full of green fluid and alien lifeforms in the basement. Or well, not theirs, precisely, but rather the Grand Architect.

Whoever the fuck that is.

As it currently stands, the moving of the bullet-tubes risks contamination of the contents, so these two guys are going to have to abort this whole collection and focus on the others that reside on other planets.

We get a quick montage of Ratchet’s life, as he had what was the last moment together with a few people who were very important to him, or at least as he knew them. Roller had come to his clinic before he and Orion Pax and the college kids left Rodion, to ask him to join them. Ratchet couldn’t, due to all the patients in the Dead End who depended on him. He looks as if he wants to say something, but instead just thanks Roller for dropping by. This would be the last time he saw Roller, as Roller disappeared during the events of that hot spot incident we saw during the ‘Elegant Chaos’ arc.

Later, he informed Pharma that he was leaving for Earth later that day, which I’ll go ahead and say, was a bit of a dick move to not say something sooner. Ratchet leaves in the middle of the conversation, not catching Pharma asking if he should take the assignment to Delphi that Prowl offered him. We, of course, know how that turned out for Pharma.

Later still, Ratchet drops off Hunter O’Nion off at his home, then quickly leaves, saying that he doesn’t want to keep him from settling in. Hunter is disappointed by the suddenness of his departure, but at least nothing bad will ever happen to this young man again.

Yep. Nothing bad happened to Hunter O’Nion.

He’s perfectly fine, and also alive.

Anyway, each of these scenes are labeled as being unsuccessful, though in what exactly we don’t know yet. In the present, we see the Lost Light parked on the planet of Scarvix, still recharging its quantum engines from that whole thing with Brainstorm’s time adventure. Inside, Tailgate is being a menace, having apparently stolen the Back to the Future hoverboard and riding it down the halls while also wielding a fishing pole. Swerve is busy inside Swerve’s, making a drinking glass tower while he abuses his employee. Ratchet watches this injustice happen and doesn’t say a goddamned thing.

Tailgate whips into the bar and hits the less obvious of the two targets in the room.

Ratchet was the only patron of the bar today, and it’s not just because of there being shore leave, or it being No-Fun-Allowed week. See, Swerve never planned for there to be any real competition to his bar, and now Mirage, who is likely much cooler and well-liked than Swerve, has opened his own establishment, and everybody loves it, especially after the whole “Brainstorm poisoned everyone” thing.

Swerve is extra touchy as a result, and threatens to ban Tailgate from the bar forever for the grave sin of thinking that Mirage’s “Visages” might be a good time. Tailgate ignores this, asking for a six-pack of space beer for his fishing date with Getaway. Tailgate then explains the game they’re going to be playing, which involves some inconsiderate handling of Legislator corpses, right in front of Ten.

Ten is banished to work the front door, for the grave sin of having sat down for a second. Walking to his post reveals that someone has graffitied his back.

Love how Tailgate still refuses to use Whirl’s name. And I don’t think pointing out how Dominus Ambus could have done more for Cybertronian society to make up for being such a nasty little creep to his own subordinates is a bad thing, Swerve.

Apparently Swerve isn’t the only bitch on this ship in a foul mood, as Ultra Magnus has apparently been interrogating folks about a missing datapad and demanding that Swerve treat Ten with basic decency. I would personally like for Union Magnus to put Swerve in the brig for his shitty boss crimes, but we don’t have time for that right now, because Ratchet just realized he’s late for something.

It’s the goddamned court case for Brainstorm’s time crimes.

Yes, for once we’re actually using due process, as the “Lost Light Internal Legal Affairs Committee”— L.L.I.L.A.C., like the room’s paint job— consists of Xaaron, who I’m sure is thrilled to finally be able to do something, Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, and Megatron, who has apparently decided he’s not going to attend. What he could possibly be doing instead is beyond me, it’s not like he’s got any sort of social life on this fucking ship. There’s also a public gallery, made up of folks who were involved in some way in the events of the time travel nonsense. Chromedome is acting as Brainstorm’s defense, I guess because no one else wanted to.

Brainstorm immediately makes things difficult for himself, asking why Rewind wasn’t also put in prison to await trial, seeing as he’s the one who actually shot Babytron. Ultra Magnus reminds him that Rewind had a whole thing with the DJD the day before all the time travel, and that the little man was traumatized to the point where they could excuse him shooting an infant, especially since Whirl fixed that oopsie pretty quick.

Rodimus cuts in here, bringing up Brainstorm’s face plate— that’s right, the man’s basically naked for his trial— and after a little futzing around, manages to get it to show off the hidden Decepticon badge on the inside. Brainstorm is pretty cavalier about it, which seems to piss Nautica the hell off, as she storms out, leaving the wrench she squeezed out of shape behind. I’m not sure why exactly she’s so upset about this, seeing as she wasn’t even around for the war. Brainstorm then goes on to explain why exactly he’s a Decepticon.

Of course, L.L.I.L.A.C. has their doubts, considering what happened on the quantum duplicate Lost Light was caused by that Brainstorm deciding he wanted them to come get Overlord. The current Brainstorm, however, has a theory on why exactly that happened, making a bad joke as he explains that he’s actually a horrendous double agent, and needed to show the DJD that he was on the up and up, by giving them one of their most elusive List members.

Ultar Mgsuna— Rodimus has been fidgeting with the name plates this whole time— asks for any final statements. Brainstorm, deciding that shutting up isn’t on his schedule for today, decides to let everyone know that he very much doesn’t appreciate being bullied into taking the blame for something that he didn’t even personally do, quantum duplication bullshit be damned. Plus, it’s not like the DJD were exactly faultless, considering they were the ones who did the actual murder.

Perceptor, this isn’t how courtrooms work, sit down.

Magnus, after taking a moment to marvel at how out of order this court is, informs Brainstorm that a committee decision has been reached; Brainstorm can’t be held responsible for the deaths on the alternate Lost Light, for reasons Brainstorm already stated, and the fact that he’s a Decepticon can’t really be charged, as merely being a part of the faction isn’t actually a crime, and it would also mean that Ravage would have to be put in jail, and also that Megatron’s deal would have to be opened back up, which nobody really wants to deal with. However, attempted murder is still a crime, and as punishment, Brainstorm’s time machine will be destroyed, and he’ll be chaperoned in his lab at all times, as well as be forced to cease all communication with his Decepticon handler.

Brainstorm is very surprised that his actions haven’t earned him a booting off the ship, but states that the Lost Light is his home, and he’s glad to be able to stay. This moment gives Ratchet pause, as he’s taken back to the last time something like this happened, and the results of that decision.

After the trial, Magnus goes a-banging on Megatron’s door, to question him about the datapad from earlier, and also the whole “not being at the trial” thing, but that feels like more of an afterthought. Megatron says that he’s been busy, but we don’t get any resolution on what exactly he’s been up to, because it’s time to go get shitfaced.

In “Visages”, we see Getaway and Tailgate having a drink, as Tailgate regales him with his time travel escapades. Getaway decides that now would be a good time to practice his negging, as he not-so-subtly implies that Cyclonus has been talking shit behind Tailgate’s back, even telling folks about Tailgate being a crybaby bitch while he was dying of cybercrosis. Tailgate is very hurt by this, having thought he could trust Cyclonus with that sort of vulnerability. So hurt, in fact, he forgets that Cyclonus just straight up doesn’t talk to people without provocation, unless it’s Tailgate himself. Why exactly Getaway is acting like such a shitbird will be better understood later, but for now, it looks like he’s doing this to have Tailgate all to himself.

Tailgate complains of a headache as Getaway pours him another drink and swears him to secrecy on what he’s told Tailgate about Cyclonus. Ratchet walks by, not having caught this conversation, asking to borrow Tailgate’s hoverboard.

Smash cut to said hoverboard having been put in a quarantine tube, as Ratchet goes down the list of all the folks he needs to check for the super-scraplets that have apparently infested it. Though it seems like there’s a hidden motive to these checkups, as he’s only invited his friends to them. He chews Rodimus out for being inconsistent with his punishments, saying he was too hard on Drift. He reminds Nautica that Brainstorm is an M.T.O., and would have been destroyed if his plan had worked, making it a selfless act to try to make the galaxy better. He tells Rung to do his fucking job and check on Hoist, after his fucking roommate got super-murdered by an office chair, and also tells him to talk to someone himself. He tells Skids to go check on Rung. He tells Swerve to invite Megatron out, in an attempt to get some business back at his bar. He checks in on Magnus, who reveals that he doesn’t feel respected, showing off the tiny figure of Minimus Ambus he found outside his office. He’s taken it as an insulting comment on his true self.

Later, First Aid calls Ratchet out on being a weirdo who can’t talk to people without having to build up an entire false scenario first. Ratchet doesn’t really acknowledge it, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have had time to do it before Tailgate comes flying in.

Tailgate apparently got himself a new board, courtesy of Ten, who even went so far as to put a sick decal on it, of Tailgate opening a Matrix. Ratchet recognizes the art style, and decides he’s got someone else to talk to before the day is done.

Ratchet finds himself down in the boiler rooms, knocking on a vent door labeled 10. Inside is— you guessed it— Ten, who invites him to come down the vent and enter his home, which he’s decorated all by himself.

Notice how Swerve is nowhere to be fucking found on this mural.

Ten also builds models from scratch— he’d have to, I doubt Flame Toys ships to outer space— and he’s made several members of the crew by this point.

Shane McCarthy slipped Roberts a twenty to set up this slowburn between his OC and Ratchet all the way back in MTMTE #4, I’m fucking telling you.

Ratchet stops thinking about his crush long enough to realize he completely missed the Magnus-centric display off to the side. It’s got Ultra Magnus, his office, his alt mode, Minimus Ambus and his alt, and the irreducible Minimus, though no alt counterpart is present for that one. That would be spoilers~ Ten’s model of himself is over there as well. When asked if Ten likes Ultra Magnus, he acts like a giddy schoolgirl.

Ratchet also notices the missing datapad that had Magnus so angry. Turns out Ten was trying to do a little trade, having left the figure of Minimus in exchange for the datapad. Ratchet violates Magnus’s privacy by reading the contents of the datapad, finding some personal writing. Ratchet, not wanting Magnus’s frustration over having his personal effects messed with to hurt Ten, writes a little note on the datapad before he has Ten hand it back over to the rightful owner.

Later on, it would seem that Minimus is feeling more at ease, having left his Magnus armor at home as he enters Swerve’s, with Ten by his side. In the background, Skids marvels at a model of the Lost Light Rung’s put together. When they go to sit at the bar, Swerve tries to make a scene, furious that Ten would try to act like a person. When Minimus threatens to move their hangout to “Visages”, Swerve reveals that he invited Megatron to “Visages” earlier, and the poetry reading he did there emptied it out real quick. Minimus says something that implies that his datapad contains his attempts at poetry, and in turn, self-understanding.

We get a full reading of Ratchet’s message to Magnus, as scenes of reconciliation, relationships built on lies, stagnation, destruction of a life’s work, and theft for unknown purposes play out.

Well that’s not ominous at all.

When First Aid enters Ratchet’s room, he finds only a phone, to be used if the new CMO should need him. Ratchet, having finally decided that he needs to be the one to finally right the wrongs of the past, has left the Lost Light, setting out with his custom model of Drift, to find the real deal and bring him home.

Nautica and Skids are still on the Vis Vitalis, and boy howdy are they having a time. Not a “barnacle zombie” sort of time, a “private dance party” time. Skids dips Nautica (I think. All the friggin’ kibble is getting in the way of seeing any hand that might be on her back) as he comments on how good of a dancer she is. Nautica deflects, saying that she’s been too shy to really do much dancing prior to this, and it’s not like the Lost Light has many opportunities to break the boogie out between universe-ending crises.

Skids really just went in and flirted with someone without knowing their gender. What a Bicon.

It turns out that Nautica’s home planet of Caminus has a major focus and prioritization of the arts. Firestar flourished in that environment, seeing as she’s an acrobat, actor, and dancer, while Nautica was more of an outcast, what with her being a quantum mechanic. Needless to say, she was pretty eager to go when Windblade called on her to help with the Metroplex thing.

Nautica then reveals that the only reason she’s besties with Firestar is because over on Caminus, if you’re a loner past a certain age, you’re labeled as a social outcast. The actual term used is “persona non grata” but I’m assuming it’s not being used in the legal sense. At least, I fucking hope not. Firestar didn’t have a bestie at the time either, so, perhaps as an act of desperation, she nabbed Nautica, the biggest nerd on the planet who also didn’t have friends. Nautica, not wanting to commit social suicide, rolled with it, despite not totally loving Firestar’s personality.

Wow, Skids is divorced? Never would’ve pegged him as the sort to tie himself down in the first place, but damn.

On Caminus, platonic divorce is seen as the worst thing you can do to a person, and it’s highly encouraged that you work it out instead. Considering that it’s socially unacceptable to be single beyond 10 mega-cycles after your creation, there must be a swarm of folks in loveless friendships over there.

Actually, let me look up how long a mega-cycle is in IDW2005—

Oh, you can’t be serious. No wonder Nautica is miserable in her queerplatonic relationship.

While Nautica’s been explaining the shitshow that is Caminus, Skids has had himself a little sit, and seems to be slowly losing consciousness. Nautica notices this, and straddles the man before she notices the barnacle zombies surrounding them.

Because Skids is very weak right now, it’s up to Nautica to save the day. She readies for fisticuffs, getting promptly clocked in the face for her troubles. The sight of a woman being harmed causes Skids to pass out, and the two are quickly swarmed.

Over in the morgue, Nightbeat and Getaway are still dealing with their own collection of barnacle zombies. Nightbeat’s trying to work through what the fuck is going on, and Getaway gets snippy with him while avoiding getting smooched by a zombie. Nightbeat tries to return the snark, but gets his tit slashed while he’s distracted.

While he’s knocked on his ass, Nightbeat works out that the barnacle zombies were using Countdown as an incubator, and took just a little too much from the guy, thus killing him. This is also the fate that awaits anyone infested with these nasty little things. Better watch out, Getaway.

A rocket blast gets one of the zombies behind Nightbeat, and we finally see where Ravage got to. Ravage had torn into the morgue to try to get away from whatever was setting off his attention deflectors, but they had stopped pinging once the barnacle zombies had been revealed through the power of Nautica’s magic wrench. Here’s a quick rundown of how this works, pulled from last issue.

So whatever’s going on with these barnacle zombies works on the same principle as Ravage’s cloaking.

Getaway would very much like to get away from all the zombies, but Nightbeat needs to look at that famous corpse again, this time with the wrench light properly on it. As expected, it’s covered in barnacles.

Over in the Medibay, Minimus, First Aid, and Velocity are being assailed by the zombies as well, though Velocity seems perfectly capable of putting up a fight, as she fastball-specials a chunk of medical equipment that’s half her size into the throng of creatures. Firestar and Skystriker walk in to see what all the hubbub is about, only for Skystriker to immediately be torn to two. Also, everyone keeps calling him Skystalker, who is a completely different guy with the same color scheme. Looks like someone pulled an oopsie during the editing process.

They have First Aid check the vitals on Skystriker’s lengthways-ed body, as if he doesn’t have enough bullshit going on with Ratchet having run off to go get plowed by a 30-foot tall weeaboo. Luckily for First Aid, and everyone else, the hero of all hours has finally gathered the strength to do what must be done.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause to… him.

Nobody does it like you, babe.

As they’re escaping, Velocity notices that the barnacle zombies are having some sort of reaction to Thunderclash. A manifestation of lust, perhaps, for the most beautiful Cybertronian? No time for theorizing, we must flee.

Back on the dance floor, Nautica’s crawled out from under the pile of zombies to stick her fingers into an electrical socket, electrocuting them all and allowing her and Skids to escape. The Vis Vitalis might need a visit from an electrician to make sure all the wiring’s up to date, that seems like quite the surge.

Firestar and Velocity run in at this point, while the fellas seem to have opted to drive. Nautica and Velocity catch up real quick, while Minimus tries to shut the door manually, seeing as Nautica’s power outlet trick likely blew the power. First Aid tries to rouse Skids to help, but honestly, considering how fucking strong Minimus is, I think we could probably let Skids take his nap.

Nightbeat and Getaway speed through the gap, Ravage riding on Nightbeat’s back. Between this and Cyclonus tucking Tailgate into his pilot’s seat, I’m beginning to think that letting someone sit in your driver’s seat is a lot more intimate than one might think at first blush. Earth must have taken some getting used to.

Or maybe a lot of getting used to.

Nightbeat waves the wrench around to check folks for barnacles, while giving everyone an earful on his working theory on what the hell is going on. He thinks that the barnacle zombies are a sort of super-chameleon species, that can become completely undetectable for the purposes of feeding on their hosts.

Then Velocity remembers a sentence structure issue so slight that I’m sure Minimus briefly considered marrying her on the spot for it, and we find out that Firestar is a fucking liar. She’s not the first officer of the Vis Vitalis at all, and she certainly didn’t save this ship from certain doom— in fact, it was the opposite that happened! After Nautica, Chromia, and Windblade fucked off into space for Metroplex reasons, Firestar, Velocity and the rest went to go look for them. They crashed into an asteroid and their pilot died on impact, necessitating Thunderclash come save the day.

Skids wakes up briefly for this news, and also probably because Nightbeat just shone a bright-ass light in his face looking for barnacles. Needless to say, Skids has them in spades. Now we just need to find out why exactly only certain folks are getting infested with parasites.

Now, what do Getaway, Skids, Thunderclash, a star athlete, a military general, and the star actor pilot from Firestar’s crew have in common? If you said “being hot”, that’s… actually not that far off.

Personality ticks are native to the planet of Marasma, which is where Firestar got her hair dye from. They snuck onto the ship and latched onto the pilot, who was one of the greatest actors of her time, which is why she immediately expired when the crash happened. Then they got ahold of Thunderclash when he came to the rescue, because he is the most beautiful, wonderful, charismatic, giving, kind, stunning, generous and understanding creature to ever grace the galaxy with his presence. This is why he had such a slow decline into near-death, despite his spark injury being fixed. His spark injury that was fixed by one of the personality ticks themselves!

I don’t think that tick was licensed, but let’s roll with it for the sake of getting to keep Thunderclash around.

Still, knowing how all this happened doesn’t automatically fix the issue, as Getaway and Skids are still dying, and god knows how Thunderclash is faring, considering that his paint job was already pretty sepia-toned at the start of this arc. Minimus tells everyone to shut up, his mustache turning into an arrow briefly, before he gets pummeled by the door exploding open. The personality ticks are here for blood.

Velocity goes into attack mode while Firestar cowers in the corner. Nightbeat gets his tits slashed again. Nautica makes a bomb out of innermost energon and Firestar’s hair. All this, and the ticks are still coming. Then the bad bitch that Firestar wishes she was walks in and all is well.

Later on, we’re over on the Lost Light giving blood donations to all the guys who had ticks. Magnus, now back in his armor, because I guess the ticks would’ve gone for it if he’d worn it over to the pre-wake, is discussing just what the hell happened with Nightbeat. Nightbeat, ever a lover of the reveal, explains his thought process for what could stop the personality ticks. However, it turns out that Nightbeat isn’t the only man with a brain on this ship, as Rodimus and Megatron were called by none other than Skater. You might remember Skater as the guy who got his tit honked in the previous issue. He, along with fellow faceless friends Flex and Borer, figured everything out and got a solution rolling.

Now that the ticks aren’t chewing on his spark anymore, Thunderclash is set to make a full recovery, and could actually join the Lost Light, now that he no longer needs the Vis Vitalis to live. Ultra Magnus is excited by this prospect, but who wouldn’t be? It’s fucking Thunderclash. Damn shame about the map he made being destroyed by all the post-party ruckus, though.

Over in the shuttle bay, Firestar and Nautica are saying their goodbyes. Firestar is ready to get the hell out of dodge, considering she saw a man get torn in half and had to retire her pride in the same day. Firestar then says that they should consider seeing other people, because she realized how backwards she had everything this whole time; the one who’s got catching up to do is her, not Nautica.

Nautica, knowing how this will go, considering Firestar is the only one headed back to Caminus, refuses, saying that their relationship is just fine, and there’s no reason to destroy Firestar’s social standing over being completely different people. They hug, and the Vis Vitalis shoots off for home.

… I sure hope they discussed that with Thunderclash before just running off, he looked pretty unconscious in that last scene.

That night, at Swerve’s, it’s time for EarthDance, featuring a playlist that I refuse to believe Blaster of all people would approve.

Tailgate makes a request for a secret song. Bluestreak is serving out of a bottle with what might be a Decepticon insignia on it, which has some strange connotations. Everyone is dancing like a fucking lunatic, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Riptide might be playing “Fuck, Marry, Kill” with Ravage, not realizing that one of the options he’s provided him with is his own son.

Tailgate walks up to Cyclonus and asks him to dance. Cyclonus, once again, refuses, stating that it would be embarrassing. Tailgate, pulling from the shit Getaway said earlier, mutters about always being embarrassing to Cyclonus. Cyclonus catches at least some of this, but Tailgate refuses to elaborate, and you know damn well by this point that Cyclonus ain’t gonna clear the air because talking about feelings is for pussies, or something.

It’s at this point that the song Tailgate requested comes on; it’s Cyclonus’s favorite Earth song, “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News.

Here’s a fun thing to do: in a separate tab, pull up “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News, and stare at this specific image of Cyclonus:

Ridiculous.

Cyclonus, my dude, what the fuck is your arc even doing? You’re a rich old man with a massive sword and a love for a single 80’s power ballad, but you won’t dance and if anyone were to point out how down bad you are for your roommate you’d probably stab them. You are a fucking mess, and I love you for that.

Cyclonus, having realized that he might have fucked up, looks for Tailgate, but alas, too little too late. Getaway has claimed the marshmallow’s dance, swinging him like he’s about to slam the little guy into a wall.

Velocity reveals herself to have stayed with the Lost Light, entering to her own theme music, and Firestar is revealed to have gotten one last jab in at Nautica.

At the bar, Skids congratulates Swerve on an awesome party, and Swerve has a little smile to himself at a job well done. What a great ending to this rollercoaster of an arc! Cheers all around!