Cycle Drone

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This article is about the Vehicon drones that turn into motorcycles. For the Decepticon drones that also turn into motorcycles, see Motorcycle drone{{#switch:{{#sub:Motorcycle drone|-1}} != .= ?= .

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Cycle Drones are Vehicons from the Beast Machines portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Cycle Drones (also Motorcycle Drones) are the spearhead of Megatron's Vehicon forces. These deadly sparkless drones chase down fugitive Maximals with their astonishing speed and maneuverability, and finish them off with their lethal pulse weapons. While their computerized brains are simple, their general Thrust leads them quite ably. A Cycle Drone's main strength is in numbers; swarming around their targets and confusing them with pulse fire. They use this advantage well, always travelling in large phalanaxes across Cybertron.

Fiction

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Beast Machines cartoon

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Voice actor: N/A (English), Nobutoshi Canna, Isshin Chiba, Yūichi Nagashima, Mitsuo Iwata (Japanese){{#if: |, {{{2}}}}}

Cycle Drones were used by Megatron in his conquest of Cybertron. Forbidden Fruit

The Cycle Drones were the second type of Vehicons encountered by Optimus Primal's Maximals. Immediately after the Maximals had been reformatted into new technorganic forms, Cycle Drones stormed the Oracle chamber. Unable to transform, the Maximals were forced to flee. The Maximals managed to evade the drones for a time by dodging them as they came up upon a crevice, forcing the drones to overshoot them and double-back. Upon their return, the Cycle Drones' forces were diminished, as half of them were forced to stay behind and use their bodies as ramps, to enable the other half to jump the gorge and engage the Maximals once more. The drones then split up to track down the Maximals. While each of the Maximals took out one drone each, the remaining ones took on Optimus Primal and managed to force him off the cliff edge. Optimus scrapped these as well when he managed to transform, and used his new body's power offensive capabilities against them. Afterwards, only two drones remained. Optimus attempted to interrogate them, but they remained silent, until they struggled free of his grasp and drove away. The Reformatting

Optimus Primal next encountered the Cycle Drones when he ventured within the Council Citadel in Cybertropolis. Primal managed to make short work of an entire squad while still in beast mode, before he managed to escape into the citadel’s inner chamber. Megatron later allowed the drones to storm his throne room after his confrontation with Optimus. Cheetor and Blackarachnia quickly took out the first wave of drones when they arrived to extract their leader. A second wave of Cycle Drones then arrived, forcing the Maximals to retreat. The Cycle Drones lacked the finesse needed to follow their targets into the narrow underground tunnels the Maximals scurried to. Master of the House

The drones were granted a leader shortly thereafter when Megatron bestowed Waspinator's spark upon a Cycle Drone, creating Thrust. Fires of the Past

A squad of Cycle Drones participated in an attack against Cheetor, Nightscream and Rattrap when the three Maximals infiltrated a Vehicon assembly factory. When Thrust was taken out, all of his drones de-powered as well. When all three Vehicon Generals were taken out, Megatron took direct control of the Cycle Drones. But in the wake of a power-feedback, Megatron was rendered weak, and all of the Vehicon drones were rendered offline for half a solar cycle. The Weak Component

After Thrust and his drones discovered the Maximals' latest base of operations, they chased them out of their camp, and into a spark-extraction factory. Though the drones managed to corner the Maximals, Optimus swept them away with a wave of coolant before the drones could finish them off. Discovery

Optimus, Cheetor and Rattrap ventured to a hangar housing several Vehicon Moles in order to commandeer one. They found the storage facility guarded by a squad of Cycle Drones. The drones were destroyed with relative ease. The Key

Once Megatron gained access to the Key to Vector Sigma, he armed his Cycle Drones with the Key's code. The drones helped their general search the streets for the Maximals, in order to test out the power of the Key. Eventually happening upon Blackarachnia, the drones fired the Key's power wildly in her direction. Blackarachnia evaded the first volley of attacks. By the time the Cycle Drones finally caught up to her, their general's former personality had been awakened by Blackarachnia. Waspinator was confused as exactly how to proceed on how to stop his troops as they attacked them. A stray Key blast re-established Thrust’s shell program, and the Vehicon General ordered his drones to continue their assault. Then the rest of the Maximals burst in, riding a giant vine. Both the Cycle Drones and the Aero Drones concentrated their fire on the vine, beginning a techno-matter infection that threatened to contaminate Cybertron’s organic core. The Catalyst

Cycle Drones patrolled the streets while the Tank Drones prepared to unleash the power of the Key to Vector Sigma on a planetary scale. The Maximals showed up, and the Cycle Drones tried to destroyed their enemies once more. In the end, both the power of the Key to Vector Sigma and of the Plasma Energy Chamber were unleashed upon Cybertron, despite the Vehicons successfully defeating Optimus Primal's troops on the battlefield. End of the Line As the two conflicting energies clashed, the sum total of the Cycle Drones were shorted out. Their idle forms could be seen littering the streets of Cybertropolis after Optimus siphoned away both the Plasma and Key energies into the Oracle. Fallout

Once Megatron retook control of Cybertron's system aboard his new body, the Grand Mal, he reactivated the Cycle Drones. All of the Vehicons sprung back to life, and drove the Maximals back underground once again. Prometheus Unbound

Later, Jetstorm and Thrust found Nightscream looking for Noble in a wrecked distric of Cybertropolis. Thrust deployed a small number of Cycle Drones to toy with his target before allowing Jetstorm to move in for the kill. The attempt was interrupted by the arrival of the other Maximals. Thrust and a couple of his drones went after Optimus, while a few more of the Cycles went after Rattrap. The battle went in favour of the Maximals until Megatron showed up and abducted both Optimus and Cheetor. Thrust nonetheless lost track of Nightscream when Noble appeared and took away his friend from the battlefield. The Vehicon General eventually found him once more. He and a pair of his Cycle Drones were driven off by Savage and the newly reawakened Silverbolt. In Darkest Knight

Thrust led another small squad of Cycle Drones against the Maximals once more when Megatron’s next dastardly scheme was put in motion: the Maximals had been infected by a Hate Plague that caused the "sheep," as Thrust put it, to turn against one another. In their state, the Maximal troops were easily baited into following the Vehicons while Megatron busied himself in philosophical debates with Optimus. The drones were still destroyed though. A Wolf in the Fold

When a spaceship crashing down signaled the possibility of more Transformers returning to Cybertron, Thrust led a squad of drones to destroy any possible survivors. The Cycle Drones were also used to slow down the Maximals’ own efforts to reach the shipwreck. As usual, this only resulted in a heap of scrapped Vehicons. Home Soil

Thrust and his drones continued to bedevil the Maximals, despite now being severally out-gunned by the organics. Further attacks carried out by the Vehicon General and his drones proved completely ineffective… until Megatron introduced two new generals to the war, with matching drones. The Strike

With Strika and Obsidian added to the Vehicon roster, the Cycle Drones became much more organized. On Megatron's orders, Thrust led his drones to Iacon, where they attacked Nightscream while Optimus was distracted by some of Megatron’s holographic trickery. Whatever drones weren’t destroyed by Nightscream were summarily thrashed by Noble when he stumbled upon the scene. The Search

Thrust and his drones worked inner security on the Grand Mal as Megatron made his first attempt at ascension. They encountered the Maximals, but were locked out of the fortress's inner chamber by Rattrap. The Siege

With the Grand Mal now in control of the Maximals, the Vehicons moved in to make a final assault against their adversaries. Thrust and some of his Cycle Drones encountered Silverbolt, Nightscream and Blackarachnia stranded outside of the fortress. Thrust was tricked into blasting his own troops when the Maximals managed to slap a modified scrambled field generator onto him. More of the remaining active Cycle Drones were blasted by Strika, caught under the same illusion as Thrust was thanks to the Maximals' holographic technology. Endgame Pt. I: The Downward Spiral

The Cycle Drones were deployed one last time as the Vehicons launched their final assault against the Maximals, now in control of the Grand Mal. A great number of them were destroyed by Cheetor. Nonetheless, the Vehicons eventually overpowered the Maximals due to their sheer numbers. A group of Cycle Drones equipped with spark extractors felled all of the Maximals, save for Primal, immediately prior to Cybertron's reformatting. When Legends Fall

Beast Wars: Uprising

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Games

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Transformers Roleplaying Game

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Cycle Drones were fast-moving scouts who specialized in running down unprepared targets. Technorganic Secrets

Toys

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Beast Machines

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  • Motorcycle Drone (Basic, 2001)
The Motorcycle Drone was released in the sixth and final retail-release wave of the Beast Machines toyline, as part of the "Battle for the Spark" subline. It transforms into a maroon and silver Cybertronic motorcycle, and although its instructions give it a two-legged robot mode with "feet", it can also be left partially untransformed to more closely resemble the show depiction.
It features a missile launcher in the left tailpipe/right arm, activated by pressing on the spark crystal. Inserting a missile opens up the panels on the forearm, while firing the missile then makes them snap shut, while the right tailpipe/left arm can just store a missile in it. The Spark crystal doubles as the launcher button and is not a fully translucent dome like most other sparks in the line.
This mold is based directly on the Thrust/cycle drones animation model from the cartoon rather than the Deluxe Thrust toy released the year before. Thus, it was redecoed as Thrust for release in the Japanese Beast Wars Returns line several years later.

Notes

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  • Throughout the course of the show, the Cycle Drones were sometimes depicted as the same size as Thrust, and sometimes significantly shorter. Specifically, they were shorter than Thrust in "The Weak Component", "In Darkest Knight", and "A Wolf in the Fold".
  • In the Japanese dub of the series, the Cycle drones would express their mindless nature by chanting "Always work hard, work hard!" (ばりばりばりばりよろしく! Baribari-baribari yoroshiku!) for every second they were on screen. This became so irritating that even the characters within the show would comment on how obnoxious it was.

Foreign names

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  • Japanese: Motorcycle Drone (モーターサイクルドローン Mōtāsaikuru Dorōn)
  • French: Cyclodrone
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