Gauging the Truth, Part Two: A Truth for a Truth

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	"Gauging the Truth, Part Two: A Truth for a Truth" {{#if: \| {{#if: \|; (')}} {{#if:\|; ""}}}}
Publisher	IDW Publishing}}
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First published	August 12, 2020}}
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Cover date	August 2020}}
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Written by	Sam Maggs}}
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Art by	Beth McGuire-Smith (pages 1-3, 8-20) Umi Miyao (pages 4-7)}}
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Letters by	Jake M. Wood}}
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Editor	David Mariotte, Tom Waltz, and Riley Farmer}}
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ist}}{{#if: \| by}}	}}
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{{#if: TFGalaxies 8 cvrRI.jpg | {{#if: IDW Publishing | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: August 12, 2020 | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: August 2020 | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: Sam Maggs | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: Beth McGuire-Smith (pages 1-3, 8-20) Umi Miyao (pages 4-7) | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: Josh Burcham | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: Jake M. Wood | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: David Mariotte, Tom Waltz, and Riley Farmer | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: 2019 IDW continuity | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: | {{#if: |

{{#switch:{{#sub:xx|2|14}}|dark cybertron=}}

Caught between the life she thought she knew and the Transformers who claim to be her mentors, Gauge must decide—is she a Reversionist, or a Cybertronian?

Synopsis

In the depths of the starship Exodus, Gauge can't believe what she's seeing: although she's never met the two 'bots imprisoned in the ship's brig, Arcee and Greenlight claim to know her! Arcee quickly recognizes the symptoms of a memory wipe and proffers a psychic patch, but Gauge remains skeptical and demands to know why they led her here. According to Arcee, the Reversionists have altered Gauge's memory: Gauge, remembering all the times when she didn't fit in with her fellow Reversionists, wonders what else she has to lose and promptly plugs herself into the mental network. In a flash, Gauge finds herself in the city of Iacon, watching her own forging ceremony at the Pyramid and her original introduction to Arcee and Greenlight. With help from her mentors, Gauge slowly begins to navigate her buried memories, soon remembers what happened to her family after the collapse of the Tether and their narrow escape aboard the Exodus. But the Reversionists aboard were planning something that they didn't want heretical stowaways like Arcee and her family to know about; after first imprisoning Gauge's guardians, Accelerator tampered with Gauge's memories to ensure that the young Cybertronian would believe she had always been a devout Reversionist...

Overtaken by emotion, Gauge rips off the psychic patch and returns to reality, convinced that Arcee's telling the truth—Gauge really is a native Cybertronian, not a Reversionist. However, Gauge isn't sure that she can free the pair; she suspects that the command to deactivate their energy cage is probably hardcoded to the ship's central mainframe... which also happens to occupy Plenary Heretech's private quarters. Greenlight warns Gauge to hurry; whatever the Reversionists are planning, they're going to execute it soon, and Gauge is the only one who can stop them. Determined to free her mentors, Gauge returns to the upper decks of the Exodus, and ignores Accelerator's scolding as she settles back into the normal routine. But Gauge can't ignore the question percolating in the back of her mind: forged Cybertronian but raised Reversionist, which is the real Gauge—the previous self that now only exists in memories, or her current self, the product of lies and manipulation?

Gauge tries to smooth-talk Accelerator into letting her clean Heretech's private chamber under the pretense of atonement for her disappearance, but to no avail; as the day wears on, Gauge cycles through the traditional routines of mindless labor and mass devotions... and, as time runs out, Gauge begins to wonder—what if Arcee and Greenlight are using her, just like the Reversionists? Finally, at the last devotion, Heretech makes a grandiose speech to his followers to announce that the "time of prophecy" is nearly upon them: if they perform their duties correctly, then tonight the faithful will "ascend". Whatever Heretech's been planning, his endgame is fast approaching... and Gauge is completely out of time. With no way to fabricate a convincing cover story, Gauge just breaks into Heretech's chambers while the crowd is distracted, but when she comes face-to-face with the mainframe itself, she hesitates. Gauge is tired of being used and pushed around; she wants to find out the truth—her truth, and does so by directly interfacing with the mainframe. The moment costs her dearly, though; when Accelerator finds her, she immediately calls for the guards!

With security bearing down on her, Gauge races back through the underbelly of the ship and reunites with a newly freed Arcee and Greenlight as they tear into the guards sent to contain them. The family reunites, but Gauge admits that she nearly didn't free her mentors, unsure if they were also manipulating her for her own purposes... when she realized that they never told her to do anything, and left the choice to help up to her and her alone, Gauge had a change of heart. But this tender moment is cut short when the ship's speakers activate to broadcast Heretech's grand announcement. At long last, he declares, their ultimate dream is at hand: Primus has promised them a world of their own, a promised land free from the squabbles of lesser factions. Now that they have arrived, the faithful Reversionists will cleanse the planet and, by morning, transform it into a paradise. When Arcee, Greenlight and Gauge scramble to the nearest porthole, they are horrified by the metallic vista below them—Heretech's "prophesied planet" is Cybertron!

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.
{{#if: ||(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)}}

{{#if:* Orion Pax (4)| {{#if:* Orion Pax (4)|| style="background:#ffdddd;" valign="top" |

Orion Pax (4) }}{{#if:|

Autobots }}{{#if:|

Decepticons }}{{#if:|

Humans }}{{#if:* Accelerator (6)

Heretech (7)
Roadhauler (8)|

Reversionists }}{{#if:* Gauge (1)

Greenlight (2)
Arcee (3)
Perceptor (5)|

Others }}{{#if:|

Misc }}

}}{{#if:|

}}{{#if:* Accelerator (6)

Heretech (7)
Roadhauler (8)|

Accelerator (6)
Heretech (7)
Roadhauler (8) }}{{#if:* Gauge (1)
Greenlight (2)
Arcee (3)
Perceptor (5)|

Gauge (1)
Greenlight (2)
Arcee (3)
Perceptor (5) }}{{#if:|

}}

Quotes

"To be entrusted with the care of a new Cybertronian... it's the highest honor. To be entrusted with you... we could never have asked for better."

—Arcee to Gauge

"She's a genius. It's why I love her."
"Just that-?"
"Okay, one of the reasons."

—Arcee on Greenlight

"Just a few cycles ago, I would have been one hundred percent convinced that breaking into the mainframe meant I would burn in the fires of a molten planetary core for eternity. Now I'm only about sixty percent certain."

—Gauge

Notes

Continuity notes

Arcee notes that Gauge was forged "demicycles" ago. According to Transformers author Brian Ruckley, Transformers in this universe organize units of time into "cycles", (one day) "kilocycles", (one year) and "megacycles" (one thousand kilocycles).<ref>{{#if: Yep. A cycle is a Cybertronian day, shorter than an Earth day. A kilocycle is the equivalent of our year (not precisely a thousand cycles, technically - but close enough), a megacycle is a thousand kilocycles. |"Yep. A cycle is a Cybertronian day, shorter than an Earth day. A kilocycle is the equivalent of our year (not precisely a thousand cycles, technically - but close enough), a megacycle is a thousand kilocycles."—|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/Brian_Ruckley/status/1134770533759950850 |Brian Ruckley|Brian Ruckley}}{{#if: Twitter |, Twitter|}}{{#if: |, ""|}}{{#if: 2019 |, 2019{{#if: 06 |/{{#switch:{{#len:06}}|1=006|06}}{{#if: 01|/{{#switch:{{#len:01}}|1=001|01}}|}}}}|}}{{#if: https://twitter.com/Brian_Ruckley/status/1134770533759950850 ||}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/Brian_Ruckley/status/1134770533759950850%7C7%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/Brian_Ruckley/status/1134770533759950850%7C8%7C11}}%7Cweb.archive= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/Brian_Ruckley/status/1134770533759950850%7C7%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#switch:{{#sub:https://twitter.com/Brian_Ruckley/status/1134770533759950850%7C8%7C10}}%7Carchive.is= (archive link)|}}{{#if: | (dead link)}}</ref> Given the context of the remark and the timeframe of the story, a demicycle might be something like a week?
Gauge remembers her forging ceremony at the Pyramid, which Bumblebee and Rubble attended in Transformers #4. The flashback accurately depicts Orion Pax, Perceptor, and two larger Cybertronians who officiated her ceremony, and the second half of the sequence features a brief retelling the events of Transformers #18, including the fall of the Tether, the scene of Arcee clearing a path for the three during their escape from Cybertron, and Arcee only just managing to squeeze aboard the Exodus as it lifted off.

Transformers references

Arcee uses a "psychic patch" on Gauge, a device that originally appeared in the Transformers: Prime episode "Sick Mind" and made several other appearances throughout the show. The device played a major role in the first season of the contemporary Cyberverse cartoon as the mechanism by which Bumblebee pieced together his scrambled memories, much like Gauge does here.
One of the guards aboard the Exodus is drawn and colored to resemble Hauler. The details don't quite match those of Grapple (of whom Hauler is usually a redeco) in Transformers #18, but the head design and colours are unmistakable. Assuming this was intended as Hauler, the cameo was later contradicted by his more-substantive role as a Velocitronian in the Wreckers—Tread & Circuits miniseries.

Real-life references

The story's title is, of course, a reference to the ancient aphorism "[[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}Eye for an eye|{{#if:an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth|an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth|Eye for an eye}}]]".
In what's both a real-life reference and a continuity callback, Gauge's memories of boarding the Exodus include a pair of Cybertronians based on Crazy Diamond and Rohan from [[wikipedia:{{#if:|:}}JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|{{#if:||JoJo's Bizarre Adventure}}]], both of whom previously appeared in Transformers #18 as extras in a crowd scene.

Other trivia

Originally solicited for April 8, this comic slipped to May and was then deliberately pushed back to August as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Covers (3)

Cover A: Gauge in crisis, by Umi Miyao
Cover B: Arcee, Greenlight, and Gauge aboard the Exodus, by Winston Chan
Retailer incentive cover: Heretech's got an evil plan, by Beth McGuire-Smith

Reprints

Transformers Volume 3: All Fall Down (February 24, 2021) ISBN 1684057396 / ISBN 978-1684057399
- Collects Transformers (2019) issues #19–24 and Galaxies issues #7–12.
- Bonus material includes alternate covers.
- Hardcover format.

Volume 3: All Fall Down – cover art by Cryssy Cheung

References

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Gauging the Truth, Part Two: A Truth for a Truth

Contents

Synopsis

Featured characters

Quotes

Notes

Continuity notes

Transformers references

Real-life references

Other trivia

Covers (3)

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Gauging the Truth, Part Two: A Truth for a Truth

Synopsis

Featured characters

Quotes

Notes

Continuity notes

Transformers references

Real-life references

Other trivia

Covers (3)

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References

External links

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