The Change In Your Nature Part Five

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"The Change In Your Nature Part Five"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	February 19, 2020
Cover date	January 2020
Written by	Brian Ruckley
Art by	Anna Malkova (pages 1, 8-20) Beth McGuire-Smith (pages 2-7)
Colors by	Joana Lafuente (pages 1, 8-20) John-Paul Bove (pages 2-7)
Letters by	Jake M. Wood and Neil Uyetake
Editor	David Mariotte and Tom Waltz
Continuity	2019 IDW continuity

Faced with a rogue Titan, a pair of unlikely heroes must lay everything on the line to defend the Winged Moon.

Synopsis

Their raid on the abandoned Titan Net subsidiary hub complete, Slipstream and her cadre of Ascenticon operatives slip away aboard Astrotrain. Although Astrotrain is more interested in taking on some more security 'bots, Slipstream warns him that it won't be needed. There's no way for the Autobots to undo what they've just done; all that matters now is that they go to ground as fast as possible.

In the wreckage of the Memorial Crater beyond Iacon, Cyclonus continues to sit and stew in his own anger. He brushes off the ceaseless bickering of his ghostly compatriots, ignoring their ideas as to how he should best deal with his emotions...and whether or not he should get Paragon involved. Only the arrival of Hot Spot shakes the old warrior from his visions; the rescue specialist tells Cyclonus he needs to leave. Cyclonus obliges, but has one question for Hot Spot: who did this? The way Hot Spot's heard it, it's Sixshot who's to blame; at this, Cyclonus stalks off, grimly announcing that he has a decision to make.

Above Cybertron, on the Winged Moon, Wheeljack updates Lancer on his investigations into Rise sabotage: someone illicitly installed an energon siphon and transmitter and diverted a portion of the moon's output to the now-destroyed Rise base beneath the crater. Gears attempts to disassemble the transmitter, but the explosion accidentally catapults him into space, forcing his mentor Wheeljack and a grudging Huffer to leap after him and drag him back to the surface. When Cosmos arrives a moment later, Wheeljack automatically assumes that he's come to rescue Gears too late, but the Chief of Space Security has instead come to ask why there's a Titan approaching the Winged Moon. Wheeljack initially believes it to be Lodestar, the only currently active Titan in Cybertron's fleet... but Cosmos warns Wheeljack that it's not Lodestar; worse yet, their mystery Titan is coming in fast and picking up speed on a direct collision course with the moon.

Down below, pandemonium reigns in Iacon's central Titan Net hub as Blaster tries to ascertain the extent of the damage. The data-bomb has scrambled the network, knocking out all communication relays between Cybertron and its fleet of slumbering Titans in orbit... all of them except Vigilem, who's somehow come back online and is on a direct course towards the Winged Moon. As Gizmo runs diagnostics, Playback points out that there's one Titan who's still awake and not linked into the network... a Titan who might now be their only chance of stopping Vigilem.

Their tour of Cybertron's colonies cut short, the Cityspeaker Lightbright and her Titan Lodestar enjoy some downtime in Cybertron's orbit, until an urgent transmission from Blaster interrupts Lightbright's music. Blaster gets the pair up to speed: with Vigilem's own Cityspeaker Skystalker missing in action, Lodestar and her Cityspeaker are now the only Cybertronians capable of talking him down... or, if necessary, taking proactive measures to protect the Winged Moon. As Lightbright races to her Titan's bridge, Lodestar confesses her own doubts: Vigilem is an ancient Titan, a veteran of many wars during Cybertron's Age of Expansion who boasts the heavy weapons and combat knowledge to prove it—and there's nothing in her arsenal capable of matching his firepower. Lightbright remains confident as she patches herself into Lodestar's systems; after all, she's sure that this is all some mistake...

Lodestar catches up with Vigilem as the other Titan continues along his course towards the Winged Moon, but her hails go unanswered: Vigilem is preoccupied with his own ramblings, quoting long screeds that Lodestar immediately recognizes as excerpts from one of Codexa's writings. Interpreting this as an ominous sign that Vigilem may be beyond reason, Lightbright orders Lodestar to stand by and prepare to escalate hostilities. Lodestar's more forceful warnings do finally pre-empt a response from Vigilem... but his response is to ponderously change course and fire on Lodestar! Lodestar struggles to withstand the barrage; as Wheeljack and his fellow engineers glimpse the deadly lightshow and sound the alarm, Lightbright tries to use Lodestar's masers to burn out his sensors and blind their foe. The desperate last-ditch maneuver doesn't work, and in retaliation, Vigilem fires a barrage of missiles that quickly overwhelm Lodestar's point defenses. Fire erupts across the bridge as Lightbright tries to get Lodestar's propulsion systems back online—it only takes a few seconds for Lightbright to activate Lodestar's auxiliary atmospheric jets... but a second is all it takes for Vigilem to transform and touch down on the surface of the Winged Moon, and Wheeljack watches in horror as Vigilem unleashes the full fury of his weapons on the great Tether that connects the moon to Cybertron!

Wounded but not defeated, Lodestar regains control... but Lightbright has no other choice but to urge her partner into action for one final, do-or-die attack. Fully aware that she most likely won't survive the battle, Lodestar thanks Lightbright for her companionship as the pair swoop in over the Winged Moon—only for a single blast from Vigilem to rupture Lodestar's hull and knock Lightbright off her feet. The second blows the bridge to pieces... Lightbright is unharmed, but her Titan partner is gravely wounded. Surrounded by smouldering debris, Lightbright is paralyzed by horror—not just at the grisly sight around her, but what she hears as Lodestar musters the last of her strength to give one final, urgent warning.

The Tether is collapsing.

Featured characters

Characters in italic text appear only in hallucinatory form.
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Ascenticons	Others
Tracer (1) Slipstream (2) Skystalker (3) Blackjack (4) Shadow Striker (5) Flamewar (6) Astrotrain (7)	Tempest's corpse (8) Gridlock (9) Highfire (10) Cyclonus (11) Groundbuster (12) ?? (13) ?? (14) Provoke (15) Grudge (16) Hot Spot (17) Huffer (18) Wheeljack (19) Lancer (20) Gears (21) Cosmos (22) Vigilem (23) Playback (24) Blaster (25) Wavelength (26) Gizmo (27) Lightbright (28) Lodestar (29)

Quotes

"What a mess."
"You talking external or internal, Gridlock? I'm picking up a lot of anger. Real seething stuff."

—Gridlock and Highfire

"How long you've been this clunker's mentor now? We two orders of magnitude beyond normal yet?"

—Huffer

"Titans built our colonies. They fought our battles. They died for us. They were us. All our potential possibilities, abilities, continued out of our deepest past into the present. Expressed. Beautiful. But terrible, too. I understand that now, but not then. We were too slow to see that not all of the past belongs in the present. Too slow to see the Titans through the eyes of the organic universe. To see what others saw when they looked at us. Perhaps we should always have been more afraid of ourselves."

—Vigilem quotes Codexa

"I have been grateful for your companionship and guidance through all these megacycles."
"Oh, and I for yours, Lodestar. I for yours. We've seen some things, no? Maybe more to see if the Thirteen fly with us."

—Lodestar and Lightbright

"Some say we are lesser for the Titans' absence, and for their sleep. But we should fear what terrible circumstance might bring their waking. And what terrible circumstance might follow it."

—Vigilem

Notes

Continuity notes

• Cyclonus's ghostly hallucinations talk about Cyclonus's relationship with the mysterious Paragon and his time with Froid, which had previously been alluded to in issue #8.
• Hot Spot blames Sixshot for the destruction of the Memorial Crater; this occurred in issue #9 as part of The Rise's efforts to scuttle a bunker underneath the surface (although if we're being picky we'd point out that it was really Shadow Striker who did most of the demolitions work).
• Wheeljack has found an energon siphon attached to the Winged Moon, and revealed that it was set to transmit a certain amount of energon to the aforementioned bunker; in issue #9, Windblade and Chromia discovered the other end of this operation—several dozen fuelling chambers—although at the time Chromia wasn't sure where they were getting the fuel from.
• Gears first appeared as a worker on the Tether back in issue #2. This issue reveals that Wheeljack is his mentor, although Huffer flags up the fact that he's been a mentee for longer than is customary.
• Cosmos makes a cameo in this issue, and Wheeljack assumes that he's there to rescue Gears. Gears and his unlucky habit of drifting off into space (and his need to be rescued by Cosmos) was a running gag in "Open Comms", which came out only a week before this issue.
• Lodestar previously made an appearance in issues #10 and #12; although she wasn't named at the time, she was the ship that Sentinel Prime and his diplomatic retinue commissioned for their tour of Cybertron's colonies. Lightbright also put in an appearance in that issue and used her skills to help Nautica and Road Rage capture a Thraal saboteur, though this is the first issue that explicitly confirms that she is a Cityspeaker.
• Vigilem's ramblings are derived from a piece of writing by Codexa, entitled The Way We Were, by One Who Saw It; notably, this work takes a very different look at the past from Termagax's rosier perspective and reveals that Codexa held a much more critical opinion of the Age of Expansion that marked Cybertron's heyday.

Transformers references

• Blaster's coworkers at the Titan Net hub include Playback, drawn to resemble the unnamed Paradronian communications specialist in the The Transformers episode "Fight or Flee" and later named via Ask Vector Prime, Gizmo, a one-off character from the 2005 IDW continuity's Spotlight: Hot Rod, and Wavelength, who appeared in More than Meets the Eye as one of the many "Disappeared" bots abducted by a time-travelling Necrobot.
• Lightbright dances along to a song about Velocitron, a colony planet that originated in the Transformers: Cybertron franchise and went on to feature in the "Aligned" continuity family, the original IDW continuity, and the Cyberverse cartoon. She mentinons the tune as a "rich Powerchord beat", referencing the one-off original character from the 2015 Ask Vector Prime Facebook column.
• Vigilem's ramblings namedrop Chela and Tempo as Titans from Cybertron's past, who both appeared in the original IDW continuity. Additionally, the issue introduces a new Titan, Waypoint, whose defeat of the Szorian empire references the race of the same name from Marvel's Generation 2 comics.
• Tempo is noted to have carried the "Knights off into legend"; it's a sure bet that Codexa is talking about the Knights of Cybertron, a semi-mythical group that originated in the pages of More than Meets the Eye. In that comic, the Knights were prominently affiliated with Titans and left the planet aboard a fleet of the giants. In the previous IDW continuity, Tempo was not one of these Titans, however; he was affiliated with Vector Prime, left Cybertron after the Knights, and met with an uncertain fate sometime before the present day.
• As she and Lodestar make their approach to the moon, Lightbright mentions the Thirteen; their existence had previously been inferred through a set of stained-glass windows in issue #11 and the existence of the Enigma of Combination over in Transformers: Galaxies, this is the first time that they've been specifically named as such.

Errors

• On page 15, Lodestar's speech bubble reads "The is reciting some of Codexa's writings." This was corrected to "He" in the trade.

Other notes

• Originally solicited for January 22, this issue arrives almost a month late, arriving instead in mid-February.
• Similar to #16, the original solicitation for this issue featured a completely different plot. It focused on Megatron, who doesn't even appear in this issue.

Covers (3)

• Cover A: Megatron and Cybertron, by Livio Ramondelli
• Cover B: Megatron at a tipping point, by Brendan Cahill and Josh Burcham
• Retailer incentive cover: Megatron unmasked, by Marcelo Matere

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• Transformers: Galaxies #5
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
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Reprints

• Transformers Volume 2: The Change In Their Nature (September 16, 2020) ISBN 1684056756 / ISBN 978-1684056750
  • Collects Galaxies issues #1–6 and Transformers (2019) issues #13–18.
  • Bonus material includes alternate covers.
  • Hardcover format.

• Transformers: The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 100: Constructicons Rising (November 4, 2020)
  • Collects Transformers (2019) issues #15–17 and Galaxies issues #1–4.
  • Bonus material includes a 2-page afterword on the full Hachette G1 collection series, a tiny cover gallery of the Hachette series, a retrospective on the various G1 publishing companies, a cover gallery of the IDW issues and an intro by Simon Furman.
  • Hardcover format.

• 
  Volume 2: The Change In Their Nature – cover art by Cryssy Cheung
• 
  The Definitive G1 Collection Volume 100: Constructicons Rising – cover art by Don Figueroa (Scrapper) and Livio Ramondelli

External links

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