Shell Game
| This article is about the 3H stand-alone story. For the canceled Beast Wars mini-series, see Transformers: Beast Wars — Shell Game. |
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 With all the Autobots gone, Megazarak gets his sick kicks by beating aroung old men. | |||||||||||||
| "Shell Game" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | 3H Productions | ||||||||||||
| First published | July 31, 2004 (OTFCC 2004) | ||||||||||||
| Story | Simon Furman | ||||||||||||
| Pencils | Andrew Froedge | ||||||||||||
| Inks | Andrew Froedge | ||||||||||||
| Colors | Joe Givens | ||||||||||||
| Letters | Simon Bowland | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | 2001 Robots in Disguise cartoon continuity [2] | ||||||||||||
A Decepticon tyrant hunts down the last surviving Autobot.
Synopsis
The Cybertron of a nightmarish alternate universe has been ravaged by a powerful tyrant, Megazarak. Appearing amidst the remnants of a crumbling Decepticon empire, he has slashed and burned his way across the planet, leaving few survivors in his wake and driving the Autobots to the brink of extinction.
Determined to wipe out the last pockets of Autobot resistance, Megazarak and his Targetmaster partner Caliburn force their way deep into Cybertron. Their objective: the Oracle, which Megazarak believes will yield the location of Base Sigma, the last pocket of Autobot resistance, and the hiding place of the last Matrix-bearer.
Only the Oracle's ancient caretaker Ultra Trion stands in his way. Megazarak bashes him aside effortlessly and demands to know where the Oracle is. Ultra Trion reveals that he's not so helpless, and launches a missile from a hidden launcher, intent on fighting to the death. But the tyrant simply catches the missile and destroys Ultra Trion with it, remaining unscratched himself. Megazarak finishes the job with his own main gun.
But Trion's final gambit is successful—the Oracle has been removed from its chamber and is gone. Denied his final victory, Megazarak howls in fury, but at the same time, he knows... there are only so many places on Cybertron to hide.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons |
|---|---|
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Quotes
"How quaint. A cleric with a cannon..."
- — Megazarak is not impressed by Ultra Trion's armaments.
Notes
- This story was published within the pages of the OTFCC 2004 guide.
Continuity notes
- This story constitutes its own micro-continuity with the bios for Megazarak and the unreleased 3H version of Defensor. In 2015, "Ask Vector Prime" shocked the world by remembering this micro-continuity existed and claimed it was a Robots in Disguise alternate universe.
- On that note, this is (retroactively) the first full appearance of Cybertron in the Robots in Disguise continuity family. Cybertron previously briefly appeared in a flashback scene (of sorts) in the episode "Ultra Magnus". This same clip was recycled at the beginning of the very next episode, "Ultra Magnus: Forced Fusion!".
Transformers references
- Among the ruins of Cybertron can be seen the head of Optimus Prime as well as those of Sky Lynx and Hound.
Trivia
- Presumably because this comic was originally supposed to take place in it's own continuity, Optimus Prime is referred to only as "the Prime", possibly to keep some sort of ambiguity.
- Now that this Optimus Prime is retconned into being the same enitity as Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime, this is the first time Optimus has been killed off in this continuity. While it was probably a very horrible death, we actually don't see how he died, so there's something.
