Scavengers (G1)
| The name or term "Scavenger" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Scavenger (disambiguation). |
- The Scavengers are a ragtag bunch from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Imagine if you will, the cream of the Decepticon crop. The Scavengers are not those Decepticons — according to Tarn's analysis of Banzai-Tron's files, they are in fact the six worst Decepticons in history.
Still, they've survived when countless others have died. That's got to count for something.
The individual members of the team are:
- Krok, the leader and obsessive-compulsive 'con searching for his squad.
- Crankcase, who's missing a big chunk of his head.
- Flywheels, who's found Primus and can't tell a lie without transforming.
- Misfire, who got his name from an incident involving a "misunderstanding and a dozen dead Decepticons".
- Spinister, an idiot savant with an itchy trigger finger.
- Fulcrum, a convicted coward.
They travel the galaxy in the Weak Anthropic Principle and have currently taken the mentally damaged Autobot powerhouse Grimlock into their care... for totally altruistic and not even remotely self-serving reasons. Really.
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 continuity
Krok was separated from his squad and gathered up the group to become his new squad. At some point, Crankcase joined after surviving a very disastrous attack and Spinister joined after leaving their homeworld.
After the Great War, the Scavengers were scavenging on the planet Clemency. Misfire was tasked in scavenging a Monstercon for its energon and circuit speeders which it had died from overdosing on. Later, they discovered a (they assumed) dead robot around a wasteland where a battle from the war took place. While they were scavenging the robot, Spinister found an explosive charge inside the dead bot and disabled it. To their surprise, the robot came to life and told them his name was Fulcrum. After a serious discussion on whether he was a zombie or not, the group decided to make him a member and Misfire introduced Fulcrum to the others. Later, they came across a P-6 Worldsweeper which housed some deformed protoforms, a ceiling covered with brain modules, and organic flesh that had been bled into the ship's fuel supply, polluting it. Krok was then contacted by the D.J.D. through Flywheels's communicube that one of them was being targeted and they were to hand over one of their seven party members for their own good. Confused since there were only six of them, the group found a stasis-locked Grimlock. Rules of Disengagement
Krok decided it really didn't matter which of them was wanted; any or all of them might be on the List, for any stupid reason, and might have no idea. Having noted that they hadn't bothered to name their target, Misfire believed that the D.J.D. would kill them all anyway. The group then went over some options on what to do and decided to stay and fight the D.J.D. because, according to Crankcase, the D.J.D. didn't deserve the Decepticon badge. They decided to use the scavenged circuit speeder laced energon to jump-start Grimlock when the D.J.D. arrived to pick him up and let Grimlock beat all of the members up in the process.
They contacted the D.J.D. that their target was dead and waiting for pick-up. To their surprise, Tarn answered that he preferred to have killed Fulcrum himself but it was fine with him. Before Fulcrum could explain, the D.J.D. arrived on their ship and went towards Grimlock's pod, which the group had laid out in the open—Tarn was already anticipating a trap, but couldn't resist the closed coffin.
Krok released Grimlock and got unexpected results as the D.J.D. started quickly overpowering the Dinobot. Before they could flee, the D.J.D. found the group and began to fight them. During the battle, Krok was impaled with Vos's mask, which was covered in drills, and shot multiple times by Misfire's horrible aim at an attempt to save him. Flywheels was grinded to death inside Tesarus, but his huge feet meant he had to go head first. As the battle became gruesome, Fulcrum decided to destroy the D.J.D. with his bomb mode, unaware that the explosive charge had been disabled by Spinister, and gave a speech, telling about how sickening the D.J.D. was, and despite the incompetentence and recently met Scavengers, they were worth 10 of the D.J.D. Fulcrum then jumped off the Worldsweeper, transformed, and crashed into the ground. The D.J.D. assumed he was offline, but left for a bigger priority and announced Grimlock and the Scavengers were now all on the List for aiding Fulcrum.
Recovering, Fulcrum found out why he hadn't exploded when Spinister told him and Crankcase told Fulcrum that Krok would recover but would never find his squad because, frankly, what Krok insisted was a communicationer was really nothing but a green tube. When asked by Spinister, Fulcrum explained he had joined the Decepticons, agreeing with their goal of cleansing the galaxy of organic races, who were too backward to see their own inferiority. His own "superiority" came into question, however, when he was the Project Manager in charge of cyberforming B'lahr 39, the Autobots attacked and he legged it as far and as fast as he could. A few weeks later, he got caught. Convicted of cowardice, he was sent to Styx to die by Traitor's wheel—which got changed to dying as a K-Class bomb on the planet Clemency when the order came down that all Decepticon prisoners were to be re-engineered as such. As the moment came to jump and die, he was sullen and silent, ignoring the perky K-Squad member Torque, until the moment came to jump.
This time, his own cowardice actually saved him—his systems, paralyzed by fear, failed to trigger the auto-transformation to bomb mode and he crashed to the ground without exploding. Still, although he didn't die, he was damaged and knocked into stasis lock for an unknown period of time. After he told his story, he realized everybody was paying attention to Grimlock, who was revealed to be very brain damaged. The group then decided to fix Krok, set off for Cybertron, and use Grimlock as a bargaining chip when they got there. Before they left, they scavenged parts from the dead Flywheels. Who's Afraid of the DJD?
Learning that Starscream had taken control of Cybertron and knowing he would be much less pleased to see Grimlock than the previous Autobot regime, the Scavengers abandoned their plan to return home. Some Of My Best Friends Are Autobots They instead embarked on an escalating series of misadventures: rescuing Misfire from the Galactic Council on Constancy (with Krok, Spinister, and Crankcase falling victim to Tyrest's universal killswitch partway through), Arm the Lonely being cursed to only speak in song, accidentally summoning an ancient horror, dealing with images coming alive from their datapads, disguising themselves as Magisterians through holomatter avatars, playing Jenga for the fate of the universe, being caught in a perspective trap, and somehow being transformed into toys. By this point, between Megatron's defection to the Autobots and Starscream's leadership of Cybertron, the Scavengers had given up on returning home. They spent their time playing Shoot Shoot Bang Bang, vandalizing Autopedia, and keeping an eye on the very-slowly-recovering Grimlock.
After crashing the Weak Anthropic Principle on Tebris VII, the Scavengers received an offer from Demus, an ex-Decepticon tradesman who had set up a lucrative scrap metal dealership on the planet. Believing that he wanted to give them jobs, the Scavengers decided to pay a visit... only to learn that he wasn't interested in their employment. What Demus wanted was Grimlock, and the merchant was willing to pay half a billion Shanix to have him.
The Scavengers were divided on Demus's offer: Krok, Crankcase, and Spinister were in favor of taking it, while Fulcrum and Misfire refused to sell off the Dinobot for a quick buck. Their deliberations were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Fortress Maximus, the new Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, who shot Demus dead in front of them and placed them all under arrest. Some Of My Best Friends Are Autobots
The Scavengers were able to evade Fortress Maximus and took shelter in Demus's warehouse of Roboid dolls, where Crankcase managed to lure the enforcer away with a mention of Grimlock (who was still aboard their ship). In the following lull, the Scavengers reconciled their differences regarding the brain-damaged Dinobot and rode out on Equinoids to rescue him from Maximus.
The group confronted Fortress Maximus aboard the Weak Anthropic Principle, where, working together, they bluffed him into retreating and leaving Grimlock in their care. Once the ship was repaired, Krok declared a new plan: rather than always looking out for themselves, the Scavengers would now dedicate themselves to helping out other Decepticons, providing them with the same support and companionship that the Scavengers had always given to each other.
But first, they played one last game of Shoot Shoot Bang Bang. Animals
Aboard the Weak Anthropic Principle, the Scavengers received the transmissions of supposedly soon-to-die crewmembers of the Lost Light; they dismissed the dark news. How Bright Their Frail Deeds
