High Noon (SG)

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Shattered Glass
"High Noon"
Publisher Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published March 14, 2016
By Andrew Hall
Illustrations by Hayato Sakamoto
Continuity Shattered Glass, GoBots
Chronology 2015
Page count 16pp

What a surprise! The spatiotemporal challengers encounter a challenge!

Synopsis

The GoBot ground force heads for the Oregon state line to meet up with their airborne comrades, but are forestalled; Road Ranger has to pull them over as he's sucking up too much fuel hauling Treds's tank form around. He makes sure everyone knows how stupid he thinks a tank form is, but Treds defends his choice of alternate mode, saying how useful his heavy artillery might be should they encounter any hostiles. Rest-Q advises they should all take a break and the team prepares to go into auto-maintenance for the night. As they park, Small Foot and Road Ranger enjoy how peaceful it is on Earth, something that feels like home. After Road Ranger continues to complain of fatigue, Rest-Q checks him over and notes that Road Ranger has a small fuel leak. However, neither of them is quite sure how his fuel line came to be damaged... Nearby, the the Buggyman does nothing but stare silently into the dark as his teammates socialize and turn in for the night.

In auto-maintenance, Small Foot sees a malicious force that devours space and leaves pure nothing. It tears its way through the GoBots' realities, driving them not just to extinction but erasing the future they should have had.

And it smiles at her.

Small Foot wakes up with a start and realizes the Buggyman has gone AWOL. She drives off looking for him and in the process, a little whisper in her head telling her to carry on leads her to a ball of light, one that talks to her in a reassuring voice. The entity claims it has been searching for her and, like Small Foot, is on a mission to help its friends. As it agrees they need to head back to the GoBots' base camp, she sees a vision of its home—a pure and unsullied harmony of light, surrounded by the malicious dark—and she finds herself back at the camp, with far less time passed than it should have.

Meanwhile, the Buggyman is miles away and seemingly talking to himself in an abnormally calm and normal voice, about a sleeper in place, that Road Ranger's 'accident' had been timed to ensure they stopped near an "Oregon emplacement", and that sinister plots are afoot. In reality, he is using the metallic soil content in this part of Idaho to chat with his co-conspirator Zero on Gobotron, a trans-dimensional transmission no other GoBot knew was still possible! Zero has a new Super Voyager body prepped for himself, which he plans to use in an upcoming "purge;" if Gobotron cannot be saved, the two villains are prepared to begin their race anew by themselves. Whatever the outcome of the mission though, the Buggyman's 'team-mates' are slated to be eliminated by The Buggyman's turboworm poison!

The next morning, Path Finder signals that her aerial team have found the Autobot Ironworks Base. The road-bound team, driving off to rendezvous, also meet their own Autobot when a red sports car catches up with them. Not just any Autobot, Small Foot notes, but the famous Hot Rod! However, his Autobot insignia is a bit darker than the GoBots expected it to be... The BuggyMan snaps at his teammates, warning them not to reveal their true identities to the sports car as it approaches; it isn't one of the local Autobots. The team heeds the Buggyman words, and what turns out to really be the evil Tracks, annoyed the cars won't get out of his way, converts to his flying car mode and zooms past. The Buggyman explains what tipped him off to the negative-polarity Autobot's true identity: he detected no "spark" within him, as positive-polarity Autobots are known to have. Additionally, The Buggyman detects at least five other 'bots with similar energy signatures to Tracks's in the general area through his drones. Not liking the odds this presents, the GoBots continue on their way without making any attempts to engage the evil Cybertronians.

But as they drive, the GoBots realize they haven't heard anything more from their allies, which raises concerns. Concerns that get confirmed when they reach Ironworks and the locals, Stepper and Nebulon, open fire on them, unprovoked and from behind! They plead they're looking for Optimus Prime but Stepper sneers that Optimus Prime is not the one they probably want to see. On Small Foot's suggestion, the team tries to get the drop on their attacker with their hand lasers, banking that Stepper won't realize they're actually armed. Unfortunately, Stepper's gaudy Golnium coating shrugs off the attack. Small Foot fears her early optimism has just doomed her team...

...when the entity from before steps in, granting her a shield that absorbs Stepper's shot in the same way his armor did theirs. The entity also informs the GoBots that they need to use the weaponry of this world to best their opponent. And that means hard projectiles, like the shells from a tank form.

Treds complies and fires, but his shot is more destructive than he intends, killing Nebulon and seriously wounding Stepper. Road Ranger has to keep a shocked Treds together, even as Stepper pleads for him to slay him too. Instead, Road Ranger subdues the enemy without killing him. To Treds's utter relief, Stepper explains that "Nebulon" was just a regular drone that he was using ventriloquism to make-believe was his fully-sentient partner. Everything seems to be alright— until a stranger locks them in his gunsights.

(Characters in italic text appear only in a vision.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Guardians Renegades Evil Autobots Good Autobots Others

Quotes

“Let me tell you, Stepper, what it means to ‘be a man.’ It’s a human expression. I’ve spent some time with humans and they’re courageous. They’re capable of compassion, even to opponents. What isn’t a man is a dirty killer who revels in unprovoked violence. That’s what you are and you make me sick.”

—Road Ranger giving a good 'reason you suck' speech.

Notes

  • Characters mentioned by name but who do not appear include: Cy-Kill, Path Finder, Bad Boy, Man-O-War, Hot Rod, Tic-Tac and the components of Puzzler, evil Optimus Prime, heroic Optimus Prime, and the Engineer.
  • Presumably for legal reasons, none of the expanded GoBots cast appears in their original, Bandai-produced toy bodies. Zero is obscured and mostly off-panel with a new, non-Bandai body available in case he makes a full appearance later on. Small Foot even managed a dream sequence where her friends were suddenly in new, Hasbro-approved toy bodies for the duration.

Errors

  • The previous installment of the Spatiotemporal Challengers story was referred to as "Part 1", whereas this installment is labeled as "Chapter 2" instead of "Part 2".
  • Frankly it has been done so many times no one really cares anymore, but the GoBots are referred to a few times in narration as "robots" when they are cyborgs, not purely mechanical.
  • On Page 11, "In one hand..." is mistyped as "In on hand..."
  • In one instance, the Buggyman's name is parsed "Buggy Man".

Continuity notes

  • In keeping with "Withered Hope", in which Path Finder and Bug Bite have never heard of Unicron, Small Foot does not know the identity of the entity in her vision. It is yet unclear how Unicron factors into this storyline, but The AllSpark Almanac II noted that the Unicron of these GoBots' home reality, Gargent 984.08 Alpha, was somehow dimensionally displaced to Primax 703.02 Gamma, the G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers continuity, wherein he played a major role.
  • A 14/5/2015 entry of Ask Vector Prime noted that many inhabitants of Gargent 984.08 Alpha had embarked on a Diaspora.
  • Ironworks Base was the main setting of the BotCon 2012 comic story "Invasion".
  • The Autobot personnel data Small Foot studied apparently did not include that Hot Rod had changed his name to "Rodimus" by the present century.

Transformers references

  • The reconfigured Cybertronian-style bodies of the Guardians in Small Foot's vision and this story's cover art are all based on Combiner Wars toys: Hans-Cuff is Prowl, Scooter is Groove, Turbo is Breakdown, Leader-1 is Air Raid with Quickslinger's head, Flip Top is Alpha Bravo and Staks is Optimus Prime, mistransformed to leave him headless. Phew! Meanwhile, Unicron's silhouette appears to use his Gaia Unicron design.
  • Remember, kids: purple is the color of the evil guys. Therefore, Autobots with purple insignias are from the EVIL alternate universe. Don't make the same mistake that these lame GoBot guys did!
  • The Hot Rod/Tracks mistake comes down to the Turbo Tracks toy from BotCon 2012, which is not just a red sports car but gives him a Roddish fiery hood deco.
  • R-Navi detects that Tracks is not an ordinary native Cybertronian because his energy signature is different. Way back in the first Shattered Glass story, it was explained that Shatteredverse Cybertronians' sparks, or rather "embers", operate on electrons rather than positrons.
  • In one of the languages Rest-Q spouts words from, Gregevor is apparently the word for "drone".
  • Zero's Super Voyager body appears to be a triple reference.

GoBots references

  • Treds refers to the Renegade drone combiner Puzzler from the Challenge of the GoBots episode, "Auto-Madic". Treds does not remember Puzzler's name exactly, however, only recalling that Puzzler's components shared names of board games.
  • Zero tried and failed to overthrow Cy-Kill in the Challenge of the GoBots episode, "The Third Column". At the end of that episode, he failed, escaping and swearing revenge, which he looks poised to execute now. Hmmm. A traitorous jet-former returning for revenge. Why are we not feeling hopeful for his success?
  • Challenge of the GoBots was a lighter cartoon with no death, hence Treds being so horrified at the idea he might have actually killed an enemy in battle.
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