Force of Habit
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| "Force of Habit" | |||||||||||||
| Publisher | Transformers Collectors' Club | ||||||||||||
| First published | April 17, 2008 | ||||||||||||
| Writers | Greg Sepelak and Trent Troop | ||||||||||||
| Illustrations | Matt Kuphaldt | ||||||||||||
| Continuity | Cybertron cartoon | ||||||||||||
| Page count | 25pp | ||||||||||||
An Autobot recon team finds a dead colony world that might not be so dead.
Synopsis
On board of the new Autobot flagship Iron Hope, Ultra Magnus thinks to himself (and his binary-bonded Mini-Con partner, Knock Out, as some of highest ranking Autobots-including Scavenger, Rodimus, Arcee, Sparkplug, Bulkhead, and Longrack gather. Ultra Magnus begins his brief: with the black hole growing exponentially, Cybertron's population has been evacuated to Earth. With conventional attempts failing, Optimus Prime has turned to the advice of the mysterious old bot, Vector Prime, and with his crew of Autobots, is looking for the four Cyber Planet Keys and the Omega Lock. Data suggest that the Omega Lock is on Earth, and with agents already on two colonies, the Autobots have a good headstart. However, data from Vector Prime suggests that aside from four main planets, there were other colony worlds designed as relay points. With no way of knowing which colonies have the keys, it's the Autobot space fleet's job to search them out, and to report any data they may find. Magnus assigns the captains to their ships, crews, and regioins of space; Bulkhead and the Eclipse are assigned to Gamma Kreuger ; Sparkplug and the Valiant to Betelgeuse; Arcee and the Azusa to Gamma Serpentis; Longrack and the Spanner to Delta Draconis; Scavenger and the DieCast to Zeta Persei; Rodimus and the Longbow to Beta Aquarii; and the Iron Hope itself to Delta Crateris. Magnus reminds the captains to not engage in any local civilization's power struggles, or to tell them of the severity of the situation. Ultra Magnus also warns them to look out for the Decepticons, as Megatron (having stolen the planet map that contained the archival database on the colonies) presumably has the same data the Autobots have, and orders them to roll out.
Featured characters
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)
| Autobots | Decepticons | Mini-Cons |
|---|---|---|
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Notes
- Mentioned characters include: Optimus Prime, Vector Prime, agents on colony worlds, Primus, Starscream, Thundercracker, Unicron, Omega Guardians, King Atlas, Snow Cat, Demolishor, and Thrust.
- Combatron appears to have been heavily influenced by Apocalypse Planet, a planet that was planned to be included in the Cybertron franchise, but was cancelled. Much like Combatron, Apocalypse Planet was to be a war-torn wasteland populated by heavily armed and armored warriors.
- None of the Decepticons attacking the Iron Hope are explicitly named. The twin-cockpit jet is obviously Slugslinger, and the robotic Tyrannosaurus rex is likely Predacon. The writers have since revealed that the two gunships were intended to be Dreadwing and Sharkticon, and that the two other jets were Skywarp and Sunstorm. Whether the reader chooses to accept that depends on their acceptance of authorial intent.
- Unlike many of the other text stories published by the Transformers Collectors' Club, this was (and is) made available to non-members.
Errors
- On page 13, the "s" is missing from the word "scream."
- On page 19, "give" is used instead of the proper tense, "gave."
Continuity notes
- Ultra Magnus thinks of an agent trapped alone on a colony world, presumably referring to Overhaul being trapped on Jungle Planet. Since he also indicates that the Autobots have yet to find the Omega Lock on Earth, this story must take place between the Cybertron episodes "Search" and "Deep", after Overhaul's disappearance but before the Autobots on Earth locate the Atlantis.
- This story identifies the dimension gates used by Megatron, Starscream, and Thundercracker as warp gates.
- As in "The Dark Heart of Sandokan", the Cyber Keys are treated somewhat differently in this story than they were in the Cybertron cartoon. Here, they are depicted as tangible objects that must be manufactured from crystals, while they are portrayed as energy-ish manifestations of a Transformer's burning heart of justice in the cartoon.
Transformers references
- This story makes a number of references to past occurrences in the Unicron Trilogy, including:
- The Powerlinx Battles and the defeat of the Decepticons at the end of Energon.
- The Armada War.
- The "lobotomization" of Snow Cat and Demolishor during Energon.
- Thrust's gruesome demise in Armada.
- King Atlas' disappearance can presumably be chalked up to his abduction by Unicron to battle in the Universe conflict.
- Hardtop compares a dead Combatron resident to an Omega Guardian, presumably the group to which Omega Supreme and Omega Sentinel belong.
- Part of the name of Grip-Lock's assigned military unit is "Irontread Squad". Irontread was the Japanese name of Demolishor after he received a new body during Energon.
- Ultra Magnus quotes his namesake's "I can't deal with that right now" line from The Transformers: The Movie.
- The Upstart is a dropship from the Armada PlayStation 2 game.
Real-world references
- The star systems Ultra Magnus assigns each ship are the home systems of different alien races from the PC game Star Control 2. Delta Draconis, the focal point of this story, is the home of the Thraddash in the game... an alien race that has razed its own civilization to the ground eighteen times by the time the player encounters them.
- Brushguard refers to "real wrath-of-god type stuff", a direct quote from Ghostbusters.
- Buzzsaw mentions Christmas and also invites the Autobots to "say hello to my little friend," a reference to Scarface.
External links
- "Force of Habit" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club
