Lively Pursuit

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The legend exists.
"Lively Pursuit"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	October 4, 2016
By	Jesse Wittenrich
Illustrations	AK Cyrway
Colors	Erika L. Galán
Continuity	Of Masters and Mayhem
Page count	32pp

Wreckage gets a second lease on life after Impactor discovers an unexpected survivor.

Synopsis

In a dilapidated building on Cybertron, Bluestreak tells a tale to six figures, one that he's told countless times before. The Autobot gunner goes into excruciating detail about how he encountered Princess Adronitia, expecting admiration and laughter from the crowd, but is met with silence. Nevertheless, Bluestreak excitedly announces that he's convinced her to stop in, when he is suddenly interrupted by a low rumble. Dismissing the ridiculous thought that it might be her, Bluestreak looks outside and finds that an alien ship he recognizes has returned...

Onboard the Wreckers' ship, Counterpunch tries to convince Impactor to investigate the signal from Cybertron, but the dour Autobot refuses. Impactor believes that, with Alpha Bravo and Offroad dead, they've lost their shot at revenge. Even if this signal turns out to be another, he feels that Alpha Bravo was right: Wreckage is too monstrous to be controlled, the result of his broken components...and Impactor is just as broken as the rest of them.. Fractyl brings up the thiotimoline failsafe, but Impactor knows that all of them know about it now, and so the first thing Wreckage will do once combined is rip it out. Having already punched in the co-ordinates, Counterpunch snaps: he accuses Impactor of having used them, rebuilding them and giving them hope that they could take down the monsters who destroyed their planet, only to take it all away. When Counterpunch invokes all the other Wreckers Impactor has lost, the already furious Autobot heads over to Counterpunch's console and stares down the Decepticon, before turning on the engines. Grabbing a copy of the transmission, Impactor heads out of the room in a silent fury, as the Wreckers head for Cybertron. Elsewhere in the ship, Toxitron cools down after his temper tantrum, having wrecked much of the cargo hold. Impactor comes across Toxitron, equally as angry, and informs him that they're heading for Cybertron. Toxitron is quiet at first, but when Impactor mentions they've found another survivor, Toxitron laughs; Thunder Mayhem left two survivors. When Toxitron inquires as to whether or not this survivor will join them, Impactor tries to choose his words carefully, informing them that for now, their focus should simply be on surviving. This turns out to be the wrong choice, as Toxitron looms over the Autobot, reminding him that he joined to get revenge on the Decepticons for experimenting on him, and heads off, telling his commander that he'll be ready when they set down on Cybertron...and that he should be ready as well.

One megacycle later, the Wreckers touch down on Cybertron, where they are greeted by Bluestreak, much to both his and Impactor's chagrin. Impactor explains to the others that Bluestreak has worked with the Wreckers before, serving as Optimus Prime's top gunner. Bluestreak, noticing the other Wreckers, noting that he's managed to survive the loss of another team, and that working with Decepticons isn't surprising, remembering the "Dark Star" mission. Counterpunch and Fractyl are confused, having believed that the two didn't know each other, but Bluestreak condescendingly claims that everyone knows the horrible things Impactor did during the war. Bluestreak then explains that when they first returned to pick up Toxitron, he watched them from afar, wishing to stay by himself rather to go with a bunch of murderers. Counterpunch and Impactor both question him as to watch changed, but Bluestreak refuses to say, instead having them follow him. Toxitron, interested by Bluestreak's story, questions him as to what "Dark Star" was. Along the way, Bluestreak explains how he and a group of other Autobots were sent do hunt down the traitorous Decepticon Starscream as he searched for the Underbase. Impactor and his Wreckers, meanwhile, were sent to hunt down the High Circuitmaster who curated the Underbase, codenamed Cybaxx. What they weren't told was that Megatron had already killed "Cybaxx" millions of years ago, and so they worked with Starscream to get their already deceased target. Impactor listens to Bluestreak's tale, knowing that while some parts are accurate, Bluestreak has exaggerated or made up most of it. Counterpunch wonders if they can trust the Autobot, but Impactor, knowing that Prime trusted him, is willing to give him a chance. Arriving at Bluestreak's current residence, a recreation of the Praxus bar the sonic and surge in Protihex. Opening the door, Bluestreak begins greeting his "friends" and introducing them to the Wreckers, who see them for what they truly are: various bits of refuse welded into vaguely Cybertronian shapes. Bluestreak, noticing their stares, explains that he knows that they aren't real; he needed to talk to someone, and while he knows where the "real" ones are, he figured it was better this way instead of digging up corpses. Toxitron brings up he's talked to plenty of corpses, having killed hundreds of Transformers. Turning his attention to Bluestreak, Toxitron tries to goad him into talking about how many kills he has, but gains some respect for the Autobot when he refuses to let the Decepticon get into his head. Fractyl questions as to why a bar from Praxus is in Protihex, and Bluestreak cryptically gives him directions to what he wants to show the others. As Fractyl, Counterpunch, and Toxitron head off, Impactor and Bluestreak remain behind. Bluestreak begins to speak, but Impactor cuts him off: he does remember the name of every Wrecker he's ever lost. For the first time in a long time, Impactor opens up: he remembers how the exploits of the Wreckers were recorded by Fisitron, until he died. Fisitron gave a data disc to Impactor containing their records, and for a long time, Impactor wore it, a reminder to both those he had lost, and the things he had done. However, when he lost it on Pz-Zazz, he believed he had one mission left: to die, letting the universe forgetting the Wreckers. He gathered a group one more time to go up against the ultimate monster, hoping to end himself in the process to ensure a better universe...but now he realizes, even without him, the universe will remember him. Bluestreak has reminded him that his deeds can't be forgotten, and that he can only atone for them. Bluestreak is briefly rattled, realizing that Impactor is real and not just another imaginary friend, before being "reminded" by the refuse that he doesn't really know Impactor. Gathering his composure, Bluestreak has Impactor follow him to join up with the others. Soon, all three are together once more, finding what Bluestreak was talking about: Praxus, restored back to life, from a time before the Golden Age. Bluestreak explains that the robotic aliens known as the Teklaans gave it to him as a gift, a test for what they could do for the rest of Cybertron, restoring both it and everyone else to life. Fractyl, recognizing the name, is worried, but before he can place where he's heard it before, Impactor questions Bluestreak as to what they want in return. Bluestreak explains that they were built by an organic race to revitalize their homeworld, and as such, that is all that they need...aside from the four Wreckers. Suddenly, the four are confronted by the Teklaans, who knock them offline with stun guns. The Teklaans' leader, Cergo, thanks Bluestreak for his help; the Autobot lured the four into place, allowing for the Teklaans to capture them and study them to restore Cybertron's lost population. Bluestreak is regretful, knowing that the Teklaans will kill them in the process; Cergo "corrects" him, telling him that they are not programmed to kill, although the Wreckers will most likely go offline during examination. Bluestreak, convincing himself no one will miss the Wreckers, begins discussing Cybertronian weather systems with Cergo, as the other Teklaans gather the four Wreckers and head for the ship.

Onboard the Teklaan's ship, the Wreckers wake up to find themselves disarmed in energy dampening cells, unable to transform and access their special abilities. Fractyl spots screens showing data on the four, and figures out that the Teklaans are scanning them for data, but when he get to close to the force field, the barrier zaps him until Impactor pulls him loose. Two Teklaan scientists go over the preliminary scans, and find an anomaly: Toxitron. One of the Teklaans heads to the bridge with the scan data, where Cergo is discussing the revitalization process with Bluestreak. After Cergo takes a look at the scans, Bluestreak is reassured that the Teklaans will be able to revitalize Cybertron...as soon as they get rid of one small problem. Namely, though the Autobot promised the Teklaans four baseline Cybertronians, he's only managed to provide them with three and one highly mutated one, and as such, they'll need a replacement. Before Bluestreak can react, the Teklaans stun him as well, and drag him to cells. Counterpunch tries to goad the Teklaan guard carrying the Autobot into talking enough to replicate his voice and trick the doors into opening, but when he leaves, Bluestreak groggily informs Counterpunch that they also transmit them wirelessly. For a brief time, the five sit in silence, until Bluestreak admits he just wanted to know his friends' real names. He explains that he's changed names and made up stories to prevent himself from facing what he did in the war. But now, after all this time, he can't tell what's real and what isn't anymore. When the Teklaans came and offered to rebuild the planet, Bluestreak couldn't refuse: he could finally ask his friends for their names. However, he's interrupted by Fractyl when he mentions Maarin, the Teklaans home planet, as things click into place for the Predacon geochemist. He explains to the others that the Teklaans are part of a group of robots built by the organic inhabitants of Maarin, tasked with rebuilding their dead world after they had ruined. The robots succeeded, and Maarin lived once more...until a virus built into the plant life wiped out the Maarin, and the robots took over the planet. Bluestreak half-heartedly suggests they let the Teklaans do it, believing that even a brief chance at life is better than nothing, but Impactor refuses. Turning to Counterpunch, Impactor inquires if he's gotten anywhere, and the spy replies that the Teklaans have their wireless signals on a loop. In 12 cycles, the Wreckers—and Bluestreak—break free.

Shortly after their jailbreak, the Teklaans have begun tracking down the Wreckers, though the first group are quickly taken down by Toxitron. Impactor orders Fractyl, Counterpunch, and Toxitron to find the armory, while he and Bluestreak head for one of the reconstruction labs. Alone with Impactor for a brief moment, Bluestreak admits that he only told the stories about Impactor to distract himself from the things he did in the war. If the Wreckers were around employing brutal tactics, he didn't have to think about all the lives he ended as a gunner. But if he lets the Teklaans bring everyone back, he believes he can atone for what he did. Impactor sadly informs Bluestreak that the world doesn't work like that, and even if it did, he'd still be dooming Cybertron to a Teklaan invasion. At that moment, Cergo confronts the two, plainly informing him that the Teklaans don't "invade" planets or "kill" anyone; they simply feel that viruses deserve as much of a chance as any other lifeform they bring back, and that they make them as perfect as they can, following their prime directive. Impactor pushes the furious Bluestreak into the reconstruction lab as the Teklaans fire, ready to fight, but the Teklaans are distracted when the ships alarms go off. Inside the lab, Impactor offers Bluestreak a place on the Wreckers, noting that if they ever want to rebuild Cybertron, they'll need to take down Thunder Mayhem first. Grabbing a data crystal from his storage components, Impactor explains that it holds body designs for the Technobots by former Wrecker Ironclad (which were ultimately abandoned after the Technobots incorporated Cybaxx into Computron in an attempt to take down Thunder Mayhem, the Circuitmaster having survived by uploading his mind into the Underbase). Pulling up the form for Lightspeed, Bluestreak realizes that Impactor wants him become a part of Wreckage, and wonders if they'll even be able to stop Thunder Mayhem. Figuring there's nothing else he can do, he decides to upgrade himself, and steps into the reformatting machine. Elsewhere on the ship, the other Wreckers are having trouble trying to navigate the halls, being bared down by Teklaans all the way. Finally, Toxitron elects to simply tear his way through the walls, and it isn't long before the three find themselves in the engine room, with the terraforming and rejuvenation equipment coming online...

Back at the reconstruction lab, the Teklaans' machines finally finish rebuilding Bluestreak into his new form, though the Autobot has stuck on to a few of his old upgrades. Turning invisible, Bluestreak heads out into the hall, where Cergo is waiting with his guards. The invisible Autobot takes down the Teklaans and holds Cergo hostage, as Impactor heads out to catch up with him. The Wrecker leader demands for Cergo to shut down the process, but the Teklaan simply tells him that even if he wanted to, his prime directive prevents him from doing so. The ship suddenly hums to life, and Cergo informs them that they're too late; if they try to shut it down by destroying the ship, they'll unleash unstable radiation that will catastrophically interact with normal space, sending a destructive wave throughout the universe. When they question him on how to stop it manually, the haughty Cergo tells them there's no way, unable to understand why fellow robots can't follow the logic, until Impactor bashes his face in, knocking him offline. In the engine room, Fractyl and Counterpunch both take turns trying to hack their way into the Teklaans systems, to no avail. Knowing that destroying the machine probably will end up causing them more trouble than they already have, Fractyl suggest that they could absorb the energy into a crystalline matrix, and Toxitron realizes its up to him to save the day. The geochemist separates the cable and plugs it into the open panels on Toxitron's back; the crystals initially are able to absorb the radiation, but soon it proves to much, as Toxitron howls in agony from the excess energy, causing both Wreckers and Teklaans to freeze in place. Impactor and Bluestreak arrive at the engine room, having followed the trail of destruction the others left behind, and the Wreckers try to remove the cable, but Toxitron stops them, knowing what will happen if he fails. Impactor realizes that Wreckage's extra mass might be able to better absorb the radiation, and with no other choice, the five Wreckers merge once more. With the inclusion of Impactor and Bluestreak into his mind, Wreckage finds himself thinking much more clearly than before, and the extra mass proves able to better absorb the radiation. Warning the Teklaans that they'll doom themselves if they shoot at him, Wreckage begins removing the excess energy buildup by firing off his weapons, and eventually the generator powers down. The Teklaans begin firing once more, but Wreckage ignores their blasts; removing the cable from his chest, he begins going on a diatribe, claiming that though the Teklaans believe themselves to perfect, they are unable to change. Perfection, he claims, is a lie, made by those who wish to rid those who are different. Ripping a hole through the ship and making his way to the cabin, Wreckage declares that though he is imperfect, he is able to learn from his mistakes—something the Teklaans never will. With the slice of his sword, he removes the cockpit, and rips the thiotimoline canister from his chest, demanding for the Teklaans to leave their ship, unless they want to join it in destruction. With self-preservation winning out over duty, the Teklaans exit, as Wreckage blasts the thiotimoline, leaving a crater where the ship once stood. Sometime later, the Wreckers load up the Teklaans into their cargo hold, preparing to take them back to their home planet as a message. Fractyl and Counterpunch try to puzzle through what they were saying as Wreckage, but to Toxitron it makes perfect sense. Inside the cargo hold, Impactor tells Bluestreak that he saw the latter's friends while they were merged, and wonders if Bluestreak was able to ask them their names. Bluestreak tells him that he couldn't bring himself to speak to them, but seeing them again was enough...for now. Bluestreak then remarks that he can't change the past, but he can prevent it from happening again, and is fully prepared to find Thunder Mayhem and take him down—something which Impactor whole-heartedly agrees with.

Later, after dropping off the Teklaans, the Wreckers pick up the signal of the Mayhem Attack Squad on an unknown planet. When they arrive, Counterpunch is shocked to find that aside from Thunder Mayhem's other components, there's potentially ten other Cybertronian signals. Unsure of what this means, Impactor orders them to head down anyway...

...because it's time to wreck and rule.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons/Predacons	Others
Bluestreak (1) Impactor (4)	Counterpunch (3) Fractyl (5) Toxitron (6)	Cergo (2) Wreckage (7)

Notes

• Characters mentioned but not seen include: Princess Adronitia, Sonder, Smelter Baron Anecdoche, Exulancus, Wrecker Hook/Tow-Line, Pipes, Alpha Bravo, Thunder Mayhem, the Mayhem Attack Squad, Optimus Prime, Hound, Mirage, Hoist, Brawn, Gears, Starscream, Boltax/Cybaxx, Megatron, Sideswipe, Thundercracker, Sunstorm, Grimlock, Noumenon, Aporia, Consumma Compersia, Master Aware, Fisitron, Fatale, Blurr, Fabulcon, Ironclad, the Technobots, the Protectobots, Rook, the Aerialbots, Afterburner, Strafe, Scrounge, Computron, Lightspeed, Ratchet, Inferno, the Mecannibals, Offroad, Superion, Defensor, Victorion, Medix, Cliffjumper, and Bludgeon.

Continuity notes

• The Wreckers picked up Bluestreak's distress signal in the previous prose story, "Deadly Aim".
• Thunder Mayhem arrived on Earth in the magazine comic story "Divination".

Transformers references

• Bluestreak states that Adronitia had a 65356-9292-346 body-type, at least in her vehicle mode.
• Bluestreak makes mention of Corrodia Gravis, the Reverse Evolution virus, and the Rust Plague as diseases which could possibly be brought back by the Teklaans.
• Impactor describes, what would be in an out-of-universe sense, an earlier Hasbro plan for a Combiner Wars Computron. "Ironclad" (a trademark-friendly alternate name for Ironfist) is described as a "mustard tan and gray" redeco of Rook, using the alternate Brawl head we previously glimpsed in Another Light with a red faceplate. It combines with an "energy-efficient" Afterburner for arm mode, presumably the Legends Class Groove mold.
• This story also posits a hypothetical "Project: Firestormer" combiner comprising Bluestreak, Ratchet, Hoist, Sideswipe, and Inferno. Given the nature of the "prototype Computron" description, this is tacit confirmation that the Combiner Wars Hot Spot toy's alternate head is Inferno (who would eventually be released in Power of the Primes. Meanwhile, the hypothetical Hoist would obviously be the alternate head for Trailbreaker seen in Another Light. Finally Fun Publications staff would later confirm that Sideswipe would be a straight redeco of Breakdown (something their Animated counterparts previously shared).

Real world references

• Cergo name-drops two planets called Eska and Desna, named after the creepy twins from The Legend of Korra.
• The Teklaans are an alternate version of Marvel's Mekkans, a race of servant robots used to terraform the planet Maarin (referred to by name in this story) before their creators perished from a virus. Additionally, Cergo seems to be based upon Torgo, the first Mekkan, although decidedly more evil. Jesse Wittenrich would later reveal that he was meant to be a successor to Torgo, as there was no Fantastic Four to free him from the Skrull gladiator pits.

Errors

• On page 3, "The Wrecker commander strode over to blue and black robot who had just unleashed the scathing rant," is missing a "the" between "to" and "blue".
• On page 11, the word "Fractyl's" is at one point misspelled as "Fracty’ls".
• On page 20, "Mecannibal" is misspelled as "Mechannibal."
• On page 28, "if" should be "it" in the line "in his deep bellow if came across as nothing other than threatening."

Other trivia

• "Foundation and Wreckage Part 2" was accidentally left off of the title page.

External links

• "Lively Pursuit" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club