High Noon (SG)

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This article is about the text story. For the Western film, see High Noon (film).
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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 and Tomoya Hosono (uncredited)
Continuity Shattered Glass, GoBots
Chronology 2015
Page count 16pp

What a surprise! The spatiotemporal challengers encounter a challenge!

Synopsis

With Path Finder, Bad Boy, and Man-O-War having gone the aerial route to the Autobot Ironworks base in Oregon, the rest of the GoBots take their time traveling the roads of this strange new world, hoping to arrive by the next day. Small Foot is, for the first time in a while, optimistic about their mission. Road Ranger, meanwhile, complains about having to carry around the tarp-covered Treds on a trailer they've found, since the heavy Guardian's alternate mode would raise suspicion. Rest-Q suggests that they stop for the night and get some rest, and Road Ranger, feeling inexplicably tired, agrees. Finding a patch of farmland, the GoBots position themselves behind a barn so that they can initiate auto-repairs and get some rest. Small Foot admires the natural beauty of the planet, so far removed from what GoBotron has become, and Road Ranger agrees, feeling much closer to humanity than the Transformers they've disguised themselves as. However, when he begins drifting off mid-sentence, Rest-Q performs a quick diagnostic check on him, finding that Road Ranger's fuel tank had been punctured at some point on the road. Using his special regenerative abilities, Rest-Q accelerates Road Ranger's auto-repair, and tells him to take it easy. All the while, the group's sole Renegade, Buggyman, stares off at a forest in the distance, and waits for the others to fall asleep. However, even Buggyman is unaware that they're being watched by one who is about to make contact with his "targets"...

Asleep, Small Foot finds herself in a dream, floating in front of a dark abyss, an unknown entity full of malice and hunger. Small Foot sees her friends, familiar yet in new forms, being sucked in by the dark entity, including the man who inspired her to become a Guardian, Leader-1. Small Foot tries to call out to Leader-1, but her voice is drowned out by distortion, as the entity makes a massive smile at her despair. Waking up from her nightmare, Small Foot is relieved to see that the others are okay...but then notices that Buggyman has wondered off. Small Foot follows his tire tracks, suspicious of the Renegade, but finds something else instead: a strange yet familiar ball of light, which greets her, so different from the evil entity from her nightmare. Despite not knowing what the light is, she feels reassured as he explains that he has been searching for her and her friends, also on a journey to save his friends. Merging with her, the light shows her his home: inside a star, where he and his fellow beings of light shared a consciousness, having evolved from their Transformer ancestors into a peaceful society...one that has now grown dark, threatened by the darkness of the same entity Small Foot has seen, threatening their extinction. Small Foot wakes up at the camp once more, seemingly having had yet another dream...and yet, it still feels so real.

Several miles away, Buggyman has found what he is looking for: a patch of land where the metallic content of the soil is enough to amplify R-Navi's transmission, reporting to his secret commander: Zero, the once and future leader of the Renegades. Having sabotaged Road Ranger's accident earlier, Buggyman drops his creepy act, and informs Zero that their sleeper agent is already in place, ready to eliminate the Autobots and take the Ironworks base for them. Buggyman tells his commander that everything is going to plan; the others suspect nothing, and he has evaluated their strengths and weaknesses. Zero informs his underling that, should he and the others fail to complete their mission in the next three days, he will be joining him on this Earth. Buggyman promises him that he will be ready for the purge, promising that the Renegade legacy will live on even without GoBotron.

The next day, Path Finder has signaled that her group is close to Ironworks, and to wait for them to make contact with the Autobots before proceeding. Out on the near-empty highway roads, the group are suddenly approached by a fast red sports car with flames on its hood. Spotting a purple-colored Autobot symbol, Small Foot believes it to be Hot Rod, one of the Autobots she's read about, and believes that it's come here to escort them to Ironworks. However, the car keeps edging forward, and Buggyman tells everyone to stay quiet and pretend to be normal vehicles, because whatever he is, he's not an Autobot of this world. Finally, as it gets scarily close to Small Foot, the car converts into a flight mode, insulting the slow moving "humans". Buggyman explains that R-Navi's been scanning for spark signatures, and that the car's signature was entirely different, "alien" in origin like them, and he's not alone. Small Foot reluctantly agrees with Buggyman, and the group decides to hurry up their pace.

30 minutes out from Ironworks, Road Ranger is relieved at just how quiet and uneventful their trip has been. However, Small Foot is worried; they've gotten nothing from the base since Path Finder's last transmission, and she has not yet activated her tracking signal to lead them to her. Worried that Man-O-War might have been right about knocking on stranger's doors, Small Foot has Buggyman use his drone to find an alternative path to Ironworks off the road. Finding a small forest, they make their way to the Ironworks base, and try to figure out where to go from there. Suddenly, a voice calls out to them...and then fires on the GoBots, intent on taking them as trophies to Optimus Prime! Small Foot and Rest-Q are both wounded, and the voice approaches; it's coming from a small blue gun, carried by another robot with a purple Autobot symbol. The gun explains that he's Nebulon, and his partner is Stepper; the Prime they work for isn't the one they're looking for, and prepares to fire another round. Treds leads the others in blasting the interloper with their fists, hoping to catch him unaware with their inbuilt weaponry, but Stepper's Golnium armor refracts their energy blasts, rendering them harmless. Nebulon fires on Small Foot...but the kindly voice from her dreams reassures her, and sets up a force field, stopping the shot. Nebulon is briefly fazed, but prepares to fire again; the voice warns Small Foot that they'll have to use physical weaponry, and Small Foot quickly tells Treds to use his cannon. Treds fires on the Autobot, and the blasts hits Nebulon, destroying the gun and sending Stepper flying. Treds, horrified at having apparently killed an opponent, feezes, as Road Ranger notices the Autobot edging towards his spare gun. Quickly grabbing it, Road Ranger aims it at the Autobot, who tries to goad him into firing. Road Ranger is having none of it; he breaks the gun over his knee, and tells Stepper the difference between them is that Road Ranger is man, while Stepper is just a killer. Rest-Q reassures Treds, telling him that "Nebulon" appears to just be a normal gun; Buggyman, having known the whole time, explains that Stepper was using his speakers and ventriloquist skills to make Nebulon seem real. Stepper, breaking down over the loss of his "partner," tells them that they're still too late; his partner is coming for them. And at that moment, a red Autobot orders all of them to stand down, aim a rifle at the six...

(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

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 May 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.
  • Nebulon's destruction in a confrontation with GoBots was first mentioned in BotCon 2015 Stepper's bio card.

GoBots continuity notes and references

  • 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.
  • 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.

Transformers references

  • On the cover illustration, Transformers-ized version of Leader-1, Turbo, Scooter, Hans-Cuff, Staks, and Flip Top are seen, part of Small Foot's Dream. All of them are "virtual redecoes" of molds from the Combiner Wars toyline, including:
    • Leader-1 uses the body of fellow F-15 Eagle Combiner Wars Air Raid, while using the head of Combiner Wars Quickslinger, whose goggle-shaped visors are used to create Leader-1's orange "domino mask."
    • Turbo is based on Combiner Wars Breakdown.
    • Scooter is based on Combiner Wars Legends-class Protectobot Groove.
    • Hans-Cuff is based on fellow police car Combiner Wars Protectobot Streetwise.
    • Flip Top is based on Combiner Wars Alpha Bravo.
    • Staks is based on Combiner Wars Optimus Prime, with his head flipped in replicate Staks' windshield head.
  • Also on the cover is Unicron, based on his Japanese Transformers: Prime Gaia Unicron toy.
  • 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.

Errors

  • While Sakamoto is credited as the sole artist, both the images of Buggyman contacting Zero and Stepper confronting the GoBots were drawn by artist Tomoya Hosono, who goes uncredited. The only image by Sakamoto is the cover illustration.
  • The previous installment of the Spatiotemporal Challengers story was referred to as "Part 1", and the next two will be "Part 3" and "Part 4", respectfully. However, this installment is not labeled as "Part 2", but instead as "Chapter 2".
  • On Page 11, "In one hand..." has been rendered in as "In on hand..."
  • On page 15, the Buggyman's name is spelled "Buggy Man" twice.

Other trivia

  • Due to the potential of legal troubles that might result from using the Hanna-Barbera models in a Transformers story, all the GoBots characters outside of the main 9 who appear in illustrations are either in shadow (like Zero) or are based on Transformers characters (like the Guardians and Zero's super combiner).
  • Words affected by Rest-Q's "foreign vocoder syndrome" include:
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