Binal Time

A mysterious visitor from the future steps into the midst of the chaos the Autobots face as the Binaltech conflict reaches a crescendo.

Synopsis

In the assault against Unicron, Optimus Prime is badly damaged, and, fearing his own death, passes the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus. Despite recognizing the fact that he is not the Chosen One of legend, Magnus bravely penetrates Unicron's body, and, shedding his outer armor, petitions the wisdom of the Matrix to allow him to wield its power. Magnus unleashes the energy of the Matrix, and Unicron is destroyed, but Prowl refuses to let the Autobots relax even for a second, as he knows that the currently-in-hiding Shockwave will be poised to summon Megatron and the full might of the Decepticon army back from the limbo to which Battle Ravage displaced them.

Meanwhile, events are unfolding on Earth. In the laboratory of Doctor Arkeville, the evil scientist is putting the finishing touches to Nemesis Prime, a dark copy of Optimus Prime that he has created, which has been programmed with personality data and requires a lifeforce to bring it online. Simultaneously, on Dinobot Island, Skids's team managed to hold off the attacking Decepticons, and Skids launches the probe containing Wheeljack's memory data back in time in hopes of undoing the changes wrought upon the timeline by Battle Ravage. Alas, rather than restore their universe to the way it should originally have been, the plan causes the destabilization of the space-time continuum, and time warps begin appear all across Earth. One of these warps materializes in Arkeville's lab just as he is attempting to bring life to his creation via a subspace link-up, and from the warp emerges a spark that enters the lifeless Nemesis Prime's body. Now in control of the clone, the mysterious visitor teleports to Dinobot Island, where he uses his incredible powers over time and space to stop the chronal warps and repair the fabric of reality.

"Nemesis Prime" is brought to the Earth Defense Command's Antarctic base by Skids's team, where they meet with Optimus Prime's forces, who have returned from Cybertron. The enigmatic entity in Nemesis Prime's body, which calls itself the "Protector", calmly informs the Autobots that their mission was a success: the probe sent into the past was successfully used by the Autobots of the past to prevent Battle Ravage from changing the timeline. The Protector, however, was sent from the future by his masters, the "Alternity", and given the power to preserve the altered version of the timeline as its own distinct parallel universe. Sunstreaker finds the whole concept hard to grasp and starts to get angry, and so the Protector explains that the Binaltech Transformers are an essential step in the evolution of the Cybertronian race that will eventually give birth to the Alternity itself; in essence, the Alternity sent him back in time to ensure their own existence would come to pass. Optimus Prime requests that the Protector tell them something about himself, but before he can, the personality data programmed into Nemesis Prime by Arkeville finally asserts itself. Nemesis Prime uses the Protector's power to open a portal back to Arkeville's lab, then ejects the Protector's spark from his body and escapes through the gateway.

Overdrive uses his dimension-hopping abilities to confirm that the "correct" version of history has been reinstated, hesitantly revealing to Optimus Prime and the Autobots that in that universe, Prime died in battle, and Hot Rod was the Chosen One who replaced him as leader. The Autobots all react with disbelief (a few even with horror), but Hot Rod likes the idea, prompting Ultra Magnus, still carrying the Matrix, to tell him not to get any ideas! This moment of levity is shattered, however, when Jazz reports the appearance of a fleet of Decepticon mobile fortresses on Cybertron. Realizing that Megatron has returned from beyond time, Optimus Prime rallies the Autobots with a rousing speech about the future, and they roll out for action.

And back in Doctor Arkeville's lab, the madman succeeds his second attempt to supply Nemesis Prime with a lifeforce found through subspace... an ancient lifeforce of terrible power... terrible evil... and terrible hunger...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• This chapter of the Binaltech story was printed on the packaging of the Binaltech Black Convoy toy. The toy itself was only available at the Japanese winter convention Wonder Festival 2007, and was the first new Binaltech toy—and hence story chapter—released in over a year.
• At roughly three times the length of any past installment, "Binal Time" is the first Binaltech chapter to actually read like a piece of true prose fiction, instead of a quick summary overview, hence our ability to include a functional list of featured characters in this article
• The Alternators version of Nemesis Prime was released over six months prior to the Binaltech toy, and had a profile written for it by Hasbro writer Forest Lee that used the Binaltech storyline as its basis. This profile originated the idea that Nemesis Prime had been created by Doctor Arkeville and given life by a subspace link-up experiment, which Hirofumi Ichikawa proceeded to incorporate into this chapter of the Binaltech story. According to Lee, Arkeville tapped into the dimension that serves as Unicron's personal power battery, and that the lifeforce given to Nemesis Prime is a spark fragment supplied by Unicron from the chaos-bringer's own attempt at cloning Optimus Prime.
• With this chapter, some events of Binaltech are cleanly established as a parallel universe to the original Generation 1 cartoon, in the culmination of a story thread begun in the earlier chapter, "Changing Lanes". A detail cut from the earlier version of the story establishes that the probe was sent to March 2005, around the time of "Reality Check" and "Changing Lanes" (as per their publication dates). Further stories seem to follow this, as the main timeline still incorporates the events of Binaltech up to that point.
• This chapter was the first reference to the "Alternity", but it would be two full years before the secret of these incredible beings would be revealed, when TakaraTomy launched a toyline about them.
• STOP! Binal Time.

References

• Complete text of "Binal Time"
• Translation of "Binal Time" at FantoFan