Bullets

Seeds for the new Wreckers take root.

Synopsis

First Aid's boss, Pharma, catches him reading datalog #113 of Wreckers: Declassified when he should be working and orders him to go check on a "Fader". While going to check on Roulette, First Aid recalls the time when Springer contacted him asking for help with a special project. He is surprised when newly injured members of Dogfight's recon team are brought into the medical ward. First Aid began carefully checking them all over, paying special attention to their Autobot insignias, while everyone else is confused by his strange behavior. He finds something of interest on Dodger and excitedly tells him he has to operate immediately. First Aid contacts Springer letting him know what he found.

Rung treats the shell-shocked Flattop and finds out that he is a survivor of the Babu Yar atrocity. He was given a new body like any survivor who requested one, and assigned to Silverstreak's group. On his first mission after recovering from Babu Yar, Flattop saw the Shimmer, which completely pushed him over the edge, and was why he was being treated by Rung now. As Rung gives Flattop scientific and psychoanalytical explanations for the Shimmer, Flattop dies right there in his office.

Ironfist is questioned by the Ethics Committee regarding his invention of cerebro-sensitive bullets. The committee comes to the conclusion that use of the bullets would constitute a war crime, and orders him to surrender the bullets within 36 hours. On the way out, he runs into Skyfall, who's impressed by his restrained reaction to the Committee confiscating his work. Brainstorm arrives, bringing his latest development, the Malevolent Counterintuitive Pathogen, before the committee, Ironfist and Skyfall aren't quite sure if he's kidding as they head back to the lab.

On Hydrus 5, Pyro and Afterburner survey the wrecked planet, newly freed from the threat of the Decepticons. Afterburner compliments Pyro on his bravery before speeding off, just before Pyro finds himself experiencing The Shimmer.

Springer stands on the command deck of the Debris, mulling over Agent 113's report, retrieved from a slug lodged in Dodger's Autobot insignia. The report warns of recent happenings at the Garrus-9 penal colony. With it in mind, Springer is deciding on who to invite to join the Wreckers.

Guzzle, currently stationed at the Igue-Moor Fuel Depot, is shooting statues with The Judge when he sees a sort of shimmer...

In his workshop, Ironfist reviews the schematic of his head and the cerebro-sensitive bullet lodged in it, remembering his long relationship with Skyfall. He had developed Optimus Prime's ion blaster, though the Autobot leader attributed its invention to Skyfall. Ironfist had continued to support Skyfall, after the latter spent a hundred years in the Decepticon Grindcore prison camp, and after the black phosphex incident when Skyfall was assigned for a time as a guard at Garrus 9.

Rotorstorm enjoys the victory the Autobots have just attained in the battle of Karashi Delta, but even that is tainted by his memories of the Iaconian Aerial Academy, and the bullying he suffered at the hands of his instructor, Jetstream. He's brought out of his reverie when he spies the Shimmer and opens fire at it.

Springer decides on the four Autobots who will be invited to join the Wreckers: Rotorstorm, Guzzle, Pyro and Skyfall.

Skyfall passes on reactions to the "Fisitron" datalogs to Ironfist, such as readers having coined the term "Fisitronisms". Irritated by the criticisms, Ironfist returns to packing up the cerebro-cannons and Skyfall leaves. Shortly afterward Ironfist receives a call from Prowl, who's well aware that he's behind Fisitron.

Springer meets with Kup, and reveals that Prowl has vetoed Skyfall as a Wrecker and is sending a substitute. Kup relates a story of how Prowl once killed a Decepticon by reading Cybertron law at him until he triggered his own kill-switch. The current Wreckers vote on the three Autobots whom Springer has picked to invite.

As Ironfist tidies his workshop, Springer appears to him in a shimmer and invites him to join the Wreckers. Ironfist naturally agrees, and Springer reports back to the other Wreckers that the only one who turned him down was Guzzle. However Twin Twist reports that Guzzle's holding on line 2.

Skyfall is astounded at Ironfist's being accepted into the Wreckers. When Ironfist gives him the workshop, he's so excited that he doesn't hear Ironfist saying that he doesn't think he'll be coming back. Once his friend has left, Ironfist receives another call...

Ironfist arrives at Igue Moor and meets Guzzle, who's impressed when Ironfist reveals he's Fisitron. The pair encounter Rotorstorm and then Pyro, who they at first mistake for Optimus Prime come to see them off. They decide to try out the lightformer cannon Ironfist has brought along.

Nine months later, Skyfall objects to the Ethics Committee cleaning out the contents of his workshop, due to his failure to attend hearings. No sooner has Xaaron disconnected the call than a pre-recorded message begins to play, triggered by Ironfist's death. Ironfist reveals that he knows Skyfall tampered with the cerebro-gun so it would "accidentally" go off, and that Skyfall leaked the Gideon's Glue research to the Decepticons. As the recording is also being sent out as a datalog, the Enforcement Squad begins banging on the workshop door in short order. With nowhere to run, Skyfall drinks a vial of Gideon's Glue found concealed in the sky-sled.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Mentioned characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"That, is the best story ever."

—Springer, upon hearing Kup tell him about the time Prowl literally bored someone to death.

"A head shot at close range...not a pleasant way to go."

—Rotorstorm, unknowingly being ironic.

"I nearly forgot to tell you, I've programmed the workshop terminal to treat this message as one of Fisitron's datalogs. Which means that every one of my subscribers will have these words beamed directly into their neural processors. You said you were a slow reader, Skyfall. You're a slow listener as well. There are 4,000 Autobots out there who've heard this part of the message before you have."

—Ironfist from beyond the grave, telling Skyfall that he's screwed.

Notes

• This text-only story was released as a bonus feature in Last Stand of the Wreckers trade paperback, and is a framing device for the material in the trade.
• The story had some minor revisions in the version printed in the hardcover edition, most notably Rung's deliberations on vocal synthesizers. The errors mentioned below are still present. Additionally, the hardcover also includes several scenes originally intended for "Bullets" that had been cut for space, as a sort of "deleted scenes" extra under the name "Out of Bullets". The hardcover edition of Last Stand of the Wreckers is the only way to obtain these extra scenes; they're not included in the subsequent Wreckers Saga trade paperback.
• First Aid initially misreads the initial on the Wreckers business card Springer gives him as "M"—a description strongly resembling the booby-trapped Machination card found by Verity Carlo in Escalation #4.
• Rung has a model of the Ark-1.
• The Autobot insignia used for passage breaks in the Wreckers Saga trade paperback are definitely the live-action versions. See the page on Insignia to tell the difference, but the giveaway is the angry eyes.
• Delphi was the name of a secret Autobot base in James Roberts's Eugenesis fanfiction.
• The number 113 crops up in a bunch of places: Agent 113 is the spy who passes on the information about Garrus-9, Room 113 is where the Ethic Committee meets, and Datalog 113 is the one that concerns the Pova incident. This is a little in-joke by James Roberts, in reference to issue #113 of the Marvel UK Transformers comic, which was the issue that got him hooked on the series.
• The description of Pyro's attack on the Tremorcons—how he runs over two of them before boosting up and transforming in mid-air—is very similar to Optimus Prime's famous entrance into Autobot City during The Transformers: The Movie.
• In the story Kup tells to Springer about raiding a Decepticon ship named the Fatal Consequence, he lists a group named the Heliobots among the Autobots who were accompanying him during said raid. However, in the text story "Zero Point" published in the hardcover edition of Last Stand of the Wreckers, Springer himself is said to have been a member of the Heliobots, which would suggest that he should have been there during the events Kup describes to him in this story. For the reprint of "Bullets" in the hardcover edition of Last Stand, Kup's mention of the Heliobots was thus changed to refer to only "a dozen other" Autobots in order to avoid the contradiction; however, the Wreckers Saga trade paperback, which also contains reprints of both "Bullets" and "Zero Point", again features the original version of the line in question with the Heliobots as part of the raid.

Errors

• Zeta Prime is described as being killed by a sniper. Later fiction would retcon this by having Megatron kill Zeta in his climactic final battle.
• On page 123, "you're" should be "your".
• On page 125, there's an extra "to" in Xaaron's dialogue.
• On page 127, "centric" is misspelled "centirc".
• One scene begins with Perceptor describing the effects of "vicarious perception", but randomly jumps focus to Ironfist after the first few lines. It looks like those lines were actually meant to be the final lines of the previous scene, and that the scene switch was erroneously inserted a paragraph too late.
• The version of Bullets printed in the Swedish hardcover Wreckers Sista Strid accidentally leaves out the final few paragraphs of the story. Said paragraphs, as well as an apology from the publisher were printed on a piece of A5 paper that was inserted between the pages.

Foreign localization

Japanese

• Title: "Jūdan" (銃弾, "Bullet")

Swedish

• Title: "Kulor" ("Bullets")
• An illustrated version of "Bullets" (resembling the old Marvel UK annual text stories) was printed in the Swedish oversized hardcover collection, Transformers: Mer än ögat kan se. The illustrations consisted of First Aid holding an Autobot insignia, pencilled by Nick Roche and colored by Malin Sasse; Rung in session with Flattop, pencilled by Stephen Baskerville and colored by Winston Chan; The Autobot Ethics Committee, pencilled and colored by Jeff Anderson; Afterburner standing around, pencilled by Nick Roche and colored by Malin Sasse and Skyfall about to drink Gideon's Glue, pencilled by Thomas Sjöström and colored by Winston Chan. The hardcover was published by Ades Media on May 30, 2019, and was limited to 500 copies.