Intersectionality

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"Intersectionality"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	August 25, 2016
By	Jim Sorenson & David Bishop
Art by	Josh Burcham & Tomoya Hosono
Additional colors	Jesse Wittenrich & Christopher "IKY" Colgin
Edits by	Jesse Wittenrich
Continuity	Beast Wars: Uprising
Chronology	circa 2384
Page count	81pp

As the crewmembers of the starship Dinosaur attempt to apprehend two fugitives, they encounter dangers both shipboard and planetside.

Synopsis

Prologue

On the borders of the Allowed Zone, the Human Confederacy ship Spooky Action at a Distance is on patrol and all crew is being summoned. Crewmen Chak and Una take informal bets on exactly why. Captain Blix, a resurrected Pleistocene caveman and psychic, tells them and ship AI Screwball that, in fact, Cybertron's probability of war just jumped from 7% to 96% after a rebel call-to-arms at a gladiator match. Now the Spooky Action will have a much harder job of monitoring Cybertronian space and they may need to sterilize their last colony, Elba, as a warning. They've also picked up what appears to be a dimensional breach at Cybertron, fifteen Sol days ago. Screwball estimates that the only allowed Cybertronian warship in the area, the Dinosaur, will learn of the incident in thirteen hours...

Part 1

On board the Dinosaur, on an indefinite mission, a Predacon crew kills time playing cards; their officers are all Maximals, a Builder trick to keep both groups divided and unable to challenge the captain. The only time anything of note happened was when Killer Punch, the intelligence specialist, got paranoid about a 'stowaway' and searched the whole ship in a mad panic. Afterwards, he had to have his systems gone over by Apelinq and people are still worried about his mental state.

Hydra crows about his winning hand but then accidentally collides with Dead-End. She chews him out, a series of insults in a long line—he worries she must be lonely. (So who is it she's talking to inside the airlock?). He gets chewed out again at the bridge by Longrack, the Maximal first officer, as he's a whole cycle late. A transmission was picked up a breem ago from planet LGC-8803, Cybertronian in origin, and Longrack wants analysis. Synapse, political officer and one of two Builders on board, also wants this looked into, the Builders wanting an excuse to check out LGC-8803 for years, and 'politely asks' that Chief Engineer Magmatron is sure everything's in proper shape for a look. The implications irritate Magmatron, who holds his tongue.

The transmission turns out to be from the Maximal felon Trans-Mutate and Killer Punch finds that one of her fellow prisoners, Protoform X, has a recapture-at-all-costs order on his head. Hydra and Killer Punch try to convince Longrack that it all seems weird, but their reclusive Captain orders them on to the planet and orders Longrack to take an away team there. The first officer, excited to be commanding an away team, is aghast to find Synapse removing said team from his command and giving it to third-in-command Apelinq. When Longrack protests, he's told the Captain wants him to stay behind and he's too busy to ask for clarification...

On the bridge, Hydra has picked up another odd Cybertronian signal and Killer Punch fibs that it might be Terran so Longrack will let his buddy look into it. In private, Hydra tells him that the specifics of the signal make him think it might be the Resistance! Meanwhile, when sneaking off to talk to the Captain, Longrack instead finds Synapse and, looking for a reason why he was there, blabs about the signal. That's bad news for Hydra, who has cleaned up Lio Convoy's call to arms and is engrossed in it, unsure how to think about the message, when the political officer comes to call. The comms 'bot is still thinking Synapse can help him understand what to think when Synapse shoots him in the head.

The away team's space shuttle descends onto LGC-8803 when they notice an Intruder ship heading right for the Dinosaur! The remaining crew return fire but with the enemy not registering on sensors, they're forced to rely on nigh-impossible manual targeting. Longrack orders the shuttle to protect them but a tractor beam from the planet surface snags the craft, right before Intruder seismic-shock missiles come right at them!

Part 2

The Dinosaur loses its repulsor shield and the Intruder corvette starts poking holes in their hull. Ignoring Longrack's orders, Guiledart and Killer Punch are able to finally shoot down the enemy but not before it fires two more missiles and knocks the bulk of the Dinosaur's power out!

Apelinq gets a panicked Bazooka to cease trying to fight the tractor beam and try to fly down with it, landing them suspiciously close to the source of the transmission. The team find stone ziggurats with vast dragon statues, many broken; Saberback has a sense of déjà vu and is unnerved to find the stone feels warm in a way his sensors can't detect. As Apelinq gives commands for searches, Sabreback asks if he can swap places with Bazooka and stay at the ziggurat site.

On the Dinosaur, they've learned that the Intruders are going to crash near the away team but they have no way to contact the team thanks to odd interference from the planet's core. Synapse arrives and subtly steers Longrack into contacting the engineering team (pissing off Magmatron by distracting him from desperate work) rather than talk about finding Hydra, and suggests that Killer Punch, who is worried and wants to find his missing friend, is too vital to leave the bridge right now. Longrack is convinced that Killer Punch can be spared though and, to everyone's surprise, including his own and Synapse's, he snaps at the political officer when he tries to overrule him again.

In engineering, Dead-End is working down in Core 3's coolant in alternate mode and Magmatron hears something over the comms, she lies that it's just some debris being cleared...

Down on LGC-8803, Hard Head leads his three-bot to the transmission source, uneasy with being in charge and unable to shake the feeling that they're being watched. They find the source is yet another stone structure and Hard Head feels uneasy about this weird, out-of-place metal sphere that Crazybolt's poking. He's right to as it suddenly transforms and goes on the attack, with a centaur buddy from inside the structure! The Predacons fight hard against the strangers and force them back, but centaur is about to dispatch Crazybolt when two stranger Cybertronians show up, one of them successfully taking down the threat! She introduces herself as Trans-Mutate.

In his search of Dinosaur, Killer Punch finds only walls where Apelinq's lab door should be, and only white noise on the comms, and the wall moving as something breathes. He tries to run for it, flicking between sensor frequencies to track which bulkheads are moving, and dives into the ducts, opened up by a gear-shredder missile. Here, he's able to regroup and think: if the Dinosaur can transform its insides, why didn't he know before and why is it using this against him? As he heads to engineering, he's unaware that the missile just transformed into a person...

The Predacons are led to Trans-Mutate's makeshift shelter and use her cobbled-together repair rig to start fixing up Bazooka. The whole situation leaves them awkward, more so when the intimidating and quick-to-anger X turns up. Things calm down when they realise that the Builders have committed acts of cruelty on the two, something that leaves Hard Head disgusted. Nobody's gonna be renditioning these two now the truth is out. The fugitives fill them in on what's up with the Destructons.

Every time Apelinq scans the ziggurats, he gets a different result but in a fifth one, he finds Saberback is inside it. The Predacon is in a trance and has picked up an obsidian relic and when Apelinq startles him, he drops it... and the room is bathed in painful green light before both 'bots vanish!

Magmatron is unable to get the repulsors back online but has bigger worries when Killer Punch emerges from the ducts, claiming the Dinosaur is a Transformer. While he tries to shrug it off, Killer Punch—realizing the ship is trying to hide that Hydra is dead and not from combat—has the hard recorded data to prove the ship layout is shifting. Magmatron decides to cut all power for a breem. This causes a lot of swearing on the bridge—and causes Synapse to head off to Apelinq's now-visible lab, beating Killer Punch to it. To the officer's horror, he finds the Micromaster gleefully telling him how Hydra died, and that the Captain had wanted to just scare off Killer Punch from finding the body; but he wouldn't stop, so now he has to die, just as Synapse had advocated all along. There's a rebellion going on back home and it wouldn't do for it to spread on this ship, now would it? Killer Punch has just enough time to try and fight before he hears a command for Trypticon to kill him, and it all goes black...

Part 3

Dead-End is fed up, tired, and looking for downtime when she emerges from the coolant, but what she finds is a very paranoid Magmatron. Killer Punch had been able to transmit part of his encounter with Synapse and the engineer knows exactly how screwed they are. To his surprise, and to his relief, Dead-End boils it all down for him: they need to kill the Builders and take the ship fast. Magmatron accesses the computer core to put engineering's surveillance footage on a loop and, while Dead-End stays behind to monitor comms and stop the Dinosaur from interfering, he's off to the bridge to recruit the others. With cameras watching his path to the bridge, he can only hope brazening it out will work. Once he's at the bridge, he reports the situation and both Guiledart and Longrack agree that, if Synapse has killed two of their own, they can't side with the Builders (even if Longrack's nervous about mutiny). That's when autocannons drop out of the roof; both are blown to scrap by Guiledart, provoking a roar from the ship. Magmatron declares that Longrack will guard the bridge and monitor ops while he and Guildedart find and disconnect the Captain, still believing that he's merely connected to the ship.

Down on the planet, the Predacons have learned about the Destructons and that the Intruder ship had been theirs. They also recall an Intruder ship that the humans had driven off recently, which had been trying to head to Cybertron. Hard Head realizes that the Destructons are here trying to capture the Transformer's ship so they can sneak past the humans and in through Cybertron's back door! With the threat known and Apelinq not picking the comms up, the Predacons know they have to get back to the shuttle and try, at least, to fight off the Destructons. They get back in time to find Lord Imperious Delirious tinkering with their shuttle and all five Transformers charge into battle under Hard Head's command.

Somewhere, Apelinq awakens to find himself bodiless on a vast glowing plain. Panicking, he thinks he's gone to the Pit, but Saberback's disembodied voice reminds him that if he is capable of processing, he must still exist. The Predacon calls him over to a new environment, revealing also that they can visualize themselves as having bodies to make this realm easier to grasp. Apelinq has just enough time to marvel at how quickly Saberback grasped this world's rules before a tentacled sphere attacks them! The Maximal is able to save Saberback from this polterglitch and as the two fight, he realizes that if this realm is in their minds, he can give himself a lot of big guns. In another burst of sourceless knowledge, Saberback realizes the wounded polterglitch is about to explode and imagines a great forcefield around them. They survive but the explosion has left a jagged hole in reality itself; knowing this is the way out, Saberback knocks his boss unconscious and makes for it.

The Dinosaur keeps trying to kill Magmatron and Guiledart, at one point laughing as it tries to crush them with sliding walls. As they fight through, Synapse has headed straight for the engine room and swifly takes down Dead-End; of all the crew, he tells her, he hates her the most. Suddenly a new mech, and so she quickly falls back to being unpleasant. Medusa claims she's here to liberate Transformers "from the yoke of design" and that attacking the Dinosaur was about sacrificing a few Transformers for the great good, a line that tells Dead-End to open fire. Unfortunately she's completely outgunned. The Destructon doesn't even kill her, just destroys the main turbine: now they're in an unstable orbit over a gravity well, with no way of fixing things!

At the battle below, the Destructons turn out to be more powerful than expected but eventually, after Hard Head is able to direct X, Bruton is killed—but Crazybolt, Trans-Mutate, and Bazooka are down. After Imperious shoves his fist into X's monstrously powerful cannon, X goes down too and Hard Head is left alone with the horror. He starts to back away to the shuttle, talking to cover his acts, as Imperious advances. Bazooka reactivates just in time to help distract the enemy before Hard Head makes his play: initiating an emergency lockdown of the shuttle, rendering it unusable. The last thing he sees before Bazooka's body is thrown at him is Imperious roaring in frustration.

Part 4

As the turbine goes down on the Dinosaur, Magmatron and Guiledart are stuck in a contracting-wall deathtrap. Magmatron fakes a tantrum that leaves all sensors and cameras destroyed, then uses the cover to dig into the ship's circuits and fake that the walls have joined. The Predacons are free and 12 frames from the Captain. Dead-End, meanwhile, is panicking as the whole engine room begins to fall to bit. On the bridge, Longrack is panicking at the loss of orbit, the quiet, and the lack of crew that, he believes, could have solved the problem. When Synapse strides into the room, Longrack expresses his frustration: he's sick of these Predacons pushing him around, man! Synapse is happy that at least one bot is on the 'right side' and declares death to all enemies.

Apelinq comes online to find a bizarre, life-filled realm where whales soar through a sky and each one has an ecosystem on it. Here, Saberback says, he's been unable to manifest anything. To proceed, the Predacon says they need to head for a pyramid with an eye carved into its center Annoyingly, it turns out that however far they go they still never get any closer to it, as they turn out to be spinning around it without realizing; Apelinq identifies this and they get out of the perspective trap.

On the planet, Imperious is twenty cycles in to trying to gain access to the shuttle systems. Bazooka is in great pain but functional; Protoform X tried to attack when he came round but was taken down; and when Imperious gets tired, Hard Head is dragged off into the ziggurat, a sight that causes Bazooka to pass out in shock. A deal is made to a bound Hard Head, that he can either give up the shuttle codes and be allowed to live (until the Dinosaur crashes onto the planet) or he can be mutilated to death. Hard Head spits in the man's face. In response to that, Imperious Delirious rants that the Transformers are nothing but abnormal parasites, a 'spark' that disgustingly inhabits a machine's body... and he plans to extinguish the Predacon's spark and let Bruton use his body, just as he plans to snuff out every 'parasite' spark on Cybertron!

Magmatron finally reaches the Captain's room and, to his surprise, the door opens itself. The Captain, an ex-Decepticon called Full-Tilt who is wired into his environment, wishes to talk, and warmly says he's glad to have met them. To their surprise, the Captain has already been disconnected from the ship. He'd objected to Synapse killing Hydra and Trypticon, long resentful of his crew who get to actually walk, had decided to side with the political officer and against the 'bot who used to be his friend. The Captain only lives as he's Trypticon's T-cog, having undergone Powermaster conversion during the war to keep the monster alive. At the very mention of Trypticon's name, the Predacons are disgusted and outraged: no wonder the Terrans never let them near their space, the ship is a notorious war criminal! Magmatron decides he's going to reconnect the Captain to slow down the ship and give him a chance to lobotomize their foe. He heads back to engineering and puts Dead-End on lobotomy duty—she makes a detour to the airlock and 'her little pet', hoping for an edge.

Guiledart is guarding Full-Tilt (whose personality has forced him to not see the Builders as a monolithic force) when Medusa comes in, hoping to kill the Captain and finish the ship off.

In the digital realm, Apelinq and Saberback reached the vast, vast mountain and begin to climb the stairs that lead to the distant iris. While the Maximal would rather not use faith and instinct, he follows Saberback's advice that this is a pilgrimage and they must climb rather than fly. It takes them twenty-five thousand steps (Apelinq knows that if this realm is real-time, the others will have stopped looking for them) and at the iris of the eye, Saberback asks the eye for guidance. It seems to not work, not until Apelinq says this isn't working, at which point it turns out something has taken control of Saberback.

Crazybolt is woken by the dying screams of Hard Head and is disgusted by Protoform X's warped litany in celebration of it. Still, he puts it aside in order for them to escape. Trans-Mutate is able to dislocate her neck enough that he can use her helmet's spire as a lock-pick. Crazybolt escapes, then realizes the others, but it's too late by then. Hard Head is dead, his body hollowed out for Bruton's mind. Enraged, the Predacons and fugitives launch an attack. Once again, Bruton is taken down, this time quicker (though Protoform X is blasted down), but all that means is Imperious himself, transforming into a vast dragon, will kill them himself!

Part 5

Nothing the Predacons have works against Imperious and only Trans-Mutate can harm him. While they're routed, Bruton uses Hard Head's corpse to vocally override the shuttle's lockdown. His reward is to be left behind to stop Crazybolt from interfering with the shuttle launch. Protoform X, however, has recovered enough from his wounds and at Crazybolt's request, he jumps onto the shuttle as it launches. While he doesn't give a fig about Cybertron, he sure wants to hurt Imperious!

After a long search, Dead-End locates the very heart of the Dinosaur and thus Trypticon's metaprocessor. But at the Captain's room, Guildedart is forced to fire every weapon he has to stop the powerful Medusa and the explosion caused severs Full-Tilt's primary life support trunk! At the last second, Trypticon is no longer restrained and is able to sic a tank drone on Dead-End. And in engineering, Magmatron has almost fixed it so the ship can have a steady orbit and that's when Synapse and Longrack come in.

In the unknown realm, the gestalt entity in Saberback's body praises the Predacon for his faith and devotion, and informs Apelinq that he gets five boons. In answer to his first, a question, it explains that it and the place are both Metascan Omega, a beacon created by the lost Logicon race to pass on their knowledge once they'd left the universe. Lord Imperious, they say during the second question, has hijacked some of their equipment after once having tried to find them. When Apelinq asks if his friends are okay, he is informed of the fate of Hard Head and the decaying shuttle orbit, the latter of which risks damaging Metascan Omega when it crashes. His fourth boon: help him save his friends.

Protoform X makes it to the shuttle's front and after four heavy blows, he breaks through the windscreen and engages with Imperious. The foes throw down on the surface of the shuttle, which begins to dip with no one to control it. Imperious manages to win, or so it seems, pinning X to the roof. That's when the Transformer activates his Galva-conductors, sending electricity through both of them, and with Imperious paralysed, X rips his head off. Deciding, in the end, he quite likes the name 'Rampage' that Imperious kept trying to stick him with, he pushes the shuttle on a collision course with the ground and roars with delight at the thought that this might finish him off.

On the falling ship, Synapse tells Magmatron to carry on fixing the engines: once Trypticon tells him it's all good, then he may or may not kill the engineer. Magmatron can't passively resist as if he doesn't fix the ship, all his friends will definitely die. When the ship briefly drops, however, he hits on a plan, all based around the fact it shouldn't drop for another 60 nanokliks. Magmatron asks Synapse to promise that Guiledart and Dead-End won't die and when Synapse lies that they won't—Magmatron is contemptuous of the fact Longrack is relieved when Synapse lies, actually believing him—he asks for it in writing. Synapse laughs this up, confirming that he was lying and saying that the others will die—he should have stayed loyal like Longrack. That causes Longrack to physically assault Synapse, battering the Micromaster unconscious for threatening his crew. When the ship lurches again, Magmatron doesn't need to make a move after all and goes back to his repairs, amused that Longrack's still bringing up rank.

Dead-End, meanwhile, has remembered that Trypticon was supposed to have been easily provoked. And Dead-End is one rude woman! She insults him until his drone is firing at the inner airlock door and blasting it open, letting all the coolant out... and the stowaway, her pet Sharkticon, Gnaw, a Builder-sized beast that chomps through the drone. The way clear, she gets into the metaprocessor and disables it, but the lengthy work leaves her emotionally exhausted as she hears Trypticon plead for life. And in the Captain's quarters, a panicked Guiledart realizes the only way to save the dying Full-Tilt is to plug the life support into his own fuel pump. The Captain comes back to life just in time to fire the engines, except the time is not enough...

And on the ground, Trans-Mutate watches the falling ship, the falling shuttle (and her friend's joy at his impending doom), the glowing ziggurat, the Predacons restraining Bruton, and accepts the incoming death. She asks the Predacons to join her in being thankful for the time they've had and such a spectacular end, and they decide what the hell.

And at the interface realm of Metascan Omega, Saberback senses that the intelligence will answer "no" to Apelinq's fourth boon. He pleads with it to intervene, whatever its ancient codes of conduct, knowing that by actively struggling with the Omega he risks dissolving his own mind. And hey, they want balance, right? Well, if Imperious had used their tractor beam to interfere, then using it themselves would surely balance things out?

The ziggurat shoots out two tractor beams, one slowing the shuttle (Rampage is not happy) and one for the Dinosaur. This extra push won't stop them crashing but, Magmatron realizes, will slow them enough that they can use the retro thrusters and land the ship. It hits hard and skids its way towards the away team, but the final crash is stopped when the mighty spaceship transforms into Trypticon's theropod form and plants its feet down. Once stopped, it transforms into its city form, right next to an amazed Crazybolt.

After a few orbital cycles of hard work, Magmatron and his crew of workers manage to the new Dinosaur City more or less functional. With Metascan Omega granting their last boon, permission to stay, they could turn this war machine into an interstellar trading hub. (Their crew even now includes Bruton, eager to be part of the crew and, with every worker needed, he is accepted... with weapons disabled) Now it is time for Magmatron to leave. Half the crew are staying behind—a bitter Synapse in the brig until the war is over and he can face trial—and Longrack proclaiming himself mayor of Dinosaur City. Bazooka and Crazybolt (on the verge of a Conjunx Endura), Guiledart, and Rampage are all coming with Magmatron to join the Grand Uprising on Cybertron.

On the watching Spooky Action, Una merrily points out to Chak that a bunch of Cybertronians have stopped feuding.

Epilogue

Deep within the shuttle's computer core, unnoticed by its crew, a massive semi-sentient kernel continues to unpack itself. Lord Imperious Delirious will live again...

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in video footage.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"Fine. Whatever. I choose to believe you, all the while knowing that your inevitable betrayal shall only make me more certain of life's pointlessness and cruelty."

—Protoform X

"We Destructons are Second-Born Intellects, mechanical life built by organic life. You… I don't know what you are. Energy beings animating mechanical sock puppets. It's disgusting."

—Lord Imperious

"Forgive my friend. He, and I, do not process the world the way most do. But we mean no offense."
"Sometimes I mean offense."
"We usually mean no offense."

—Trans-Mutate trying to apologize for Rampage, who isn't helping.

"You're right, Synapse. I am loyal. Loyal to the Maximals, and to the crew under my command!"

—Longrack

Notes

• Characters mentioned but do not appear include: Saint Rand, the Intruders, Crick, "some dim-skipping cowboy", Professor Ōgaki, Deluge, Spanner, the Builder Assembly, Primus, the Mutacons, Desecrus, the Oracle, the Chaos Bringer, Gaia, the Logicons, Alpha Trion, Mendel, and the Quintessons.
• Characters mentioned/seen in the Swindle, Swindle, and Swindle advert: Swindle the First, Swindle the Second, Swindle the Third, Beast Wars Waspinator, rock monsters, Animated Mindwipe, Stonecruncher, Excavator, IDW 2005 Kup, Onyx, Marvel UK Galvatron, persistent bounty hunters freelance peacekeeping agents, cosmic entities, some hapless bot, Limbo parasites, Brave Maximus, and IDW 2005 Swerve.

Continuity notes

• The dimension breach the crew of Spooky Action at a Distance detect is Blackarachnia returning to her home reality, followed by Lio Convoy initiating the Grand Uprising, as seen in "Broken Windshields", the broadcast of the latter is seen by the characters of this story.
• An entry of the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime mentioned the existence of Terran "Second-born intellects" who did not consider themselves strictly male or female.
• Trans-Mutate, Rampage, and the Destructons reappear following the events of Alone Together. The Destructons can now transform, having acquired the technology from the computer they found at the end of that story.
• In Alone Together, Trans-Mutate and Rampage were to be shipped to the prison facility Garrus-16. This story reveals that said facility is located on Elba, which is home to the more famous Garrus-9 in the 2005 IDW continuity.
• The Destructons' personal transport is a probably-stolen warship constructed by the Intruders, the race which built Medusa.
• Trypticon was previously mentioned by Cerebros in "Head Games", which established the sheer destructive power possessed by Titans in Uprising (though this version of Trypticon is not a Titan, but a Megamaster).
• The Great Push was previously mentioned in the cybertronix in "Micro-Aggressions", though not by name, as the final, failed military campaign led by Galvatron against the humans.

Transformers references

• As in previous stories, most of the characters have bodies which are "virtual" redecos of existing toys. Apelinq takes the design of Crossovers Hulk tank mold, Magmatron is the revived Diaclone line's Dia-Battles V2 toy (which appropriately has three combining components), Hydra is BotCon 2016 Terrorsaur, Hard Head is Cybertron Cybertron Defense Hot Shot, Dead-End is Power Core Combiners Undertow, Saberback is Beast Hunters Bumblebee, Crazybolt is Reveal the Shield Wreck-Gar, Bazooka is Generations Warpath, and Guiledart and Killer Punch are Generations Roadbuster. Longrack, similarly to his IDW Beast Wars counterpart, repurposes the design of his Cybertron counterpart.
• Demonstrating how advanced the humans of Uprising are, Una mentions that the humans quantum locked Earth some time ago. The Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime previously mentioned this as an ability of the multiversal singularity incarnation of Vector Prime, which he used to protect the hiding place of the Origin Matrix.
• The Gung Ho, the Maximal ship from Beast Wars: Neo is mentioned by Captain Blix, and later by Crazybolt.
• Blix name-drops Cybertronian scientists Deluge and Spanner as scientists who'd work out Doctor Okagi's work on superstring resonance fatlines. Both characters have associations with Space Bridge tech.
• Crazybolt appears to share some of the coloration used by his Robots in Disguise namesake.
• Seismic-shock missiles debuted in the Dreamwave Energon comic.
• Longrack swears by the Oracle. Later on, Dead-End wonders if she committed a crime against Gaia, a sibling of Primus and Unicron's from Fun Pub's Classics continuity (there spelt Gaea).
• A similar fate befell a different Trypticon.
• This is not the first time the Destructons' plans were messed with by the Logicons.
• In another continuity, another Magmatron met a different fate on Arkus.
• The eye-pyramid that Apelinq and Saberback encounter seems to be based on the Brigadoon from the Beast Wars cartoon.
• The trailer that Apelinq creates while in the mind-realm references his transformation into the cab for Sentinel Maximus in Universe: Featuring the Wreckers.
• Hardhead was a dim but enthusiastic guy in Beast Wars Neo but the Beast Wars Sourcebook had him as a NCO who could competently lead troops. Once Bruton takes over his body, the latter characterisation becomes the former.

Swindle, Swindle and Swindle

• At the end of the story is an ad from Swindle, Swindle and Swindle. In true Jim Sorenson fashion, it's chock-full of references, including:
  • The Triptych Mask is a double reference: not only is it based on the supernatural tripartite mask worn by Onyx Prime, but the three mask pieces here are shaped like an elephant, a bird of prey, and a lion, referencing Magnaboss and the beast modes of his components.
  • The inspiration counter, Buddy Bracelets, Phase Bits, Deep Earth Scouts, the anti-gravity patch, the invisible phone, and the space-time continuum rupturing toaster are all inventions from the Rescue Bots cartoon.
  • The Mini-Con panels debuted in the Armada.
  • Plasma dynamic thrusters are from the Animated franchise. The advertising blurb mentions its capability to warp Transformers around the galaxy, and encounter "rock monsters"; both of which happened in "TransWarped".
  • The Omega Keys are from the Prime cartoon, but the accompanying blurb describes their propensity to "throw entire dimensions out of kilter"—a reference to "Echoes and Fragments", where Sideways and Gong used Omega Locks to do just that.
  • Animated Mindwipe appears in an ad promoting a hypnosis course.
  • The power booster rod appeared in the Marvel G1 comic.
  • "Papa Galvatron's Patented Time-Jump Mechanism" also put in an appearance in the Marvel comic, the method by which Galvatron travelled back in time in "Target: 2006". The ad copy notes that it's a good way to escape "freelance peacekeeping agents".
  • Stasis cuffs have appeared in multiple continuities, but the ones here are clearly based on their Animated incarnation.
  • The O-Parts were introduced in Car Robots/Robots in Disguise cartoon as a key plot point, linked to Fortress Maximus (or as in Car Robots and in the catalog, Brave Maximus).
  • The ad for an "exploding cy-gar" depicts Kup's IDW incarnation, the first character to take up the habit.

Real world references

• Intersectionality is a social theory focusing on the intersecting nature of all social categorizations such as race, class, and gender.
• Fittingly for a story set in the late 24th century, the human uniforms in this story bear a resemblance to the Starfleet uniforms of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Blix even wears a baldric similar to that of Worf!
• "Ny Norge" is Norwegian for "New Norway".
• Chak is an alumnus of an institution named after Saint Rand.
• Fittingly for a biologically-enhanced human, Una swears by Francis Crick, and later, Mendel.
• As a genderfluid being, Screwball uses gender-neutral pronouns.
• PBS produced a biopic about Professor Ōgaki.
• The "cover" for part one is a homage to New Mutants vol. 1 issue #39, by Arthur Adams and Bill Sienkiewicz.
• According to Sorenson, Longrack's behavior is partially derived from Arnold Rimmer, the fundamentally unlikable chicken soup-machine repairman / smeghead of British science-comedy series Red Dwarf.
• In homage to the toy he's designed after, Magmatron's primary weapons are called the Diabattle Cannons.
• The Desecrus Formulation is based after René Descartes's famous philosophical proposition "Cogito ergo sum."
• Trypticon's "death" draws inspiration from HAL 9000's defeat in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Cementing the homage, Trypticon pleads that he can "feel [his] mind going", before finally admitting that he is afraid—dialogue lifted almost verbatim from the film.
• Rampage's kamikaze plunge aboard the shuttle is lifted from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This is not the first time it has been homaged in Transformers media.
• The ad copy for the Triptych Mask in the "Swindle, Swindle, and Swindle" advertisement says it grants "sight beyond sight", a reference to one of the trademark abilities of the Sword of Omens from ThunderCats.

Errors

• On the cover, Hydra is miscolored as the nigh-identical Lazorbeak—having a red-orange face instead of Hydra's silver.
• On page 56, Full-Tilt remarks that his name "doesn't suite [him]". That should be suit.
• On page 58, Protoform X is accidentally referred to as a Predacon in the narration.

Other trivia

• This story was the second Uprising story began, but for various reasons (like length) it was pushed back. The five-act structure is taken from Five Faces of Darkness, and various 5-part G.I. Joe season openers. An early idea was that it would be separated into five whole parts, the "covers" being a leftover of that discarded idea.
• Per Sorenson on The Allspark Forums, this story came about because he didn't like the idea of leaving Trans-Mutate and Rampage out in space while the action focused on Cybertron, and he wanted to tie-in Alone, Together to the main story thread. The use of the Beast Wars: Neo cast came about during a brainstorming session.^[1]
• Following the trend in previous stories, the names of characters in this story which are shared with other characters in the continuity have alternate spellings. (e.g. Beast Wars Neo Hardhead is spelled "Hard Head" to distinguish him from Generation 1 Hardhead).
• Similarly to Blackout and Spaceshot in "Micro-Aggressions", the Uprising incarnation of Dead-End debuts as a female Transformer when her previous incarnations have been male.
• That the Destructons retain their original design was a deliberate choice, since Sorenson didn't want to lose their original aesthetic.

References

External links

• "Intersectionality" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club website
• "Intersectionality" annotations by Jennifer Alexis Carlo