Perception

Trans-Mutate finds herself stuck on an isolated chuck of rock, trying to understand how it all went wrong.

Synopsis

At the Ferromax Detention Center, Trans-Mutate is discovered and arrested by Maximal guard Bigmos. Taken to the Maximal ruling body, she is forced into a stasis pod, and now, awakens on an alien world. And all the while, the only thing she can think is that everything is wrong...

The stasis pod's A.I. chimes in, confirming that they failed to reach their destination, and orders her to return to stasis so as to be reclaimed by Maximal authorities, with a wait time of "indefinite". Transmutate refuses, pointing out the stasis pod likely no longer functions, and tries to pull out the A.I. The navicomp advises her to instead knock herself out, and that removing it is a felony; Trans-Mutate points out that the generators look set to blow, and sufficiently frightened, the navicomp instructs her on how to remove it. Driving along, the navicomp explains that she was en route to Garrus-16 on the prisoner transfer ship the Claustrum, when during a standard safety drill, the ship was shot down before it could send a distress signal, leaving her alone on the barren dwarf planet LGC-8803. As the day goes by on the strange planet, Trans-Mutate and the navicomp bicker, the latter continuing to insist on her putting herself in stasis. Driving by strange floating rocks and abandoned structures, Trans-Mutate transforms and spots a shape in the distance. The navicomp, unable to detect any lifeforms in its scan, believes she is experiencing a form of false input, and again instruct her to knock herself out. Ignoring the latter, Trans-Mutate goes on to explain that she does not experience false input, and that she was arrested for that. The navicomp attempts to "correct" her as having questioned the "official record"; Trans-Mutate disagrees, pointing out there were far to many errors in history to attribute to mere incompetence. When she tried to explain this, others reacted with offense and anger. One individual, however, seemed to believe in her; the crime boss Cryotek. He told her about how their leaders used them to fight in a war not their own, and helped her focus her power. But when she outgrew her usefulness, he abandoned her. Found by a kind Maximal named Botanica, Trans-Mutate knows that she trusted wrongly...but does not understand why. Accessing her medical records, the navicomp confirms that she doesn't see false images, but rather something else entirely. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a familiar face attacks: Protoform X.

Featured characters

Italics indicate characters only in flashback. (Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"You are advised to return to the pod interior and re-initialize stasis to await reclamation by Maximal Security for the completion of transfer. Approximate wait time... indefinite."
"No, I will not be doing that. Also the pod is highly unlikely to properly function anymore."
"Then you are advised to get in and self-induce stasis manually. Slam your head in the door. Two to three attempts should be sufficient."

—The navicomp has some ideas on how Trans-Mutate can induce stasis.

"The ship was shot down. How is that user error?"
"All error is, ultimately, the fault of a user, given sufficient investigation."

—Trans-Mutate and the navicomp

"The data did not correlate. History was inconsistent. Too many errors to attribute to incompetence. I pointed this out but the reaction was not correction, but offense. Anger."

—Trans-Mutate

Notes

Continuity notes

• Trans-Mutate was discovered after her infiltration into Ferromax with her squad in "Alone Together: Prologue"; the Dynobot propaganda poster from that issue is in Bigmos' hands. Her earlier allegiance to Cryotek and Botanica finding her was established in her profile, published in the same issue.

Transformers references

• As with the prologue, many Beast Era characters appear, with some having bodies based on various modern-day toys:
  • Bigmos, the Maximal Insectron from Beast Wars II. He has a mechanized version of his beast mode body, akin to the designs that appeared in IDW's Beast Wars comic.
  • Santon and Lio Junior (later called Lio Minor in future Beast Wars: Uprising stories), Maximal components of combiner Magnaboss from Beast Wars II. Lio appears to be in the black and orange colors of one of the redecoes of his toy included with a puzzle.
  • Windrazor, a redeco of Beast Wars Fuzor Silverbolt from BotCon 1999. He is a virtual redeco of Beast Hunters Dreadwing.
  • Cryotek, a Predacon from the Robots in Disguise toyline and the 3H Productions Universe comics. He is a virtual retool of Prime: Robots in Disguise Bulkhead, with a new head.
  • Packrat, a redeco of Beast Wars "Basic"-class Rattrap from BotCon 1997. He, like Rattrap, is a virtual redeco of Prime Rumble, though he keeps Rumble's head. He was a thief, hence his affiliation with Cryotek here.
  • Escargon, a Maximal snail created by Shōji Imaki as an example for a Beast Wars II Character Design Contest in Comic Bom Bom. He is a mechanized version of his beast mode body. A version of Escargon was shown to be selling black-market merchandise in the TransTech story "Withered Hope", translating to his position as a criminal here.
  • Nitrostreak, a Maximal cop from BotCon 2006's "Dawn of Future's Past" comic. He is a virtual retool of Classics Rodimus, with a "hovercar" alt-mode.
• Before it was shot down, the Claustrum was en route to Garrus-16, named for Garrus-9, the Autobot's maximum security prison from the IDW 2005 continuity.

Real-world references

• The Claustrum is named for a thin layer of neurons in the center of the mammalian brain.
• The navicomp believes Trans-Mutate is experiencing pareidolia; essentially, the fancy word for seeing faces in things.