A Brush With Infamy–Prologue

Nucleon remembers...

Synopsis

The verdict is in and despite all of Swindle's legal efforts, the Quintesson judge sentences Galvatron and Scourge to death and their binary-bonded partners to indefinite detention. That's where it ended, but where did it start?

For Nucleon, it technically starts when his ancestors fled war-torn Cybertron and founded the colony Rebirth. More specifically, he tells us, it started when the Decepticons ran an infiltration protocol on Nebulos and the Human Confederacy got in the middle of it. Things escalated, and Zarak and his mad scientist collaborator Fausto Borx created the war-altering binary bonding technology. First it was the Headmasters, then the Autobots invented Targetmaster tech, then the titanic double-Headmasters... By the time the Autobots had won, Nebulos was utterly lifeless. Horrified by the Scouring of Nebulos, Earth (which Nucleon disparages as ignoring humanity's own involvement) contained the Transformer war within a blockade.

Galvatron had tasted the power of binary-bonding and thought of turning people into living batteries now, and fell upon Rebirth in the hope of using its small, non-transforming Cyberdroids as "Powermasters". Terrible, right? Not for Nucleon! He felt the planet was a decaying oligarchy under the Optimus and joined up with the Malignus to fight them after his own conjunx Kari was arrested. When Galvatron arrived, Nucleon happily signed up and even invented the Powermaster process in the hope of stopping the Optimus.

Malignus's founders Doomshot and Clench joined him in making Galvatron a "Triple-Threat Master" (that power was a kick!) but as soon as they'd nobbled the Optimus and renamed the planet "Master", the Autobots showed up and yet another planet was being torn apart in a proxy war gone hot and binary-bonded 'masters. The Autobot leader, taking three partners, became Triple-Threat Prime, and eventually Fortress Maximus was dusted off and thrown once more against Zarak's revamped beast, MegaZarak.

In the end, the Decepticons won and Master was, er, 'saved'. Unfortunately that meant Galvatron turned to the human blockade. And with the 'masters tempering his madness and giving him greater smarts, he came up with the Grendel Gambit...

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"It’s ironic, isn’t it? Ours is a history of oppressor and oppressed, changing places on a never-ending dance stretching back to time immemorial."

—Nucleon

Notes

• This "story" was released within "Not All Megatrons", translated into Cybertronix and sprinkled into that story between page breaks.
• Beast Wars Uprising continues to cover up just who was the Autobot leader at the time the Great War ended, with Triple-Threat Prime vaguely described as the Autobots' leader and nothing more. Note that Nucleon refers to the Optimus as being named after the "once-and-future" Optimus Prime, suggesting he did indeed die and come back at some point. The fact that this Triple-Threat is called a Prime in the first place, and that his partners are those who've bonded with him in other continuities is a pretty good indicator it probably is Optimus himself. "Derailment" would address this subject further.
• While Sorenson has said he'll expand the 'book' A Brush with Infamy if he gets the chance, the original plan was that you'd just get the prologue: this would tell the 'big picture' stuff and the 'book' would go into the nitty gritty.^[1]

Continuity notes

• This story fills the readers in on the details of the previously mentioned Scouring of Nebulos, the proverbial last straw for humanity and their tolerance of the Autobot / Decepticon war, and the seeds of the Great Push, Galvatron's big breakout plan.
• Nucleon had thought about his backstory during "Not All Megatrons", which introduced him, Doomshot, and Clench.
• Fracas was handed over to Artfire, ostensibly to be extradited to locations unknown. Since this version of Fracas is a Targetmaster, he likely became a victim of the Targetmaster Extirpation, a fact Nucleon is unaware of.
• Nucleon ruminates on post-war Cybertron's brief, scattered uprisings, after the failed attempts of Cheetor and Dynobot, established in Blackarachnia's profile from Collectors' Club issue #25 and "Alone Together: Prologue" respectively.
• Cyclonus is mentioned to have made a great sacrifice, and indeed in "Broken Windshields" Eject's headquarters, an important building, is named the Cyclonus Memorial Tower.
• Nightstick's fate would be addressed in Star Dasher's profile in "Safe Spaces"—Nucleon's dour prediction proved partly true: Nightstick the Nebulon and his fellow Star Seekers were captured and arrested by Headmaster bounty hunters.
• Shockwave and Overlord had brief periods of Decepticon leadership, the latter after Galvatron was executed.
• Dante and Caliburn were previously mentioned in the Cybertronix of "Broken Windshields" as civilians on Cybertron in the present day.
• Llyra was mentioned in "Head Games" as a "wife" and "mother" in the Witwicky family. This story indicates that in this continuity, she was the wife of Daniel Witwicky and therefore mother of Galen Witwicky and Olin Witwicky.
• In addition to several other events the audience has already learnt of, Nucleon mentions in passing a new one called "The Rending".
• The Grendel Gambit would be poetically described in the "Book of Logos".

Transformers references

• The biggie is that this story brings in elements from the Marvel, Sunbow, and anime takes on Headmasters! The World Watchers of the comics go up against the Hive from the cartoon, with various 'master partners coming from both sources, while the planet Master with its teeny Transformers is from the anime. In a sneaky gag, the planet is originally called Rebirth (after the cartoon's Headmaster story) and then supplanted by Master (as in the anime ignoring "The Rebirth").
• Nucleon figures Nightstick was eventually hunted down like a slaarg, the creature mentioned by Cyclonus in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 1"
• Much like his rival Fort Max, the Uprising version of Scorponok is an amalgamation of his various versions from prior G1 media. Much like the Marvel comics, he starts off as a regular-sized Decepticon who binary bonds with a Nebulon, though here the names are changed so the Decepticon is named Zarak (so as to avoid sharing a name with the Predacon Scorponok, in keeping with Uprising's naming conventions), and the guy normally named Zarak is instead Fausto Borx, who debuted in Regeneration One as a Nebulan scientist, albeit one cooperating with the Autobots. Their larger combined form is made out of a city, just as the full-sized Scorponok of the cartoon was, but is named MegaZarak like in Japanese media. Later on, Zarak replaces the now-dead Borx with a new partner called Dante, same as his IDW counterpart did, along with picking up Caliburn, who was a partner to a different MegaZarak (from the 2003 Universe line, via the OTFCC).
• Artfire had a partner named Nightstick who was basically Fracas in a new package. Regular Fracas replaces him and then defects as a playful way to explain why they look identical.^[2]
• Being released contemporaneously with the Titans Return toyline, this story makes use of many new Titans Return toys, sometimes repurposing them into separate characters from the portrayals in the Titans Return toy bio continuity. Skytread, for example, is the revamped Titan Master form of Flywheels in Titans Return, but in this story, Skytread is a separate character and the Nebulon Headmaster partner of Flywheels.
• Rarigo and Tankette are redecoes of Titan Master beast/vehicle partners from the Legends line, probably used here since Legends actually gave names to their "Titan Master" vehicles. Both of their Nebulan riders-Spasma and Skytread-are partnered with them due to the two drones being redecoes of vehicles that came with the Titans Return versions of their partners, Apeface and Flywheels.
• Infiltration protocol is taken from the IDW continuity.
• Going by the way Nucleon says Shockwave was in charge for "a few epochs", it seems the set-up with him followed that of the G1 cartoon, where Shockwave remained in charge on Cybertron, rather than going to Earth.
• Zella is a Nebulan scientist from the United story "The Fierce Fighting on Planet Nebulos" (wherein he wasn't a "-master"). He is the only Nebulon here to not have an obvious Headmaster matchup.
• Llyra is still the daughter of a Decepticon Headmaster but here it's Borx rather than Zarak.
• Zarak hesitates in a fight because Llyra is endangered, similar to what happened in "Love and Steel!"
• The planets Paradron, Gigantion, Omnitron, and Opulus get name-dropped by Nucleon as colony worlds.
• Hunter is a Cyberdroid version of Hunter O'Nion from IDW while Daburu Leo merges Daburu from Titans Return with Daburu's physical basis White Leo.^[3]
• Optimus and Malignus were the factions in Estrela's Brazilian version of G1. The Malignus as "revolutionaries" comes from "Gone Too Far".
• Rebirth's political setup is akin to the Aligned and IDW backstories, where Cybertron is a corrupt oligarchy.
• Another Megazarak is also a planet-killing baddie!

Real world references

• The "Grendel Gambit" is presumably named for the Scandinavian mythical monster.
• Fausto Borx gets his first name from the legend of Faust, where a very smart man sells his soul for material gain and it goes badly for him. Hmmm.

References

• Archived translation of A Brush With Infamy–Prologue by Jalaguy

References