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AGE OF THE PRIMES Deluxe Sideways

Maybe he's just got a trustworthy face.

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Universe "Battle Beneath the Streets" Ratbat

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Legacy: Velocitron Speedia 500 Collection Deluxe Class Road Rocket

#Transformers #Age of the Primes #Sideways #Ratbat #Crosswise #Rook #Transformers: Cybertron

dear vector prime,

Are sideways and mirror the same entity? Or is there something weirder going on with those two

Dear Sideways Stumped,

Even all this time after having passed on from that reality… I’m sorry to say that Sideways confounds me still. In my attempts to disentangle the origins and nature of this particular foe of mine, I have sought guidance from my multiversal brother, Alchemist Prime. But when he turned the Lenses on that particular universal stream, and focused them on Sideways… he saw only static, like a television tuned to the wrong channel, the cosmic microwave background of the universe. Prior to Sideways’ first appearance before the Autobots and Decepticons, that fateful day on the interstate highway… we could find no trace of him.

However, Runway was convinced he had met Sideways long ago, back on Cybertron, during the war—or rather, Sideways’ rider, who Runway claimed was not one Mini-Con, but two combined, their names Rook and Crosswise. Many of the other Mini-Cons corroborated their existence, and I have seen these figures crop up in alternate realities elsewhere in the multiverse. What the Mini-Cons seem unable to agree on is who Rook and Crosswise were—how they acted, what they did. Were they class traitors, working to sabotage the Mini-Cons’ efforts to escape Cybertron? Were they reactionaries, sowing discontent towards the Autobots, or the opposite? Was it Rook who suggested surrendering to the Decepticons, or Crosswise? If even a small number of these conflicting accounts are accurate, then it seems that these Mini-Cons were capricious indeed. Runway would have it that the Sideways we knew was nothing but a drone, that it was these Mini-Con steering him all along. Runway can be narrow-minded—why, he made similar remarks about Overload, whose relationship with Rollout was, in truth, vastly more complex than that—but his theory has a ring of truth to it. For when Sideways’ rider spoke, it was with the same voice, as though it was only through some act of ventriloquism that the bike could speak at all.

In one of his final reports, Rhinox hypothesised that Sideways was the successor to the race of Mini-Cons created by Unicron: not one entity, but rather a cloud of Nano-Cons, capable of infecting all forms of computerized life, undergoing constant transformation at a near-molecular level. In a combined state, it would be able to change appearance entirely—which would certainly explain his radical makeover by the time of his reappearance during the search for the Cyber Planet Keys.

Still, this fails to explain where Sideways came from in the first place—not as a collection of matter, but as a set of ideas: a name, a voice, a vehicle, a personality. The Unicron I know is not possessed of the spark of creativity. There must have been someone, at some point in history, who looked like that, and behaved like that… On Earth, there must have been a purple motorcycle, but I have not been able to locate it. Who did it belong to? What happened to them?

If Sideways, Rook, and Crosswise truly did exist… then what became of them? Did Unicron destroy them, and fashion a mirror from their shattered remains, a figurehead for bad luck? Or did he keep them alive, enslaved, at times reduced to mere puppets? In those moments where that cool, aloof temperament yielded to a more sinister and chaotic demeanour… was this simply a mask being removed, or a hand slipping into a glove? I wonder if they gave themselves willingly, as Thrust later tried, in his folly.

The Sideways I knew seemed almost like a different person entirely, a brazen buffoon who delighted in stoking the mistrust of others, and whose final act seemed to serve no greater purpose than simple patriotism. Unicron, by that point, had already been all but defeated; whatever fragment of his essence remained in Megatron’s body, and in the black hole, was little more than an echo, a rerun. If Sideways was still a pawn of the chaos bringer, then he was removed from play before he could make his final move.

But I have walked the streets of Planet X. I have met the gaze of passers-by, so similar in their construction, and thought—“Are you him?” Later, when Alchemist Prime looked, he could only confirm what I already suspected. It’s just a maze of white noise.

That reminds me… did you know that one of the Galactic Guardians pilots a vehicle that looks almost identical to that alien alt-mode of his? I passed by the TV once, and saw it. Safeguard does not see the resemblance…

RiD 01 Crosswise

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Transformers: Mosaic - "I Never Drink Wine"

Originally posted on October 7th, 2011

Story - Curt Lunsford, Juan Pablo Osorio Art - Jeremy Tiongson Colours - Tomoko Letters, Edits - Franco Villa

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Later revised and annotated for Transformers: The Lost Seasons

wada sez: The finale of the MonsterQuest trilogy was never actually published as a Mosaic; presumably the project was shuttered before this could happen. It’s not precisely clear to me who the “one more” monster was intended to have been. A comment from the team on the first strip remarked that it was a shame there wasn’t a fourth Decepticon Headmaster who’d work as a stand-in for the Mummy; it seems possible to me that this final line was just intended as a little stinger if they wanted to revisit Crosswise in a future strip. However, our Gherkin has another suggestion: maybe the intention is the Crosswise is referring to himself in narration, believing he’s become a monster himself in the course of this quest? The large wound on his back from Mindwipe’s bite would support this interpretation, if Mindwipe is being portrayed with classic vampire powers here. See below for clean art.