Dear Vector Prime, What happened to Dante after Scorponok was taken into custody?
Dear Missing Machinations,
Following Scorponok's arrest and binary un-bonding, Abraham Dante was taken into Skywatch custody for "further study". For a brief period before the Great Decepticon Invasion, Earth had very little overt Cybertronian activity. However, Jimmy Pink had heard about Dante from Hunter O'Nion and decided to infiltrate Skywatch to keep a closer eye on him.
He discovered a small group of Skywatch guards, all ex-Machination, that were funneling information about new weapons to Dante's cell. Jimmy forcefully extracted the location of the new weapons from a guard, and found himself in a warehouse full of small grey, double-barreled tanks. One of them transformed, announcing himself as Fasttrack, Scorponok's shadow lieutenant on Earth!
Fasttrack had submitted to one of Scorponok's early experiments in cloning, and upon his master's arrest, now responded to mental commands from Dante. In fact, Skywatch had unwittingly become the new Machination base of operations, and Jimmy's snooping had forced their hand. As Dante-as-Fasttrack grabbed Jimmy and prepared to kill him, a mysterious blue and black car slammed through the warehouse wall, demolishing several Fasttrack drones and offering Jimmy an escape.
The car was a Cybertronian, calling himself "Punch", and had been undercover as a Decepticon in Dante's secret organization, watching Skywatch much like Jimmy had. Punch explained that Dante hoped to use Fasttrack clone tanks to destabilize and disable Earth military systems with a "Cosmic Rust" cannon, setting up a fledgling Neo-Machination as the only source of weaponry on the planet. Wanting to prevent a legacy of terror, Jimmy and Punch joined forces.
Unfortunately, during an attack on Skywatch, Punch was shot through by a Cosmic Rust cannon. Distraught at having watched his friend disintegrate before his eyes, Jimmy fled back to their secret base at his garage—but not long after, a blue and black car pulled up outside. It was too good to be true; at its back was an entire convoy of Fasttrack drones, and none other than Dante himself stepped out from behind the wheel. The car transformed into a Decepticon named "Counterpunch"—who revealed to Jimmy that Punch was naught but a fabrication, a guise under which to flush out any humans who knew about the Machination.
With Counterpunch's blaster squarely aimed at Jimmy, Dante converted to Headmaster form to gloat—but the very moment he clicked into place atop Fasttrack’s shoulders, Counterpunch spun and fired, fatally wounding the Decepticon. And in that same instant, Fasttrack himself opened fire. As Counterpunch slowly turned to rust, he told Jimmy that he had used Dante's clone technology on himself, and that the death Jimmy had witnessed was that of a "Punch" clone. Counterpunch apologized to Jimmy and thanked him for their brief friendship.
Skywatch confiscated the remaining Fasttrack drones. Jimmy, uncertain if he lost one friend or two, became increasingly bittered about Cybertronians on Earth. Dante, abruptly separated from a binary bond, eventually found himself at E.D.C high-security in a catatonic state, where he mutters in a quiet voice: "Scorponok... Zarak... prepare... confront... repel..."
