can i ask about the transformers time loop?
this is going to be Mushroomverse's answer to War Dawn and a very important playing piece in my setup for the movie retelling. if i can FINISH IT. the aerialbots get thrown back in time to the day cybertron's engines blew up and stuck in a timeloop about it <3
Or, what they had been left with, the last he’d seen, because what he was seeing now was the enormous expanse of the Well of Iacon, ringed with hundreds of lights. Not just emergency strips and leftover chemical caution paints, but brilliant neon stripes outlining railings and doorways and docks and ports. As he watched, more lights flicked on—floodlights and glittering fountains and flashing billboards, holograms and windows and most amazing of all, channels of energy that just seemed to pour in circles around and over and down the many levels of the well, from the far distant surface all the way down to the great glowing block of the Primal Basilica below. And everywhere, in the air and on the great circular levels, moved more Transformers than any of them had ever seen in their lives.
“We’re still on Cybertron?” Air Raid muttered. “But...how?”
Skydive reached out and put one hand against the wall, feeling that very faint thrumming and pulsing that reminded him just a little of a generator, or a weapon on standby, or riding on Omega Supreme close to…
“The engines,” he said, in tandem with Silverbolt, who had clearly also been thinking hard. They looked at each other while their brothers stared at them, not having caught on yet. “Cybertron’s engines are working again.”
“But those broke before we were all built the first time,” Slingshot said. They could hear that his confusion was building up towards crankiness and into outright belligerence. “How did they get the engines back on? How did they get all these mechs here?”
Fireflight flinched and they all reached for weapons, but he signaled they should stand down. “Wow, use an antiviral if you want to check the signals—or like, a lot of antivirals—but um. There’s a lot of satellites. And they all agree on the date, and...I don’t think they got the engines back on. I think the engines...haven’t ever been off yet.”
“What, we all just went back in time?”
“Spike and Bumblebee did, with that whole thing with Starscream. They said they saw a dragon.”
“Are we sure Bumblebee wasn’t just making that up?”
“Spike said he saw it too.”
“Not the dragon, the time travel.”