Dear Vector Prime, can you tell us about the Beast Wars reality where everyone was a Mutant?
The universe of which you speak began like many other iterations of the Beast Wars: the crews of the Axalon and Darksyde crash-landed on prehistoric Earth, adopted beast modes, and waged war with one another for control of the planet’s energon supply. The Maximal High Council dispatched transwarp probes to search for the missing Optimus Primal, and Megatron sought to disrupt the process by trapping the Maximals in their beast modes, rendering them unable to operate the machine. But while the Megatron you are familiar with used the Transformation Lock Lens, this reality’s Megatron instead deployed an experimental transformation paralysis virus that temporarily trapped the afflicted Maximals in their beast modes. The overall effect was the same—Rhinox was unable to contact the probe—but while the virus eventually wore off, airborne samples of the paralyzing gas remained airborne for a long time afterwards.
From this point, the Beast Wars continue on, almost identically to the version of events you are familiar with, up until we reach the point when the Vok launch their first attack on prehistoric Earth. The transwarp explosion generated by the destruction of their Planet Buster weapon somehow mutated the dormant samples of the transformation virus, which quickly spread. This new strain trapped the Cybertronians in their beast modes, locked their internal mechanisms, and fatally “burned them out” in a matter of hours. One by one, both Maximals and Predacons perished, with four exceptions: the Cybertronians who had been born on Earth over the course of the conflict were somehow immune to the Transmetallized virus.
Once infected, these four entered a dormant “chrysalis state”, then emerged as powerful new Mutant Beasts capable of switching between two animal forms at will. Tigatron now transformed into a tiger and a magnificent eagle with the power of telepathy; Airazor, a nimble bobcat capable of teleportation; Inferno’s new centipede mode gave him the power to spew metal-melting venom, and Blackarachnia’s dragonfly form let her blast others with paralyzing vibrations.
Horrified by this new transformation, Blackarachnia promptly joined forces with Tigatron and Airazor in the hopes of reversing the process, but they found no cure. Before long, the three joined forces with a similarly mutated Silverbolt, while this reality’s version of Quickstrike joined forces with Inferno. Though initially outnumbered, they soon found their forces bolstered by Rampage, who promptly bullied the two mutants into submission using his massive crocodile mode. Without Megatron’s knowledge of the future, and no way to get offworld, I believe that this strange iteration of the Beast Wars ground on for many years...
