for those character profiles I said were coming- Hot Rod and Firebolt!
After departing from the matrix, Hot Rod didn't really know what to do with himself. The war was mostly over, with Galvatron defeated and only a select few stragglers still battling. He wasn't a leader anymore, he was free, just like he had wanted for so long, but, he didn't know what to do with that freedom. Try as he might, he couldn't go back to the fun loving kid he'd been before. He'd been a leader for years, he'd seen friends die, he'd made leadership decisions that caused his friends to die. He... wasn't the same bot he had been. Eventually, he found a way forward. Or at least, what he thought was a way forward. He, and some likeminded bots who needed to get away from the planets on which they'd seen so much fighting, so much death, boarded a ship christened the Lost Light. He was chosen to captain it, as much as he still felt ill suited to leadership rolls. Their goal was to find somewhere new they could strike out, somewhere not scarred with death and memories. Some of his closest friends came with, as well as some near strangers.
Try as they might, adventure seemed to follow them- not helped by their captains heroism, his need to help whenever the opportunity presented itself. They picked up more crewmembers, from lost colonists to archaeological explorers, but they were no closer to finding a peaceful world.
The most eventful moment of their voyage started as a simple distress call from the planet Nebulos. The crew were called upon to help defend the people of the planet from a group of villainous Nebulans, who had allied themselves and become emboldened with the help of a rogue faction of decepticons. The fighting seemed to drag on. Months he spent there, fighting back invasion attempts, protecting noncombatants to the best of his abilities. During this time, he met someone. A Nebulan youth named Firebolt.
Firebolt was, in a lot of ways, similar to Hot Rod, the Hot Rod that had been. He was a bright young man, seeking adventure, wanting to fight, to save people, to be a hero. Hot Rod, of course, saw himself in the boy. When the targetmaster process was engineered, and Firebolt volunteered to be one of the first to undergo it, Hot Rod requested he be partnered with the Nebulan youth. Through this partnership, Hot Rod started seeing the world in a new light, or rather, an old one. Firebolt's enthusiasm was contagious, and soon, Hot Rod found he had regained the passion he thought lost forever.
After the ascent of Fortress Maximus, Nebulos was peaceful- the precise type of planet the crew of the lost light had set out to find. However... some of them had changed, over the course of that voyage. Some of them, Hot Rod among them, didn't want to stop. While a portion of the crew stayed behind on Nebulos, Hot Rod led the remainder on a continuing voyage, an adventure across the stars, helping whoever they could. And by his side, was Firebolt, who much preferred a life of unanchored altruism to what had been awaiting him at home.
Together with his friends, his crew, his family, Hot Rod set out into the great unknown.
