Dear Vector Prime, have you ever had a Headmaster partner?
I have indeed. Allow me to continue my tale of the ultimate Titan Masters, and I promise your curiosity will be satisfied.
While Arcee was tracking down the Titan Master hidden on Caminus, a separate mission was being carried out on the colony world of Biosfera—known to the locals as Eukaris. Grotusque, Twinferno and Repugnus journeyed there to find another Titan Master, this one believed to grant incredible fireblast. The Monsterbots were not Optimus Prime’s first choice for the mission, as he worried their bellicose disposition would create conflict with the native population—but with the so-called jungle planet having no roads to speak of, only Autobots with bestial alt-modes would be able to handle the terrain.
As Biosfera had been largely insulated from the Autobot-Decepticon conflict, the Monsterbots expected its inhabitants to be pushovers, who would do little to impede or expedite their search one way or the other. Instead, they arrived to find the planet on the brink of all-out war between the four major tribes. Something was terribly wrong: the kinds of weapons being amassed were beyond even those used by Cybertronians in their raw destructive potential. Still, the Monsterbots decided the brewing tensions were none of their business, and decided to focus on searching for the Titan Master.
It was at that point that I was forced to intervene. I materialized in their midst, which proved to be something of a miscalculation: they were taken by surprise, and turned on me immediately. Naturally, I am no lightweight, but I must admit the three of them had me on the ropes. I forced a time-out, separating us from physical spacetime, to allow us to communicate without violence. Once they were prepared to listen, I told them what I had seen.
In the future, Biosfera is an irradiated wasteland. Algorithmic engines crawl over the ash, feeding carbonized trees into immense furnaces, liquid metal pouring from foundries to coat the planet, constructing some kind of superstructure… to uncertain ends. The few survivors of the global devastation have shed the last vestiges of their organic biology, becoming purely robotic lifeforms in order to weather the potent radiation.
The Monsterbots refused to believe me without proof, and so I removed my head, Safeguard. Repugnus briefly swapped Dastard for Safeguard, and saw in his memory banks what we had witnessed of that apocalyptic future. Begrudgingly, the Monsterbots agreed to help us, and we separated, each to visit one of the four tribes.
High in the mountain eyries of the Cloud Walkers, Grotusque and Fengul discovered that they had forged a partnership with the Decepticon Fangry, who had given them a powerful attack jet. At the same time, Twinferno and Daburu found the Scale Walkers to be strategizing with Krok, who had armed them with an unstoppable armored tank. So too were the Wave Walkers consulting with the crab-like Squeezeplay, and as I discovered, the Fur Walkers had welcomed amongst them the ferocious Horri-Bull. It was obvious to us that the Decepticons had completely infiltrated the planet’s tribes, and were deliberately stirring conflict between them. Unfortunately, stirring conflict was the Monsterbots’ specialty, and they each started fights with the Decepticons on sight, leading to them quickly being ousted from the other tribes. Safeguard and I had the most luck, managing to convince the chieftain of the Fur Walkers that they were better off without the “guidance” of Cybertronians—though unfortunately, this included ourselves.
We regrouped, and the Monsterbots decided to resume their search for the mythical Titan Master hidden on the planet. I hoped that in the course of our hunt, we would stumble across a centralized base of operations for the Decepticons, which might produce the evidence we needed to sway the tribes. As it turned out, we were being followed: one of Twinferno’s heads spotted a bird flying overhead, and recognised it not as one of the Cloud Walkers, but as the Decepticon Wingspan. Twinferno almost flew up to take out the snooping Decepticon, but I was able to convince him to hold. We waited until nightfall, and when Wingspan left to make his report, we quietly followed.
He led us to a foreboding tower of steel, a weapons factory hidden in a barren valley. Inside, ensconced within the topmost chamber, we found the true mastermind behind the hostilities: the lost Titan Master, Scorponok. Once, he had commanded one of the Titans of myth, but he had been usurped by the alien Lord Zarak. Driven to madness by this defeat, he had begun traveling the galaxy in search of new evolutionary pathways. On this remote and primeval colony, he found them: and now, his machinations had brought him to the precipice of his return to power. In the fallout, once the biomechanical natives evolved into a purely mechanical existence to survive the nuclear winter that followed, he would use a planetwide relay to reach out and upload his consciousness simultaneously into thousands of bodies—becoming a gestalt lifeform on a scale that would surpass even the Titans.
Well, we certainly weren’t going to stand around and wait for that to happen! The Monsterbots made short work of Wingspan and Horri-Bull, but Scorponok was far from finished: he recalled the jet and the tank from the tribes, and they joined together to form the almighty Overlord. One Titan Master formed his head, while another plugged into his chest, right alongside Scorponok himself—giving the combined giant three times the power.
As it happened, deploying Overlord turned out to be a miscalculation: unbeknownst to us all, skillful trackers from the four tribes had followed us to Scorponok’s lair, and when they saw that the Cloud Walkers’ and Scale Walkers’ new weapons were in fact one and the same, they finally had proof that they’d been deceived. They raced back to their homes, to urge their leaders to begin peace talks. Unable to take down Overlord, we beat a hasty retreat, and he split into his individual components once more to menace the tribes.
Unfortunately, the nuclear submarine Scorponok had built for the Wave Walkers remained in play—and once he gave the command, it launched its payload, sending a dozen missiles up into the atmosphere. Converting to starship mode, I flew after them, and began an arduous process to disarm the bombs. First, I froze the missiles in time, halting their trajectories but maintaining their velocity relative to the planet’s rotation in space. Then, with a boost of power from Safeguard, I isolated each individual warhead, accelerating time to allow billions of years to pass in what was, from our perspective, mere cycles. During that time, the fissile material experienced many half-lives’ worth of radioactive decay… until finally, the payloads were rendered inert. Although I had saved the planet from nuclear fallout, the missiles still had enough raw explosive power to cause untold destruction—and I was powerless to stop them. The radiation from the warheads needed to go somewhere—and although spread over a short period, it was still a strong enough burst of gamma rays to cause a chain reaction, unleashing an electromagnetic pulse which knocked me offline and sent me plummeting into the ocean.
The rest, I heard after-the-fact, once the Wave Walkers dredged me up and brought me to shore. The Fur Walkers and Scale Walkers united, ambushing Overlord’s tank half, while the Monsterbots waylaid the jet—just long enough for the Cloud Walkers to intercept and destroy the missiles in midair, before they reached their targets.
As for Scorponok, he was able to slip away in the confusion. The Monsterbots were frustrated to have failed their mission, but after seeing the sheer destructive potential of his fireblast, they knew it was for the best that Cybertron would have to do without his power. They resolved that when Scorponok next appeared, they would be ready and waiting to settle the score.
Back on Cybertron, the situation had gone from bad to worse: Powerhouse’s seismic forces disturbed Trypticon from his hibernation, and he awoke very hungry indeed. After consuming several Titan Masters, including Powerhouse, and gaining their abilities, Trypticon lay waste to the Autobot defenses, felling Fortress Maximus. Just in time, Iron Apex arrived from Caminus, merging with Magnus Prime to form Omega Prime, who was able to drive the beast back to the Praetorus Wharf.
During the battle, I had been impressed by the bravery of Metalhawk, and so before returning to the Realm of the Primes, I entrusted with him the power of my spark—much as my father, Primus, had done long ago to create the Titan Masters in the first place.
