High Noon (SG)

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"High Noon"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	March 14, 2016
By	Andrew Hall
Illustrations by	Hayato Sakamoto and Tomoya Hosono (uncredited)
Continuity	Shattered Glass, GoBots
Chronology	2015
Page count	16pp

The GoBots make their way to Ironworks, but find that they're not the only visitors to this world...

Synopsis

With Path Finder, Bad Boy, and Man-O-War having gone the aerial route to the Autobot Ironworks base in Oregon, the rest of the GoBots take their time traveling the roads of this strange new world, hoping to arrive by the next day. Small Foot is, for the first time in a while, optimistic about their mission. Road Ranger, meanwhile, complains about having to carry around the tarp-covered Treds on a trailer they've found, since the heavy Guardian's alternate mode would raise suspicion. Rest-Q suggests that they stop for the night and get some rest, and Road Ranger, feeling inexplicably tired, agrees. Finding a patch of farmland, the GoBots position themselves behind a barn so that they can initiate auto-repairs and get some rest. Small Foot admires the natural beauty of the planet, so far removed from what GoBotron has become, and Road Ranger agrees, feeling much closer to humanity than the Transformers they've disguised themselves as. However, when he begins drifting off mid-sentence, Rest-Q performs a quick diagnostic check on him, finding that Road Ranger's fuel tank had been punctured at some point on the road. Using his special regenerative abilities, Rest-Q accelerates Road Ranger's auto-repair, and tells him to take it easy. All the while, the group's sole Renegade, Buggyman, stares off at a forest in the distance, and waits for the others to fall asleep. However, even Buggyman is unaware that they're being watched by one who is about to make contact with his "targets"...

Asleep, Small Foot finds herself in a dream, floating in front of a dark abyss, an unknown entity full of malice and hunger. Small Foot sees her friends, familiar yet in new forms, being sucked in by the dark entity, including the man who inspired her to become a Guardian, Leader-1. Small Foot tries to call out to Leader-1, but her voice is drowned out by distortion, as the entity makes a massive smile at her despair. Waking up from her nightmare, Small Foot is relieved to see that the others are okay...but then notices that Buggyman has wondered off. Small Foot follows his tire tracks, suspicious of the Renegade, but finds something else instead: a strange yet familiar ball of light, which greets her, so different from the evil entity from her nightmare. Despite not knowing what the light is, she feels reassured as he explains that he has been searching for her and her friends, also on a journey to save his friends. Merging with her, the light shows her his home: inside a star, where he and his fellow beings of light shared a consciousness, having evolved from their Transformer ancestors into a peaceful society...one that has now grown dark, threatened by the darkness of the same entity Small Foot has seen, threatening their extinction. Small Foot wakes up at the camp once more, seemingly having had yet another dream...and yet, it still feels so real.

Several miles away, Buggyman has found what he is looking for: a patch of land where the metallic content of the soil is enough to amplify R-Navi's transmission, reporting to his secret commander: Zero, the once and future leader of the Renegades. Having sabotaged Road Ranger's accident earlier, Buggyman drops his creepy act, and informs Zero that their sleeper agent is already in place, ready to eliminate the Autobots and take the Ironworks base for them. Buggyman tells his commander that everything is going to plan; the others suspect nothing, and he has evaluated their strengths and weaknesses. Zero informs his underling that, should he and the others fail to complete their mission in the next three days, he will be joining him on this Earth. Buggyman promises him that he will be ready for the purge, promising that the Renegade legacy will live on even without GoBotron.

The next day, Path Finder has signaled that her group is close to Ironworks, and to wait for them to make contact with the Autobots before proceeding. Out on the near-empty highway roads, the group are suddenly approached by a fast red sports car with flames on its hood. Spotting a purple-colored Autobot symbol, Small Foot believes it to be Hot Rod, one of the Autobots she's read about, and believes that it's come here to escort them to Ironworks. However, the car keeps edging forward, and Buggyman tells everyone to stay quiet and pretend to be normal vehicles, because whatever he is, he's not an Autobot of this world. Finally, as it gets scarily close to Small Foot, the car converts into a flight mode, insulting the slow moving "humans". Buggyman explains that R-Navi's been scanning for spark signatures, and that the car's signature was entirely different, "alien" in origin like them, and he's not alone. Small Foot reluctantly agrees with Buggyman, and the group decides to hurry up their pace.

30 minutes out from Ironworks, Road Ranger is relieved at just how quiet and uneventful their trip has been. However, Small Foot is worried; they've gotten nothing from the base since Path Finder's last transmission, and she has not yet activated her tracking signal to lead them to her. Worried that Man-O-War might have been right about knocking on stranger's doors, Small Foot has Buggyman use his drone to find an alternative path to Ironworks off the road. Finding a small forest, they make their way to the Ironworks base, and try to figure out where to go from there. Suddenly, a voice calls out to them...and then fires on the GoBots, intent on taking them as trophies to Optimus Prime! Small Foot and Rest-Q are both wounded, and the voice approaches; it's coming from a small blue gun, carried by another robot with a purple Autobot symbol. The gun explains that he's Nebulon, and his partner is Stepper; the Prime they work for isn't the one they're looking for, and prepares to fire another round. Treds leads the others in blasting the interloper with their fists, hoping to catch him unaware with their inbuilt weaponry, but Stepper's Golnium armor refracts their energy blasts, rendering them harmless. Nebulon fires on Small Foot...but the kindly voice from her dreams reassures her, and sets up a force field, stopping the shot. Nebulon is briefly fazed, but prepares to fire again; the voice warns Small Foot that they'll have to use physical weaponry, and Small Foot quickly tells Treds to use his cannon. Treds fires on the Autobot, and the blasts hits Nebulon, destroying the gun and sending Stepper flying. Treds, horrified at having apparently killed an opponent, feezes, as Road Ranger notices the Autobot edging towards his spare gun. Quickly grabbing it, Road Ranger aims it at the Autobot, who tries to goad him into firing. Road Ranger is having none of it; he breaks the gun over his knee, and tells Stepper the difference between them is that Road Ranger is man, while Stepper is just a killer. Rest-Q reassures Treds, telling him that "Nebulon" appears to just be a normal gun; Buggyman, having known the whole time, explains that Stepper was using his speakers and ventriloquist skills to make Nebulon seem real. Stepper, breaking down over the loss of his "partner," tells them that they're still too late; his partner is coming for them. And at that moment, a red Autobot orders all of them to stand down, aim a rifle at the six...

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in a vision.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

“Let me tell you, Stepper, what it means to ‘be a man.’ It's a human expression. I’ve spent some time with humans and they're courageous. They're capable of compassion, even to opponents. What isn't a man is a dirty killer who revels in unprovoked violence. That's what you are and you make me sick.”

—Road Ranger giving a good 'reason you suck' speech.

Notes

• Characters mentioned but not seen include: Path Finder, the sleeper/fly, the hawk, Cy-Kill, Bad Boy, Man-O-War, Ironworks, Classics Hot Rod, Tic-Tac, the components of Puzzler, Shattered Glass Optimus Prime, Classics Optimus Prime, the Engineer, and Drift.
• Characters who appear only in illustration include: Hans-Cuff, Scooter, Turbo, Flip Top, and Staks.

Continuity notes

• Obviously, the entity that Small Foot sees in her nightmare is Unicron, whom she and the other GoBots do not know about, hence her inability to identify him.
• In Small Foot's nightmare, her friends are in different, new bodies; these bodies are Transformer designs taken on by the GoBots during the Diaspora from their home universe, as established in Ask Vector Prime and Beast Wars: Uprising, having since decided to evacuate after last chapter.
• Solarbot's backstory was given in both "Solar Requiem" and his toy's tech specs, where it was established he was from a race of Solarbots, beings who evolved from the Transformers to live in the suns of the Mirtonian constellation, only for them to slowly grow dark. To stop this, Solarbot was sent to search for a way to save his people and his home. This is the first indication that Unicron has anything to do with their stars going dim.
• Buggyman's sleeper agent is poised to "eliminate the hawk," referring to Classics Autobot commander Metalhawk, who, like the Ironworks base and the rest of the "Classicsverse" Earth, was transported to the "Shatteredverse" in "Invasion".
• Small Foot mistakes Shattered Glass Tracks for Hot Rod, one of the Autobots she read files on in preparation for the mission, her confusion the result of Tracks' red colors and his hood's flame decal. The Classics stories previously published established that Hot Rod had renamed himself Rodimus, indicating that the GoBots' study of the "Classicsverse" wasn't fully complete.
• R-Navi's scans of the Shattered Glass Autobots show that they do not appear to have sparks—as established all the way back in the original "Shattered Glass", Transformers from the world of Shattered Glass have embers composed of electrons, rather than sparks composed of positrons (something which was first established in the Beast Machines cartoon).
• Stepper was establish to use his ventriloquist skills to make Nebulon seem in charge of him in his BotCon 2015 toy's bio, which also noted that he had fought with the G1 GoBots alongside his partner, Drift. However, see "Errors" below.
• Road Ranger's speech about being a man is similar to the one he gave to TransTech Demolishor back in "Withered Hope".

GoBots continuity notes and references

• Road Ranger pulls Treds on a flatbed trailer he "borrowed"; his original toy converted into a truck with a flatbed trailer forming out of his legs.
• The GoBots were established in the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon to have both built-in weaponry (fist blasters, which they used regularly throughout the series) and regenerative healing abilities (though they only showed up a few times in early episodes of the series; this ability finally got used again in "Withered Hope").
• Small Foot reflects on how Leader-1 inspired her to come to GoBotolis and join the Guardians; GoBotolis is the capital of GoBotron, first introduced in the episode "Lost on GoBotron".
• Buggyman's change in characterization is revealed to be an act to hide his true nature from his teammates, making them believe he's just a crazy Renegade.
• Zero was a Renegade who challenged Cy-Kill's command in the episode "The Third Column", briefly creating his own splinter faction of Renegades before fleeing in the episode, promising his revenge. Much later, flashbacks in the episode "Et Tu, Cy-Kill" would reveal that Zero was the leader of the exiled Renegades before Cy-Kill rebuilt the faction. His name is never explicitly stated, but his identity is obvious, especially from his final line: "If we lose Gobotron, it will not mean the end of our race. We will simply start again from zero."
• The monitor in the illustration of Buggyman contacting Zero appears to be based on the detailing of the base mode of the GoBots Thruster playset.
• Road Ranger wonders if Tracks is Tic-Tac, one of the components of Puzzler. In the episode "Auto Madic", Puzzler was shown to be made of drones created by Cy-Kill and the Renegades to take on the Guardian Power Warrior, Courageous. Treds isn't quite able to remember their actual names, only that they were related to games, believing they might have been called "Chess" or "Backgammon."
• Treds is distraught when he believes he's killed Nebulon; in the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon, no one ever died in battle, the result of it being a children's show.
• Like Path Finder last chapter, Treds swears by the Last Engineer after "killing" Nebulon; the Last Engineer was the GoBeing who designed the GoBot body after the near-destruction of GoBotron, as seen in "The GoBotron Saga".

Transformers references

• On the cover illustration, Transformers-ized version of Leader-1, Turbo, Scooter, Hans-Cuff, Staks, and Flip Top are seen, part of Small Foot's Dream. All of them are "virtual" redecos of molds from the Combiner Wars toyline, including:
  • Leader-1 uses the body of fellow F-15 Eagle Combiner Wars Air Raid, while using the head of Combiner Wars Quickslinger, whose goggle-shaped visors are used to create Leader-1's orange "domino mask."
  • Turbo is based on Combiner Wars Breakdown.
  • Scooter is based on Combiner Wars Legends-class Protectobot Groove.
  • Hans-Cuff is based on fellow police car Combiner Wars Protectobot Streetwise.
  • Flip Top is based on Combiner Wars Alpha Bravo.
  • Staks is based on Combiner Wars Optimus Prime, with his head flipped in replicate Staks' windshield head.
• Also on the cover is Unicron, based on his Japanese Transformers: Prime Gaia Unicron toy.
• Zero's "Super Voyager" body is based on the Generation 2 Rotor Force Decepticon propeller plane Ransack, albeit with his arms modified to give him claw hands. The "Super Voyager" name is derived from three sources: the large Super GoBots from the GoBots toyline; the larger Voyager size class seen in modern Transformers toylines; and "Super Voyager", the second opening theme for the Beast Wars II cartooon.
• Buggyman plans to eliminate the others with his turboworms poison; turboworms were originally mentioned in issue #27 of the Marvel The Transformers comic.
• Road Ranger figures that Tracks is just an Earth vehicle with a case of "road rage,"; Shattered Glass Tracks' colors are based his positive-universe counterpart's toy's original Diaclone release in red, which would be used by e-HOBBY in 2002 to create the character Road Rage.
• When examining the remains of Nebulon, Rest-Q points out that "he's" just a gun, at first calling him a "Gregevor" thanks to his foreign vocoder syndrome. Gregevor was the romanized English name put on the packaging for the Japanese Adventure Greejeeber toy.

Real-world references

• The story presumably takes its title from the 1952 Western film of the same name.

Errors

• While Sakamoto is credited as the sole artist, both the images of Buggyman contacting Zero and Stepper confronting the GoBots were drawn by artist Tomoya Hosono, who goes uncredited. The only image by Sakamoto is the cover illustration.
• As with last chapter, both "GoBot" and "GoBotron" are rendered as "Gobot" and "Gobotron," without the camelcase spelling, as is "GoBotolis."
• The previous installment of the Spatiotemporal Challengers story was referred to as "Part 1", and the next two will be "Part 3" and "Part 4", respectfully. However, this installment is not labeled as "Part 2", but instead as "Chapter 2".
• On Page 11, "In one hand..." has been rendered in as "In on hand..."
• On page 15, the Buggyman's name is spelled "Buggy Man" twice.
• While Stepper's tech specs claimed that the destruction of Nebulon opened a rift to Axiom Nexus that sent him there, here it simply just blows up his hand, with his transport to the multiversal city coming next chapter.

Other trivia

• Due to the potential of legal troubles that might result from using the Hanna-Barbera models in a Transformers story, all the GoBots characters outside of the main 9 who appear in illustrations are either in shadow (like Zero) or are based on Transformers characters (like the Guardians and Zero's super combiner).
• Words affected by Rest-Q's "foreign vocoder syndrome" include:
  • "R'mevran," meaning "road."
  • "Scju-glarp," meaning "check."
  • "Lyptsnarg," meaning "leak."
  • "B'hin-draehv," meaning "base."
  • "Stfloerks," meaning "sparks."
  • "Gregevor," meaning "gun."

External links

• Spatiotemporal Challengers Chapter 2: "High Noon" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club