Tonight's Episode (Issue):

Megatron was flying at Mach 2 towards the Harrison Nuclear Power Plant. With him was Starscream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, & Soundwave (whom was carrying all 5 Decepticon cassettes). He knew that nuclear energy wasn't as powerful a source of energy as the fusion reactor in his cannon, but it would be strong enough to provide a decent amount energon to boost what the Decepticons' energy reserves already had in order to conquer Earth.

The Autobots had already gotten word of the planned strike against the power plant. Optimus Prime knew that the results would be disasterous if the Decepticons beat them to the plant. Fortunately, the Ark was closer to the plant than the Decepticons' Atlantic Ocean outpost and because of this, the Autobots had a head start. However, you cannot really say that cars and trucks travelling at over 200 mph have a head start over jet planes and robots flying at Mach 2.

Luckily, the Autobots arrived just in time and intercepted their age-old enemies about 10 miles from the plant.

"Autobots!" shouted Megatron. "How did they get here so fast?"

"Stand down, Megatron," shouted Optimus Prime. He was being followed by 15 Autobots.

"Never!" replied Megatron as he fired a blast at Optimus.

Instantly, Optimus and his Autobots transformed. The Autobot Commander, along with Huffer, Bluestreak, Mirage, Ironhide, Jazz, Wheeljack, Prowl, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Cliffjumper, Windcharger, Hound, Brawn, and Gears were engaged in a firefight with their adversaries. Sunstreaker fired a surface-to-air missile which hit a teleporting Skywarp right in the underside. Some of the Decepticons landed for hand-to-hand combat. After landing, Soundwave ejected all 5 of his cassette-shaped fighters. Ravage knocked down Ironhide and brutally attacked Mirage before being knocked off and shot with Mirage's armor-piercing liquid fuel darts. As the youthful aristocrat was relaxing from that conflict, Buzzsaw cut through Mirage's chestplate with his diamond-tipped beak. Gears got into a fight with Soundwave, whom is slightly taller than Megatron. The fight finally ended when Gears sucker-punched Soundwave and knocked him unconscious. Windcharger magnetically stalled some of Frenzy's inner workings so that he couldn't electronically disrupt anything nor cause a low-level earthquake. Rumble was knocked out by Brawn.

"Eat yer heart out, Tyson," boasted Brawn as he easily punched the outclassed Rumble.

Prowl fired 2 incendiary missiles at Starscream, but missed. Starscream tried to transform and take flight, but he was stopped by Optimus Prime grabbing his leg (at 100 feet!) as it was about to turn into a jet engine.

"Going somewhere?" asked Optimus.

Amazing, thought Starscream. Optimus grabbed me in mid-flight!

Starscream was then flung into Thundercracker. After Thundercracker got up, Ironhide cryogenically froze the tips of his incendiary guns. Optimus released the Combat Deck from its standard mode as his trailer and fired 2 missiles from its Auto-launcher. The missiles connected and left small hairline cracks in Megatron's chest armor. Bluestreak followed up with 2 of his own missiles. The damage caused from his weapons made its way through the cracks and left some of Megatron's motor functions paralyzed. Starscream saw this and found his opportunity.

"Decepticons," shouted Starscream. "retreat! This battle is lost.

The Decepticons quickly grabbed their wounded comrades. Starscream transformed and was carrying Skywarp on the end of a tow hook. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw each grabbed Rumble and Frenzy in their talons, Thundercracker carried Megatron, and a still woozy Soundwave placed a transformed Ravage in his chest, transformed into a cassette deck and landed in Starscream's open cockpit. Finally, the decimated Decepticons flew back to their base.

"Ratchet," called Optimus Prime to his Chief Medical Officer. "get Mirage and let's head for home."

"Yeah," chimed in Ironhide. "you can stick a tunin' fork in this one, `cause it's done!"

The Autobots transformed and returned to the Ark.

Meanwhile, back at the Decepticons Atlantic base (which was made out of the ruins of their second starcruiser), Megatron, whom is barely able to speak is getting a visit from Starscream and Skyjack.

"Reflector told me to tell you that it will take a while for new parts to be manufactured," reported Skyjack. "Don't worry about it, sire. They'll finish in no time."

"V-Very well," replied Megatron. "St-St-Starscream, I want you to take Thundercracker, Laserbeak, Reflector, Buzzsaw, & Ravage and attack the Will-llamette F-Fuel Refinery in Portland, Oregon. There the humans possess a fuel that does not need to be converted by energon cubes to suit o-our n-ne-eeds."

"Yes sir, Megatron." said Starscream.

As they prepared to leave, Megatron called for Reflector. He ordered him to make a secret call to Cybertron. He pointed out how important this message was. After making the call, Reflector flew to catch up with the others.

At the Willamette Refinery in Portland, Sparkplug, the Autobots' human friend had just gotten a job there after the Decepticons sank the offshore drilling platform that he was working on.

I'll be danged if those Decepticons are going to cost me another job, thought Sparkplug. It had been over a year since Megatron's Decepticons assaulted the oil rig he worked on, destroying it -- and nearly killing him in the process. When he took this job, He knew that the odds of the Decepticons paying this place a visit was high, but he had a plan. He developed a fuel identical to that of the Transformers' lifeblood. Because of this, it would not need to be converted or purified. He created this fuel for the Autobots. The Willamette Refinery employed him and planned to develop it for different types of cars. To this end, they had 4 million gallons of the stuff. Suddenly, a hole was blown into the wall.

"Decepticons, ATTACK!" shouted Starscream. "It is important that this new fuel serves our purposes."

With that his crew of 7 Decepticons began to threaten the workers into telling them where the fuel was kept.

"You'd better start talking human," said the three units of Reflector in unison to Sparkplug. "we'd hate for something bad to happen to you."

"Alright, guys," replied a calm Sparkplug. "I'll tell right where it is."

The other workers looked in shock as Sparkplug proceeded to show them where the tanks were hidden. They were equally as shocked when he began to lead them in the wrong direction. Not one human said a thing.

The room he took them to didn't have refinery tanks but smaller ones. They were small enough for the Decepticons to carry like duffels. The 8 Decepticons took off with the 'duffel tanks' soon afterward. Laserbeak made a motion as if he were going to shoot Sparkplug and then left with the others.

The other workers ran up to Sparkplug to check on him. After he caught his breath, he told them everything.

"I sure hope they bought it," started Sparkplug. "I was a P.O.W. in the Korean war. When they made me work on their trucks, I tampered with their brake lines. For these fools, their 'fool's fuel' is going to eat them alive about 20 minutes after they use it! Tell the Autobots this should they ask."

The workers had laughed and tried to get back to work.

"Good job, Witwicky!" his foreman told him.

40 minutes later, Starscream's crew reached the Decepticon base. He had ordered Reflector to refuel 10 of the cadets after his strike party of 8 got 'first dibs' He did so and also sent Skyjack (who wasn't refueled) to the space bridge to intercept a 'mystery guest' for Megatron.

Skyjack took to his task and was surprised when the very tall guest appeared from the bridge's locking gates. Suddenly he was spoken to by a soulless voice.

"Take me to Megatron," bellowed the mysterious figure.

The two dark figures then flew off in their robot modes. They arrived at Decepticon headquarters about 25 minutes later. When they entered the war room, they saw about 10 Decepticons lying on the floor in stasis lock with almost as many writhing in excruciating pain. They then ran to Megatron's room.

"What happened here?" asked the stranger.

"Shockwave!" replied Megatron. "e-eexcelllent. H--Human ger-rms poisoned the fuel. My warr-rriors are barely functioning."

"I'll take care of it, Megatron." replied the 35-foot tall leviathan.

Over the course of a day, Shockwave placed Megatron and the stasis-locked Decepticons in various life support machines, which kept the robots functioning while badly needed repairs were run on their bodies. Afterward, he oversaw the final repairs made on Skywarp, Soundwave, Rumble, & Frenzy. While repairs were being made, Shockwave was observing several human television broadcasts. On one screen was Honeymooners rerun. On another was a game show. On two others was a soap opera and a football game. On the last screen was a news broadcast with a reporter asking an industrialist about his new offshore drilling platform.

[See Pages 2-6 of Transformers Marvel (US) Iss. 5 for excerpts.]

"Very illuminating," said Shockwave. "These humans are even more primitive than I thought."

The news report about the offshore oil derrick continues.

"--I'm here with G.B. Blackrock," started Charlene Welles, the news correspondant. "the flamboyant multi-millionaire industrialist. Mr. Blackrock, this new oil-drilling platform is said to have no equal. What can you tell us about it?"

"Charlene," replied the boasting industrialist. "this rig is so revolutionary they'll have to invent a new name for it! We can extract 50% more oil from the ground than any other operation. We can refine it, dock tankers, land planes, do everything but pump it into your car. But it's Josie Beller here who deserves the credit!"

"Ms. Beller, you have been called a computer genius even though you're only a few years out of high school," started the reporter. "What is your role in this?"

"It's true I designed the secondary and tertiary oil recovery systems," replied Josie. "the semi-automated defense system, the refinery's non-polluting digitized micro-scrubbers, but I consider it all just a part of my job -- working for Mr. Blackrock!"

Shockwave left the room to oversee the repairs of the poisioned Decepticons.

"The conquest of this planet and enslavement of its people will be a simple task -- indeed. But I'll attend to those affairs later. Now I must see to the rehabilitation of Decepticons Thundercracker, Starscream, Reflector, Ravage, Buzzsaw and Laserbeak. All appears to be proceeding well. These life support systems are repairing the injuries they sustained under the former leadership of Megatron! [He sees Megatron as he's speaking.] According to my calculations, he should just now be achieving a nominally conscious operating level. Although his complete rehabilitation will require much more time!"

[See Pages 1-7 of Transformers Marvel (US) Iss. 6 for excerpts.]

To be continued...

You are the ^th person to be mystified by this story and await its completion.

Links to X-Men and Generation X sites on the Web as well as descriptions of some of my TF: Alternative characters.

Downshift, a humanoid Autobot.
Desirée, a female Omnibot designed to resemble my best friend, Tracie Brown.
Solar Phœnix, a really fine sista who you really, REALLY don't want to call "high yellow".
Jetfire, Autobot air guardian and Shockwave's rogue creation.
To discover why I have the username I do (Savannius), read all parts of this page.
Here's one of a few decent X-Men Pages
Generation NeXt: A Page dedicated to Generation X, the next generation of X-Men.
A page devoted to my favorite member of Gen. X, Monet St. Croix, better known as "M".
Memphis: Take a look at the city I call (ugh!) home.
Boobilicious. Self-explanatory.
NORMASTITZ.COM. Home page to a woman big enough for Mirage to love.

Interstate 10: Katy Frwy. (on a really good day.)

Return to the Master Site. Go to the Metroplex.

© 1998 Jejackso@Memphis.edu If you liked the first piece of this "unfinished symphony", e-mail me.

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