Common Knowledge: Airazor's Reality

[Airazor]

There is a video recording, accompanied by a transcription for those who don't want to sit through the video.

The video is merely a bust shot of Airazor, taken somewhere in the base from the looks of the background.

"The reality myself and my fellow Maximals hail from did once have Autobots and Decepticons. Aesthetically, our ancestors are a visible match for realities such as Perceptor's, Emirate Xaaron's, and Rodimus Prime's. There was a Great War, as well as an attack by Unicron. However, much of the information surrounding these times were classified by the Maximal Elders, so we cannot know which reality our history most closely resembles.

"At the time I was taken from, Cybertron had been in relative peace for three centuries. Autobots eventually became Maximals and Decepticons became the Predacons. A Predacon calling himself Megatron was not happy with the peace, and sought energy to restart the wars. This led to the conflict I participated in, called the Beast Wars. Rattrap would be a better source for information on the early part of the Beast Wars, as I was not online for it.

"Our team of Maximals was originally an exploration team, and the majority of the crew was carried in stasis pods, with just a skeleton crew to pilot the ship the Axalon. We ended up battling Megatron and his group, which caused both ships to crash-land on a then-unknown planet. Botanica has informed Rattrap and I that this planet is actually ancient Earth. When he realized the ship was going to crash, our captain Optimus Primal had all the stasis pods ejected into orbit around the planet. I come from one of these stasis pods. Mine later crashed on the planet, and I was brought online then.

"These organic-based alternate modes we sport are actually a technology only used by off-world teams, and can be quite useful. On ancient Earth there was a lot of unstable energon crystals. Enough to cause a strong enough radiation field that could send a normal Maximal into stasis lock within five cycles. Our beast modes protect us from the radiation, though we are still vulnerable in robot mode.

"Most of our fights with the Predacons are over energon or stasis pods. However, they aren't our only obstacle. The planet has many artifacts left over from an unknown alien race that were using the planet for some experiment. Many of these alien artifacts are dangerous. One such was a floating island that contained a powerful energy weapon. Another had been disguised as a second moon, and was meant to heat up all the unstable energon deposits and cause the planet to explode. When this was activated, we managed to blow it up instead before it could finish its job.

"The explosion of the alien machine sent out an unusual shockwave that ended up reformatting some of the members of both sides. These are known as transmetals. Their beast modes became metallic-based once more, and gained greater strength, armor, and a secondary means of transportation in beast mode.

"I left on a journey with one of the other Maximals at this point. There were several stasis pods in orbit when the planet-destroyer had exploded, and the shockwave had also knocked them out of orbit and out of contact with our ship. We had left to search for them, and had only minimal contact with home base.

"As I said before, Rattrap would be a better source for the start of the Beast Wars. Botanica knows more of what happened after the Beast Wars. Both would be a better source about Cybertron itself than I."

[Rattrap]

It's a video response for the perusal of interested parties. There's no conveniently attached transcript, but some viewers may be relieved to note that while Rattrap is characteristically loose in his posture, sitting splay-legged, his elbows resting on his knees, on a decorative-looking but battered three-legged stool he probably rescued from a local junkyard, he approaches speaking with his own sort of business-like quality.

"Okay," he begins, "da bird lady got most o' the highlights covered. Yeah, we had a Great War back inna day, and you better believe th' Autobots won it. Trounced those Decepticons so hard they signed da Pax Cybertronia wit'out so much as a squeak." His bucktoothed grin is cocked at an odd angle and doesn't quite look right. "I'll get ta that in a cycle or two, so don't go gettin' yer skidplate in a bunch.

"Now, far as I can tell, there's a lot about our reality dat seems like a couple o' the others. There's stuff we don't share wit' others, too, though… we got a Vector Sigma, but we also got Primus – well, some folks might wanna argue dat point, but whatevah – and we ain't got laser cores. We got sparks, and not da kind ya get from rubbin' yer parts together." Just so the distinction can be made. "Where things really start gettin' hairy is our history. A lot o' the files have been locked down, lost, or corrupted over time, it seems like," he goes on, and observant viewers might note the disgruntled cast to his expression. Considering some of the things he's picked up since arriving here, that situation back home does not a happy rattie make. He doesn't dwell on the matter, though.

"Either way, the most solid info starts right about the end o' the Great War, when the Autobots finally trounced the Decepticons and ended things. Da Pax Cybertronia was signed not long after that – dat would be the peace treaty dat put th' Autobots in power and keeps us Maximals in power these days. Word is Optimus Prime was in on makin' it. We got Cybertron back ta prosperin' since then, started th' Exploration Program… oh, and instituted da Maximal Upgrade while we were at it. Don't worry," he adds quickly as if expecting protest, "trust me, it don't mean puttin' on one o' these fursuits. Downsized for fuel efficiency, though, somewhere between me and, ehhh… Holi, I suppose. Nah, the critter getup is somethin' you'll only find on folks in the Exploration program. We put 'em on ta blend in better wit' whatever locals we end up buggin'.

"If ya can't tell by lookin', me and Airazor… and I think dat Claw Jaw fella, too… we ended up on Earth. Not like we knew dat at the time. Or I sure didn't when I was there." Here, he pauses to frown in annoyance and scratch his 'brain'. "See, Earth was one o' those things dat got locked down. Data, location… couldn't find squat on it if ya tried. But there we were. Us Maximals were still kinda scramblin' when I ended up here. Turned out we couldn't just blow da Predacons ta kingdom come," and Rattrap is so for that plan, "'cause as it so happens, there's a big – I mean big – energon vein runnin' beneath both bases. We blow them up, we go kablooey too." Ain't life grand?

"Da whole planet's just crawlin' wit' energon, far as we figured, all in raw form. Real unstable. It'd need a lotta refining to be usable, but I tell ya, a miner could make a lotta credits if it wasn't Earth." You know, because Earth is off-limits. "Whole mountains of the stuff. We actually fought over those a couple times. We also managed to lose the Boss Monkey once – he wasn't dead or anything like dat, thank Primus, but this probe thing zapped him inta thin air. I… kinda wound up in charge 'til he got back." If the sight of Rattrap looking as uncomfortable as he can get amuses anyone, and it probably does, they'll want to save a screencap of the video at this point. He shifts his weight, rubs the back of his neck, and looks anywhere but at the camera for a full second before standing and approaching the camera, grabbing it so his scowling face fills the frame. "But it was only 'cause I had to!" he follows up, not quite sputtering. "Like I'd let Scalebelly take charge…."

And this is where the video ends.

[Ramulus]

"Perhaps I can fill in what happened to the other stasispods, at least from my side?" Ramulus tacks on, crouched low by the ground. "Where I come from, all the other stasispods that survived the crash which I presume has been due to that alien shockwave mentioned, have been activated. Don't cheer! It's about all the good news I can give." He takes a moment to think.

"A group of Predacons under lead of Magmatron was send to arrest the rogue Megatron when Agent Ravage failed. Magmatron, like any good Predacon bad lord, had his own plans to overthrow the Tripredacus Council, and intended on using all the dormant stasispods, us! that had crashed for this purpose. He used somekind of transwarp dislocator to shift every pod and bot from the local timestream, and ordered Razorbeast, his technical expert, to unleash a shell program to get Predacons. A lot of them!

However, Razorbeast was a Maximal double-agent, and while he had no other option to unleash the program, he managed to add a virus to undo everything. But it didn't protect all of us...." For a moment, Ramulus looks mournfull. But he continues quickly; "Still, there were Maximals! We rallied together, following a signal for days. For most of us it was the only lead we had, so we were kind of going into the dark, but we held faith.

Razorbeast informed us about our situation and mission. We were given no illusions about our fates though: We could remain stuck forever on a mudball planet, and if we let Magmatron escape, we would've failed not only ourselves, but Cybertron as well. To emphasize everything: We had no CR-chambers to mend our wounds so we had little for a lifeline. And while search parties raided the other ships, including the Ark, they could walk straight through our former crewmembers like they were ghosts. So now you know where the other bots were; right in front of you.

We ended in a massive clash, defeating the Predacons for the moment. And then I stood on this mudball planet. I don't know if Magmatron was defeated, if the rest is still alive and out of displacement, and to be honest: I don't like it one bit!

As for our world: we run wide spectrums of appearances; because of the crash and those aliens, a lot of us fall in the mutant or hybrid category, so most of us look really strange. There's me and Optimus Minor for instance, who look like this (he motions to his implants) in both modes; we have found that wounds disappear quickly on us; I even got thrown off a cliff paralyzed... I mentioned the lack of CR-Chambers?.... no permanent damage! (Ramulus grins as he pats his thigh).

We also have the variant Airazor described; Transmetals; I can say this since we saw some Axalon members in that form as well. And then there are the fuzors: Their alternate modes are made up from different parts of different animals: I can name Torca as a good example: He is a crossing between a killer whale and an elephant, if not for him we would've lost the big fight.
There's also the group that calls themselves the Mutants: They are Cybertronians, but have lost their robot modes: They go from beast to, well, beast. What a damaged pod can do, right?"
He smiles a bit wryly, for really, his world is no laughing matter. Scratching his chin, Ramulus decides to have filled in everything he knows.
Er..... this is about everything I know, so we'll leave it at that."
With that, he reaches out, and turns off the video.