RID - Bumblebee vs Scuzzard

Plot

Bumblebee is sparring with Sideswipe and Strongarm at the junkyard, but starts to get annoyed when the two younger Autobots start bickering as usual. Russell turns up, feeling lonely since his friends have gone away for Spring Break. To try and cheer him up, the Autobots start to play a game of "Lob Ball", using Fixit as the ball itself, which ends up in a mess and Bumblebee has to save Fixit from being badly hurt.

Denny comes out, all excited about his old friend having some rare pinball machines for him, and he takes Russell with him to pick them up.

Elsewhere, one of the missing Stasis Pods opens up, and Scuzzard is released, he's immediately hungry and finds a liking to the taste of some junk around him...

Later, Russell and Denny have picked up the pinball machines, they encounter Scuzzard as he lands on top of their pick up truck. The humans drive the pick up truck away, so that they get away from the other innocent humans in the city, during the chase, one of the pinball machines is let loose, and smashes on the ground, Scuzzard goes after the trash allowing the humans to leave for now.

They make it back to the junkyard where they inform the Autobots about the Decepticon, whom Fixit manages to identify for them from the ship's manifest, and explains that he's a Scavengebot who gains power from eating matter, but his personal tastes make him like trash more than others. Fixit manages to track down the Decepticon and Bumblebee, Sideswipe and Strongarm head out to takke him down.

Sideswipe manages to get Scuzzard's attention when he finds him going after some junk at the arcade and leads him towards the other Autobots. Sideswipe manages to use a nearby forest as some cover to make it harder for Scuzzard to just pick him up and take him away, forcing him to land and fight Sideswipe in the forest, soon being accompanied by his team-mates.The Autobots manage to defeat and capture Scuzzard and head back to base.

Back at base, Grimlock starts playing some football with Russell, when he accidentally knocks into a Stasis Pod, and releases Filch from her pod.

On the way back to the base, Filch intercepts the Autobots, seeing them as "shiny" and manages to free Scuzzard, planning to add him to her collection. The Autobots head out to recapture them as a team.

Scuzzard struggles from Filch's grasp by biting her foot, and the two Decepticons start flying around causing some damage during their own little skirmish between themselves. Bumblebee and his team arrive and interrupt the battle by joining in themselves. During the battle, the Groundbridge opens up and Drift comes through, and joins the battle and they quickly defeat the two Decepticons.

Following the battle, the team head through the portal, and back to the junkyard with their prisoners in tow. Filch manages to briefly escape their grasps again, but is soon recaptured and placed back into their cells.

Drift informs the team that he's found an Energon deposit in his recent solo mission for them to gather up for their own uses, which makes the team even happier. Bumblebee tells the team that their teamwork in this mission was vital for their success and he's proud of them, and he's sure Optimus would be too.

Characters

Autobot

Bumblebee - Sports Car

Sideswipe - Sports Car

Strongarm - Police SUV

Grimlock - Tyrannosaurus Rex

Fixit

Drift - Race Car

Jetstorm - Arm Guard

Slipstream - Arm Guard

Optimus Prime - Truck (Reflection or Possible Hallucination)

Decepticon

Scuzzard - Vulture

Filch - Falcon

Underbite - Cybertronian Car (Mentioned)

Human

Denny Clay

Russell Clay

Doug Castillo

Hank (Mentioned)

Butch (Mentioned)

Other

Solus Prime (Mentioned)

Notes

• This is the first book in a (currently) small series of books showing other stories from the Robots in Disguise cartoon.
• This story is clearly set after Drift joins the Bee Team, but he is pretty much just shoehorned into the story, meaning he was probably added late on in development. His Mini-Cons even just appear for no reason in his brief scene!
• Scuzzard appears to have a robot mode, with his vulture form being his alternate mode, much like Filch has, compared to the majority of Decepticons from the Alchemor.
• Grimlock mistakes the term "pigskin" as a Decepticon's name. This is somewhat understandable considering the animalistic theme of the Decepticons in the series.
• Bumblebee uses Strongarm's usual "catchphrase" of "Sweet Solus Prime!" here, this may have been a mistake and was supposed to be her line after all.
• It's mentioned here that the Decepticons are after something just about as powerful as the All-Spark...this would be mentioned to be the Anti-Spark in the next book, but we don't know what it is so far (it's possibly a Dark Spark clone though). This also gives us our first potential look at what the "big threat" of the series that Optimus is training for is.