Written and Drawn by: Nick Roche
Colours by: Josh Burcham
Letters by: Tom B. Long
Editor: John Barber
Publisher: Ted Adams
Plot
In the past, on Cybertron, Prowl visits his secret Neutral ally, Mesothulas in his lab where he reports that his new invention, the "Decepti-Bomb" was a success, and the survivors of an attack by it all assumed it was a Decepticon weapon, and have all joined the Autobots out of radicalization. Prowl begins to wonder whether he's being ethical, and thinks that he can't keep manipulating people like this, however Mesothulas interrupts him and shows him his newly created Noisemaze portal, which he had originally tried to get made as a prison that causes suffering, and asks if Prowl thinks it's any good....
In the present, Verity and the Wreckers are inside the Noisemaze, but the Transformers, except for Claw Jaw and Hubcap are all in pain from the effects of the maze. Claw Jaw starts cackling and Verity asks him and Hubcap what's going on.
Elsewhere, Mesothulas shows himself to Prowl in his new body, a giant spider, and reveals that his name is now Tarantulas. Tarantulas explains that he wants to show Prowl something, and he only went after the Aequitas files since he knew it was the only thing that would catch his attention, and make him listen to him, he then takes Prowl elsewhere in the complex.
Back in Nome, Alaska, the battle is continuing, and Carnivac appears and watched the fight, he receives a message from Leobreaker inside Tidal Wave, who says that he's discovered what's jammed Tidal Wave's T-Cog. Carnivac has Tidal Wave convert back to whale mode and retreat with the others so they can sort out the problem.
In the aftermath, the Wreckers wonder what to do next, when Kup reveals the identity of Prowl's captor. Impactor recognizes the name, and has Guzzle and Kup return to Debris immediately.
Tarantulas gives Prowl a tour around his facility and reveals that he built all of this for Prowl to use in his plans to dominate the Cybertronian species, by making him a perfect undetectable army, and powerful weapons.
Inside Tidal Wave's T-Cog room Leobreaker explains that Stakeout got himself trapped inside the gears and jammed it during Tidal Wave's conversion. Carnivac dismisses Leobreaker and takes Stakeout's hand, and waits with him until his death as they reminisce over their time spent under Ultra Magnus' command in the past.
Back in his lab, Tarantulas states that he and Prowl need each other to survive, he needs Prowl to keep giving him new projects and ideas to make, and Prowl needs him as he was addicted to seeing what happened from those devices. Prowl denies all of it, then muses that he wasn't supposed to have survived what he did to him. After being shown the Noisemaze portal, Prowl attacked Tarantulas, and knocked him into it, and destroyed the lab in the process.
Taranulas explains that he survived the Noisemaze by using a "back door" he created in the system in the form of a personal jumpgate, however it took a long time for him to react to the situation due to the maze's effects. By the time he escaped, the lab and everything inside it was destroyed.
After his betrayal, Mesothulas decided to continue his work in secret and travelled to Earth where he took samples of Ore-13 and created a new substance, Obtenteum, which was used for his new organic bodies, whilst on the planet he also became obsessed with Earth's wildlife, especially the spider.
Tarantulas asks Prowl what happened to their shared creation, Ostaros, a fully artificial Cybertronian lifeform, and Prowl states that he made him pass off as an Autobot, and he died in the war. Tarantulas gets angry and threatens to cause Prowl extreme agony if he refuses to join him, but Prowl still refuses. Tarantulas leaves the room, simply hoping that Prowl hasn't lied to him about Ostaros.
Inside the Noisemaze, Claw Jaw is still cackling away, and begins to taunt Verity about Hubcap's true allegiances, but Hubcap disables his neural blocks, and kills the squid-bot, and just claims that he was annoying him.
Verity begins to ask Hubcap to project some mental defences on the other Autobots, but then has another one of her pain spasms, but Hubcap reaches out to her, praises her f trying to expose Prowl's amoral actions, but asks her to be brave for just a short while longer...
Back at Debris space station, Impactor is digging up his own grave, where he explains to Kup what the Noisemaze is, since Prowl explained it to him some time ago. They prepare some mental shields and dampeners etc, whilst Impactor unearths another gateway to the Noisemaze that was buried there.
Later, Prowl is sitting in the dark when he starts hearing the voices of Springer, Arcee and Roadbuster coming from nowhere, he wanders in the darkness until he comes to a room where he finds the three Autobots, and Verity strapped to some devices, which Tarantulas explains is his new version of Aequitas, called Impetus, a device that extracts guilt from it's users and exposes it for all to hear. Hubcap is also now standing with Tarantulas as his open ally.
Characters
Autobot
Prowl - Police Vehicle
Arcee - Sports Car
Springer - Helicopter/Car
Roadbuster - Armoured Jeep
Hubcap - Sports Car
Stakeout - Police Car Crushed by Tidal Wave's T-Cog
Kup - Pick Up Truck
Impactor - Tank
Guzzle - Tank
Ultra Magnus - Vehicle Transport (Mentioned)
High Command (Mentioned)
Judge Tyrest (Mentioned)
Mayhem
Carnivac - Wolf
Tidal Wave - Whale/Tank
Leobreaker - Lion
Claw Jaw - Squid Killed by Hubcap
Cybershark - Shark
Stamp - Rabbit
Decepticon
Shockwave (Mentioned)
Neutral Cybertronian
Tarantulas/Mesothulas - Spider (formerly Motorcycle)
Ostaros (Flashback) Supposedly died during the war
Jhiaxus - Jet (Mentioned)
Human
Verity Carlo
Notes
- Mesothulas' body appears to be a new character model design, but from what we can see (and based on Tarantulas' common past alternate modes) he probably turns into a motorcycle of some sort.
- Prowl uses the radiation suits previously seen in Spotlight: Kup in the opening flashback.
- It's revealed that Mesothulas designed Aequitas.
- Tarantulas' modern body is based on his Transmetal toy design, but with an organic look, rather than mechanical.
- Tarantulas states that he is not really affiliated with the Mayhems, he just supplied them with their new disguises, and is using them as soldiers for now.
- From Prowl's dialogue it sounds like he did indeed destroy his copy of the Aequitas files.
- Tarantulas developed the Mayhem's perfect organic disguises by using some of Shockwave's Ore-13 and adding onto previously created simulated organic forms, such as those seen in Spotlight: Shockwave, and also creates a cloaking device around the spark.
- The Mayhems are also apparently fitted with mass-shifting devices to explain how they can better infiltrate the animals (such as Stampy turning into a small bunny)
- Amongst the organic body frames in Tarantulas' lab are what looks like a horse, a shark, a bison and maybe a kangaroo.
- Leobreaker is named after the Autobot from the Cybertron series, but is designed after the "big cat" mold used in Beast Wars, such as by Cheetor and Tigatron.
- Carnivac is revealed to have been a former Autobot cop working under Ultra Magnus along with Stakeout.
- Stakeout claims that Magnus missed Carnivac after he defected to the Decepticons. Carnivac thinks this is a lie, but considering how attached Magnus is shown to get to people in recent years this could be true!
- The spider that Tarantulas examines in the past to get his inspiration for his alternate mode is actually based on Black Arachnia's Beast Wars toy.
- I get the feeling that Prowl may have lied about what happened to Ostaros.
- It's highly likely that Hubcap actually made Claw Jaw's head explode on purpose, as none of the Autobots had their heads explode when exposed to the Noisemaze's effects.
- Also, I totally called that Hubcap was involved in Prowl's disappearance back in issue one!
- After this issue there will be a couple of months of hiatus due to personal reasons for Nick Roche.
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