In a dim shuttle hangar on the grounds of the Cybertron Spaceport, Trixter worked on repairing the damage done to the bridge of her ship, the Starcruiser. Music from a tiny black box that sat on the pilot's control panel filled the room as she worked at rewiring shot-up panels and welding new covers on them. Even as she sought to lose herself in her work, the laser scars on the metal she was replacing only served to remind her of her friend Furie, who had done the damage after she and her Firestormer teammates had rescued him from a derelict ship. Thoughts of what had driven him to the madness he now dwelled in haunted her. She had taken him to a medic the moment they landed, and he had been left in his care, but she still worried that nothing anyone did could fix what had happened in the time since he disappeared all those years ago.
As Trixter slid out from under the copilot's control panel, the door to the shuttle slid open and Upstart walked in. "I've got some good news, Trix!" he announced. "We're getting sent to Earth!"
"Sent?" she asked, reaching for the thin welding torch that sat beside the black box. "As in an actual assignment? What's the catch?"
"The catch is that something big's going on there, but it's real hush-hush." Upstart ploped down into the captain's chair in the middle of the bridge. "Optimus said we'll find out about it when we get there."
"Oh, goody, one of those." Trixter reached over and plucked a custom cut sheet of metal from the pile on the floor near her and proceeded to weld it into place under the copilot's station. "But at least it's on Earth. I mean, anything for an excuse to drop in on Jazz and them."
Upstart gestured to the black box. "Speaking of Earth, where'd you get the new toy?"
"Oh, yeah, and speaking of Jazz, he had it left here at the spaceport for us. It's a CD player. Remember, those were just getting big there on our last trip. He got some good discs to go with it, too!"
"Cool. So are you about finished?"
"Yeah," Trixter replied, "almost. Might as well get the other guys on the radio and tell them to get back here."
Upstart radioed Air Raid, Afterburner, and Strafe and within a couple hours the team was regrouped. Their trip to Earth was short and uneventful (except for when their only copy of "Bladerunner" got caught in the VCR), and before they knew it the fortress known as Autobot City was a sparkling dot on the desert ground that spread out below them. They landed on a runway just outside the city and proceeded to the control room for a briefing on the situation.
Inside the cavernous control room, Nightbeat, Perceptor, and the current city commander Scattershot huddled around a wall monitor showing readouts from a probe. The screen was filled with a milky, luminescent white swirl against the backdrop of stars and black space, while bright blue numbers flashed on the left side. A nearby set of double doors slid open and the three Autobots looked over to see the Firestormer team enter. "Oh, good!" Scattershot exclaimed, "You're here!"
"But, uh, what exactly are we here for?" Afterburner asked. "Prime never told us."
"This is what you're here for," Nightbeat said, gesturing toward the screen. The five Firestormers joined them in front of the screen. "Nice to see you guys again!" Nightbeat whispered to Trixter and Upstart.
"Likewise," Trixter whispered back. "So were we a special request of yours, Mr. Security Chief?"
"Yep, you guessed it." He pointed to the screen again. "You wanna explain, Perceptor?" he asked with a smile.
"What we apparently have here is the manefestation of a disturbance in the space-time continuum, located somewhere..."
"You mean a temporal anomaly?" Upstart said in amazement. "Cool! I thought those were only on Star Trek an' stuff!"
"As you can see," Perceptor continued, flustered by the interruption, "this is not a television show. And, though there's never actually been one recorded, I can find no other explanation for this phenomenon. It is located in this solar system, halfway between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn."
"And though whether it poses a threat to us has yet to be determined," Nightbeat continued, "we wanted more Autobots here just in case. Two more Firestormer teams are scheduled to arrive soon, Grimlock's and..."
He was interrupted by the swoosh of the doors as Jazz walked in. "There you guys are!" he exclaimed with a smile. He sauntered over to the group and greeted Trixter with a big hug. "I heard my favorite space cadet was coming for a visit!"
"Let's just hope this turns out to be nothing and we get a peaceful vacation here," Trixter smiled.
As if in defiance of her wish, the computer started letting out a series of loud beeps. "What's going on?" Strafe asked over the noise.
Nightbeat rushed to the controls and shut off the alarm. "It means that there's activity near the spiral," he told them.
All optics became glued to the screen as the white form was set in motion, spinning and growing as they watched. There was no frame of reference in the picture on the screen, but the anomaly quickly expanded beyond the boundaries of the viewer. Soon a darker shape could be made out in the center of the swirling mass, growing bigger every moment. The image of object slowly became sharper as it came through the vortex. Jazz, standing beside Trixter, stiffened with recognition as Nightbeat let out a gasp. Then there was a flash and the screen became filled with static. "N-no way! It can't be!" Jazz exclaimed.
"Jazz," Trixter whispered with a freightened awe, "are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Okay, it's decided," Nightbeat said shakily. "We're definitely in trouble. We need to get in touch with Prime and tell him...tell him Unicron's on his way to Earth."
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