Head Games

« Transformers Timelines text story » Beast Wars: Uprising
"Head Games"
Publisher	Transformers Collectors' Club (online exclusive)
First published	March 16, 2015
By	David Bishop & Jim Sorenson
Illustrations by	William Mangin
Cover	Jesse Wittenrich
Continuity	Beast Wars: Uprising
Chronology	circa 2384
Page count	30pp

Buzzclaw is recruited for a mission into Fortress Maximus.

Synopsis

The past—Buzzclaw is fighting in the Games. Pitted against Armordillo, his situation looks grim; while he is out of ammo, the Maximal still has plenty. He manages to find a rusted metal spike which he hopes to use as a javelin. The Predacon launches a desperate aerial attack against his opponent, but is hit by a missile mid-flight. Badly damaged, Buzzclaw accepts his fate... only for Armordillo to trip and skewer himself on Buzzclaw’s javelin, still in his grasp. The Predacons are declared the winners of this Game.

The here and now—Buzzclaw spends his days in The Proton Blaster, where he coasts on his past victory, entertaining whoever will listen to his story. Today it is Ser-Ket, though she is quickly losing interest. His companion brings up that Buzzclaw's match might have been fixed, as Lio Convoy revealed many were when he interrupted the last Game. Buzzclaw vehemently defends the legitimacy of his victory, but with no more money to spend on drinks for himself of his companion, fails to keep her from leaving.

Ser-Ket is about to head off to meet some friends when a projectile explodes in the street before her. She rushes back into the bar, where the vid-screens report that the "unprovoked" attack came from the Resistance. The bar's patrons begin to panic, one of them getting blown to bits as he tries to flee from the establishment. Ser-Ket turns to Buzzclaw for leadership, who blurts out that they should barricade themselves in. To his surprise, the rest of the patrons follow his orders. The lot of them start to drink, and wait out for the whole thing blow over. Buzzclaw finds he is enjoying himself greatly, his waning sense of self-worth now returning thanks in part to the engex he is drinking, and in part to the adulation the others heap onto him. Despite this, he gives the others to okay to leave after Ser-Ket asks if it is safe to do so. Most of the patrons depart, leaving Buzzclaw alone with Ser-Ket and Cybershark. The latter divulges he is a member of the Resistance. With a few choice words to stroke Buzzclaw's ego, Cybershark manages to convince both him and Ser-Ket to ally themselves with Lio Convoy's freedom fighters.

Buzzclaw's first undertaking as resistance fighter is to infiltrate Fortress Maximus, the living prison. Along with Bighorn, Cybershark, Ser-Ket, Survive, and Corahda, his mission is to liberate allies of the revolution held within the cyclopean Builder. Lio Convoy, leading another group, provides them with cover fire.

The others in Buzzclaw's team begin to scale Fortress Maximus, while Buzzclaw himself is tasked with watching their flank in his aerial mode. Though he manages to deal with Bulge and Windsheer, more Builders swarm out of Fortress Maximus and attack the rest of his squad. Corahda splits off from the group to take on an incoming brigade, but dies as he's overcome by their numbers. Buzzclaw rejoins his team, and they finish the climb up, and into, Fortress Maximus. All the while, strange errant thoughts invade Buzzclaw's mind...

Inside Fortress Maximus, the infiltration team must contend with more Micromaster patrols. In the heat of battle, and thanks to Maximus's shifting innards, Buzzclaw is separated from the others. Wandering about, he eventually finds his way to a room containing three black obelisks. The voice he had previously heard in his head starts to converse with Buzzclaw here, and taunts him with the tortured shrieks and panicked dialogue of the rest of his team. Maximus begins to peel away at Buzzclaw's confidence and self-worth, then segues into a history lesson; the titan explains how he helped bring the Maximals, Predacons, and Cybertron's current status quo into existence. As Maximus speaks, Buzzclaw is gradually brainwashed to act as his agent, and is sent out to lead his fellow invaders into a trap.

However, as soon as Buzzclaw presents himself to his former allies, Cybershark stabs the Predacon with a silver canister, killing him and forcibly retrieving the coordinates to Cerebros's control room. Though Ser-Ket is bewildered by this turn of events, Survive explains to her that this isn't the first time the Resistance has made an attempt on Fortress Maximus. Previous efforts failed because the Builder had managed to brainwash members of their parties, just as Buzzclaw was under Maximus's thrall before his death.

Once in Cerebros's control room, the Resistance fighters retrieve the Gran Cyberdroid housed there, and execute the other two, Plasma and Kord. With the psychic weapon that was Cerebros disabled, the team accesses Maximus's systems, and frees the political prisoners held within him.

Back at Resistance HQ, Ser-Ket demands to know why Lio Convoy sacrificed her friend without ever telling her of his plan. Lio Convoy sadly answers that they couldn't risk her tipping Buzzclaw off, and that the political prisoners they rescued were too important to leave incarcerated. Ser-Ket storms off, and Lio Convoy is left to muse that they all do what they must for their cause.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

“Hi, I’m Buzzclaw, Champion of the Games.” [...] “And I can fly, I guess.”

—Buzzclaw fails to make a great first impression

“I am Plasma, but I’m also Galen, and Spike, and Daniel. I am Cerebros, who is Zebres, who is Emissary. I am male, and I am female. I am compassion and horror. I am my own father, grandfather, son. I am Gasket and Grommet, who are Cog, who is Koka and Onomisu. I am wisdom and grief. My wife is my mother is the daughter of my enemy is bonded to my opposite. I am human and Nebulon, Cyberdroid and Macromaster and Megamaster. I am death and I am life. I am Fortress Maximus! WE are Fortress Maximus. We are–”

—Plasma's speech is cut off midway

Notes

• The following characters are mentioned or referenced, but do not appear in the story proper: Diver, Drancron, Frostbite, Abel, Vamp, an Omega Sentinel, Queen Rage, Autostinger, Night Viper, Scourge, Razorclaw, Megatron, the Liege Maximo, Primus, Squeezeplay's former partner, the Titans, Trypticon, Spike Witwicky, Daniel Witwicky, Galen Witwicky, Zebres, Emissary, Gasket, Grommet, Cog/Cog, Koka, Onomisu, the wife and the mother, the daughter, the enemy, the opposite, Cheetor, Grimlock, Preditron, and the Tripredacus Council.
• Further mentioned in the Cybertronix text are: Llyra and Olin Witwicky.
• Like the previous story, "Head Games" has blocks of Cybertronix text between scene transitions - in this case, the thoughts of Fortress Maximus, with Gran's data reports in red, Kord's status checks in blue, and Plasma's rambling literary quotations and cryptic references in green.
• Bishop did most of the initial writing for this story without a particular viewpoint character in mind - when he asked Sorenson if he knew of a character "like this", his co-writer suggested Buzzclaw.
• In Bishop's initial draft, the Maximals would not have planned for Buzzclaw to be brainwashed.
• This story debuts an in-universe term for the characters usually referred to as "city-formers"; Megamasters. Judging by Fortress Maximus's words, they're separate from the Titans.

Continuity notes

• More detail is fleshed out for this timeline and how the war ended this way, namely that the Human Confederacy, now more advanced than Transformers, forced them to Cybertron. We would hear some more detail about them in the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime and in "Micro-Aggressions".
• This story follows a few days on from "Broken Windshields" but the Grand Uprising is only now kicking off for real, much to the shock and horror of many characters at the pub.
• Buzzclaw thinks about Queen Rage, mentioned as one of the participants in the Game Lio and the Resistance interrupted to announce the start of the Uprising. Turns out she, along with her teammates Autostinger, Nightviper and Scourge stuck around where the Maximal team ran off, but the Builders still wouldn't say whether that counted as a victory or not.
• Cerebros's monologue to Buzzsaw sheds a little light on the nature of Maximals and Predacons in this continuity. Unlike prior Beast Wars fiction, which have generally treated the two factions as simply being smaller, more energy-efficient upgrades of Autobots and Decepticons, here they're physiologically entirely separate races. He also states that Vector Sigma was destroyed, explaining how the Builders have been unable to replenish their own numbers.
• Cheetor as "first resistor" nods back to the earliest Uprising fiction, Blackarachnia's bio in club magazine #25.
• It's implied Daniel Witwicky had a son, Galen Witwicky.
• Powers and abilities:
  • Buzzclaw has the ability projectile vomit acid at enemies in robot mode. He doesn't use it often because aside from being totally gross, it's not even very accurate.

Transformers references

• Buzzclaw's bundle of nerves under a brave front and Armordillo's patient, murderous stalking are both in line with their Beast Wars Sourcebook bios.
• The Photon Blaster has a rival bar named Abel's Energon, named after (and presumably operated by) the Cyberdroid from the Headmasters anime.
• Wreckloose and Backstop, two slight redecoes of the Cybertron characters/toys of the same name in the 2010 Transformers toyline, are finally given a continuity family of origin with this story: they're G1 guys!
• When he tries puffing himself up, Buzzclaw notes he's actually smaller than Cybershark anyway. Back in the original Beast Wars toyline Buzzclaw's toy was sold in the Basic price range, while Cybershark was a Deluxe size.
• Lio Convoy has been dubbed Supreme Commander of the Resistance. Typically in Japanese Transformers media, this is the rank given to the head of the goody goods, including Lio himself.
• Ser-Ket declares as a Predacon, her lineage goes back to Razorclaw, Megatron and the Liege Maximo. We shouldn't need to specify why Megs is listed there, but Razorclaw, as leader of the G1 Predacons, has been treated as the founder of the Beast-era Preds in plenty of ancillary Beast Wars media (though not in Uprising continuity). As for the Liege, he was identified as being the ancestor of all Decepticon way back in his first appearance, in the final issue of the Generation 2 comic, a part of the character's history that has largely fallen by the wayside in all subsequent depictions
• Lio Convoy's projection of Fortress Maximus, with red circles designating various spots on the giant's body and a specific one ringed in blue, is based on the sticker attached to the Buzzsaw toy that came packaged with Generation 1 Soundblaster.
• Just before his death, Squeezeplay mentally rails against his "former partner". This probably refers to his Nebulan Headmaster partner Lokos.
• While several of the Micromaster guards in Fortress Maximus are classic Generation 1 Micromasters, others are repurposes of Armada and Cybertron Mini-Cons. Dirt Digger is the only Micromaster with a new name but may be an erroneous rendition of the Classics Mini-Con Dirt Rocket, a member of the Dirt Digger Team.
  • Interestingly, "Head Games" includes the Micromaster Spark Grid, a second Micromaster character based on the Armada Mini-Con Zapmaster in addition to the Micromaster Zapmaster in "Broken Windshields".
• The given origin for Fortress Maximus is broadly in line with "The Rebirth", with Cerebros the regular-sized Cybertronian pacifist being rebuilt into a city-sized 'bot. However, he's a walking turducken of Fort Max and his various partners and repaints from across Transformers fiction. Plasma is the Japanese name for the Robots in Disguise version of Cerebros, Gran is the Headmaster form of Grand Maximus from Super-God Masterforce, and Kord was a name given to Galen, the original partner to Fortress Maximus in the US Marvel comic, in Transformers Annual 1987 (and in keeping with an Uprising continuity tradition, Kord and Galen are separate characters). Zebres is the name for the Cerebros repaint that came with the Robotmasters "Cybertron Base" figure, while Emissary is the western name for the Robots in Disguise version of Cerebros. Gasket, Grommet and Cog are the tiny little robot accessories that came with the original Fort Max toy, while Onomisu and Koga are their repaints that came with Grand's (and whose combined form was also named Cog). The "wife who is the daughter of my enemy" mentioned in the rambling up above would be Llyra, who in the Marvel comics was the daughter of Zarak, Nebulon Headmaster partner to Max's rival city-former Scorponok, though later stories show that the Uprising version of that character goes by a different name. Hard to blame Plasma having difficulty keeping all that straight in her head.
• Galen Witwicky is a reference to Galen, Fortress Maximus's original partner in the Marvel G1 continuity.
• The Cyberdroids are a reference to two Japanese redecoes of Cerebros and a UK Annual's wrong name for Galen. Together, they form an RGB pattern.
• At story's end, Lio name-drops the Tripredacus Council, the usual ruling body of the Predacon faction as established in the original Beast Wars cartoon, though later stories in the setting will alternately call them the Tripredacus Alliance, conflating them with the Predacon Alliance, also mentioned in Beast Wars. They're said to have usurped the original founder, Preditron, which has been taken from other Beast Wars media, such as the profile card of the 2009 Botcon Razorclaw toy. Preditron himself was a character in the Wings story "A Team Effort", a transplant of the 2004 Go-Bots character Beast-Bot under a new name. Later stories in the Uprising-verse will show this Preditron is different from his depiction there, both in terms of character and appearance.

Real world references

• Ser-Ket mistakenly calls the dead Armordillo "Armordrillo", after the alien of the same name from the cartoon series Ben 10. Later Uprising stories will establish that the Armordrillo is also a species of Cybertronian animal.
• Buzzclaw's plan for the bar patrons is a direct reference to, and a near verbatim quote of, the titular character Shaun's survival plan in the 2004 zombie comedy film Shaun of the Dead.
• The "Terran Singularity" which gave humankind the capability to be powerful and immortal is a reference to the Rapture-for-nerds theory of a technological singularity.
• Many of Plasma's babblings come from real world works, including:
  • The poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, W. B. Yeats, Ovid, John Keats, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson
  • The songs of Smash Mouth, Guns and Roses, and Patti Smith

Errors

• Night Viper's name is misspelt as "Nightviper".
• On page 13, the narration reads "Buzzsaw located silent black form of Lio Convoy's transport". There should be a "the" between 'located' and 'silent'.
• Shot is accidentally referred to as "Shock".
• The depiction of Fortress Maximus's eye on page 21 doesn't really jibe with the descriptions the text gives of him being ludicrously huge compared to the Resistance members.
• On page 21, the narration says "he just about had the presence of mind to shoot green tank rumbling towards Ser-Ket." There should be a "the" or "a" between shoot and green.
• On page 22, the narration says "an uncharacteristic surge of honest" when it should be "honesty".
• The word "grow" should be "grew" in the sentence "As the centuries dragged on and the desperation grow steadily worse, I realized I was the only one left who believed words could make things right."
• "Hear" is used in place of "here" in the sentence "This Fortress Maximus is no more a Builder than the transport that brought you hear is part of you."
• On page 29, the narration says Bighorn "shook the green cyberdroids", when it should just be cyberdroid singular.
• Shortly thereafter it says "her limbs were too atrophied to provided any resistance", instead of "provide any resistance".

See also

• "Head Games" Cybertronix translation

External links

• "Head Games" at The Official Transformers Collectors' Club website
• "Head Games" annotations by Jennifer Alexis Carlo