Following Optimus Prime's departure from Cybertron, Rodimus publicly announces his intent to do likewise aboard the Lost Light, following the map found within the Matrix in hopes of locating the Knights of Cybertron. Prowl predicts virtually no Autobots will respond to his open invitation to join him, but Rodimus winds up with a little over two hundred recruits, including (much to Bumblebee's consternation) Ratchet—who believes he is getting old, a concern punctuated by his failure to save the life of a NAIL who has committed suicide as a political protest—Chromedome—the loss of whose scientific talents particularly infuriates Prowl, prompting him to order the loading of a mysterious cargo onto the Lost Light—and Chromedome's friend, Rewind. Ultra Magnus, of course, has misgivings about nearly every recruit, but Rodimus is thrilled to have so many.

In the skies above Cybertron, Cyclonus grieves in his own way for the loss of the world he had known and all the memories he made there. Detecting a life-sign resembling Scourge's, he investigates a small shack, only to find the unhinged Whirl talking to a collection of Sweep corpses that he has strung up inside. Cyclonus enters and interrupts him just as he is about to burn down the energon-soaked building, and Whirl immediately attacks him, professing innocence and explaining the bodies were already dead: he had merely collected them. Cyclonus, for his part, doesn't care in the slightest, but can't convince Whirl of this fact.

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Elsewhere, Red Alert is running security checks on the Autobots who have signed up to join the Lost Light: Brainstorm, carrying a mysterious briefcase but exempted from security checks by Rodimus; Swerve, in the mood for "a good quest"; and Rung, whom Red Alert does not recognize at first, despite having been a patient of his for six centuries. Rung tempts fate by commenting on his knack for staying out of trouble: before the sentence is even finished, Cyclonus and Whirl's running battle swoops through the area, and Rung winds up with his forearm cleaved off by Cyclonus's wing.

Ratchet, Chromedome, and Rewind, meanwhile, are making for the Lost Light through the Mitteous Plateau, but are running behind schedule due to Rewind's lack of a vehicular alternate mode, a trait of his that Chromedome has never understood. Just as the group are about to start having an argument about the validity of alt mode variety, Cyclonus and Whirl come crashing down out of the sky, their battle at an end with Whirl the victor. Whirl spins a few quick lies and is about to deliver a killshot when a sudden, unexpected energon explosion from beneath the ground blows him to bits. Peering into the blast crater, the Autobots find Tailgate, who, unbeknownst to them, is a Cybertronian from six million years ago who was supposed to be on the Ark-1, but became trapped underground in a subsidence. He has spent the past six thousand millennia periodically going offline and reawakening, unaware that any time has passed, until he was just now finally able to detonate the energon rations he had with him in a bid for freedom. Panicking and passing out before he can tell anyone any of this due to his belief he has killed Whirl, Tailgate is brought aboard the Lost Light by the Autobots, as is Whirl. Rewind takes advantage of the brief confusion to slip off and purchase some golden discs from Swindle.

Soon after, the Lost Light takes off, and Bumblebee complains to Prowl that he thought he had a plan... at which point the ship is crippled by a mysterious explosion that forces the ship to quantum jump before preparation is complete, hurling it off to some far corner of the galaxy. A fifth of the ship's crew is sucked out into space before the breached hull repairs itself, and Rodimus orders them to set down on a desolate nearby planet, where they watch as the Autobots come raining down, burning up as they enter the atmosphere. A

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