Four million years ago, in the Alyon region of Cybertron, Orion Pax, Roller, and their gang of outliers defend a recently ignited hot spot against repeated incursions from Sentinel Prime's Elite Guard. As the Guardsmen flee from their latest failed attempt, Roller decides to help them on their way by transforming to vehicle mode and ramming them—but after doing so, his trailer section unexpectedly erupts with light, and opens to reveal Rodimus, Rung, Cyclonus, Riptide, Tailgate, Chromedome, Whirl, and Rewind!

Flashback: A short time earlier—relatively speaking—aboard the Lost Light in the present day, Rodimus gathers his team together and explains, with help from Perceptor, that Brainstorm has travelled into the past to kill Orion Pax. After travelling to Messatine as an apparent calibration exercise for his time machine, Brainstorm has now relocated himself to Cybertron; using autobiographical data on Optimus Prime from Rewind's database, the team concludes that he will be in Alyon, and they prepare to depart, with Whirl gleefully raiding Brainstorm's armory for the mission.

Present: After a few moments of tense confusion, Rodimus's team establishes a cover story for themselves, pretending to be reinforcements teleported in to help Pax by Zeta. Recognizing Chromedome from their previous meeting, Pax accepts the team and brings them back to his squad's dugout, where he explains their belief that Sentinel and the Senate are attempting to destroy the hot spot—the first to ignite in a million years, and curiously shaped like a hand—in order to prevent the Functionist Council from exploiting it as proof of Primus and strengthening their waning hold over the public. Cyclonus observes a mysterious platform floating over the hot spot, which Pax explains is apparently a monitoring station that arrived the previous evening; their conversation is chimed in on by Trailbreaker, who has just risen from the camp's recharge slab.

As everyone talks amongst themselves, Rodimus, taken aback by Trailbreaker's appearance, secretly takes him aside and, without telling him anything outright, warns him of the circumstances of his future death on Ofsted XVII in order to prevent it from happening. Rung talks with Roller, tasting the "juicebox" the heavyweight 'bot always carries with him, only to realize Roller has added the circuit speeder C32 to the drink. Roller solemnly claims he requires the boost to keep up with the Outliers, and that Pax only keeps him around because they're friends. Megatron calls via the "time phone" communicator Rodimus has brought with him, but as Rodimus is busy with Trailbreaker, Orion is the one who answers. Pretending to be his younger self, Megatron has a conversation with the young police officer, whose optimism for the future is a mixed source of both affirmation and tragic amusement to Megatron. Rodimus returns from his talk with Trailbreaker and takes up the call, receiving a status update from Megatron that indicates a notable amount of background radiation is leaking through the quantum generators from the past to the present. This causes Rodimus to believe that the senate's "monitoring station" is actually bombarding the hot spot with radiation in an attempt to sterilize it, but when he reveals this to the group, Rewind is able to use his database—altered to contain data from the alternate timeline that Brainstorm has created—to uncover the full story. The Senate are not trying to sterilize the hot spot with radiation: they're trying to mutate it, to find a way to artificially create outliers.

Now aware of the true threat, everyone heads outside, where Orion has Trailbreaker shield the hot spot with a forcefield. In response, the floating platform unveils a weapons array and opens fire on them. While Whirl and Cyclonus take to the air to combat the platform, Roller storms into the middle of the hot spot, risking his life to use a small mobile teleporter to send each spark, one by one, to a safehouse in Nyon.

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