Megatron records the latest in a series of political broadcasts that will be played across Cybertron: the Ascenticon leader rails against the Nominus Edict that has, in his view, stymied the expansion of the Cybertronian race. Soundwave observes that this latest message will reach thousands, and his words are indeed borne out when the message is broadcast, with a crowd gathering around a screen in the streets of Iacon to watch. But Chromia, who's passing by one such broadcast, has more pressing concerns; a call with Sideswipe regarding energon distribution records confirms her suspicions that a dozen members of The Rise have indeed stopped withdrawing their regular fuel allotments and gone into hiding...but she's blindsided when Sideswipe reveals that more than two hundred Cybertronians have abruptly gone off the grid in the days since Brainstorm's murder.

Elsewhere, Prowl reflects on the recent investigations from the privacy of his office as he tends to his pet. Prowl muses aloud that Cybertron's unbroken peace and prosperity has dulled his old predatory instincts, and the loss of this old edge is why it's taken him this long to figure out how to best root out an unlicensed Voin scavenger: rather than operating within the Voin community, he needs to find its clients and scare them into cooperating with his inquiries.

At the Tether, Wheeljack bids Rubble goodnight at the end of another training shift. Rubble waits for Bumblebee to pick him up so that they can take the space elevator up to the Winged Moon itself, but Bumblebee calls in on Rubble's communicator with bad news: they'll need to postpone their trip, as his mentor has another one of his pressing secret appointments. Bumblebee promises the crestfallen Rubble that he'll take him there as soon as he can. Wheeljack comforts Rubble by assuring him that Bumblebee has a good reason for doing so, and so the little 'bot heads back to his quarters alone… and, not far away, Bumblebee transforms and speeds off through a run-down part of town, down into an abandoned mineshaft.

Rubble's trip home takes him through Iacon's Energon storage fields, where he stops to marvel at the city's vast stockpiles of fuel, past the A'ovan habitat, a vast arcology constructed to house Cybertron's population of A'ovan refugees, and into the tangled streets of the city's bustling Xeno-Quarter. Fascinated by the diversity of the planet's organic immigrants, Rubble's attention wanders until a gaggle of Voin pass by, with one of them offhandedly recognizing Rubble as the "small Cybertronian." Realizing that this Voin must be the same unlicensed scavenger he encountered on the night of the murder, Rubble, eager to help Prowl and the other members of Security Operations in their investigation, impulsively gives chase.

In the depths of the mine, meanwhile, Bumblebee meets up with his mysterious contact. Although he was expecting Elita-1, he's instead confronted by none other than Senator Soundwave, who brushes off his concerns and abruptly plants a metal pole into the ground before he permits their conversation to continue.

Rubble's chase takes him deeper and deeper into the Xeno-Quarter, passing one alien after the next, but he's unable to locate the mystery Voin. Rubble instead tries to use his communicator to contact Bumblebee, but is unable to remember how to turn on the device... and that's when a crunching noise catches his attention, followed by one of the Voin's slaved organics bolting past, shrieking in terror...

Bumblebee's meeting with Soundwave starts off rough and doesn't get much better: Elita-1 might command the new Ascenticon Guard, but it's Soundwave who's in charge of recruiting new members, and neither of them are particularly inclined to trust a former member of Security Operations. Bumblebee tries to point out that he's far from the only member of the force to join the Guard, and besides, he was expelled from the organization, but Soundwave retorts by pointing out that he's al

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