ROBOT WAR 1990

Optimus Prime remained in his depression, leaving the Autobots to fight on by themselves. Hot Rod was involved in a battle between
Scorponok and the Air Strike Patrol (still following Megatron's orders to get Scorponok killed, despite his apparent death), which resulted in the Decepticon leader being let go to avoid the battle damaging a human city even further. This was not the only problem for the Decepticon leader, as he was facing widespread criticism for allowing Starscream back in to the ranks after the Underbase incident. On 27th of January, Hot Rod decided to snap Prime out of his depression by setting up a fight for him against a Guardian unit- it worked, albeit not in the way it was meant to.

 Meanwhile, on Cybertron, Thunderwing ordered the new Mayhem Attack Squad- the Pretender warriors Bludgeon, Octopunch and Stranglehold -to assassinate the Classic Pretenders out of fear of their presence bolstering the Autobot resistance. At this point, the trio was being sent back to Earth along with the Micromaster Rescue Patrol to bolster the Earthen ranks; the Mayhems attack caused both them and their targets to accidentally be teleported into the centre of Cybertron, where they found the Primus Chamber- a room containing the head of their god Primus! The battle continued and briefly woke up Primus before the Transformers were sent off to Earth- however, the Autobots knew that the waking of the god would betray Cybertron's location to Unicron, the Chaos-Bringer and the being the Transformers were created to fight. This provided the impetus to find the missing Creation Matrix, so they could use its holy power against Unicron, and so on 2nd February four Autobot teams were sent out to find it.

. Nightbeat, Siren and Hosehead, after saving the planet of P'zzaz from a major degeneration whilst on the Matrix Quest, were captured by Thunderwing & several of his troops, and tortured into revealing the quest. Thunderwing now became obsessed to beat the Autobots to the Matrix. The Triggerbots arrived on the desert planet of Cheyne, where they were brainwashed and fed on by a family of psychic vampires, but broke free of the programming. On Gottleib, Longtooth went insane and his team-mates had to stop him from wiping out the last of a near-extinct race; Thunderwing, realising the animal had been revived by Matrix energy, was able to use his Matrix affinity to discover where the energy had come from- an escape pod from the science colony of the moon VsQs orbiting Cameron. Meanwhile, Unicron made his presence felt by devouring the mechanoid planet of Ghennik; three survivors were reformatted into his servants Hook, Line and Sinker, and sent through time and space to the Dark Universe to bring back an alternate future version of Galvatron, whom Unicron could use as an agent against the Autobots.

The Classic Pretenders were already on VsQs, where they found the entire colony had been slaughtered. When the Decepticons arrived, both found that the Matrix had been tainted with darkness and had recreated a dying alien parasite into a viciously powerful xenomorph called the Matrixspawn. Thunderwing battled it for the Matrix, putting his own troops at risk to get it; once he got the Matrix, he steeped it totally in evil and then took the Autobot's ship to the Ark, where he began ripping his way through the Autobot ranks. The Matrix slowly started to possess Thunderwing and soon he found himself completely under its control; not even Optimus could defeat him now, and it was up to Nightbeat and his comrades, who had broken free of captivity, to blast the Decepticon and the Matrix into deep space. This done, the Autobots had lost their only weapon against Unicron.

Back on Earth, RAAT had been disbanded due to their constant failures and G.B. Blackrock was ordered to create an alternative to them. He gathered two super powered mutants- Lee Gruber, bitter circus freak and Katrina Vesotzky, destitute -and trained them as the first members of a superhero team the Neoknights, giving them the alias Thunderpunch and Rapture respectively. On March 25th, a third mutant was found after he fought back against the Air Strike Patrol's occupation of a Louisiana oil refinery. A battle was fought over him between the Neoknights, Starscream and Circuit Breaker, who all wanted him for different purposes. Both the man (renamed Dynamo) and Circuit Breaker joined the Neoknights team, whilst Starscream ran into Shockwave, resurfacing for the first time since January 1989!

On July 8th, Optimus Prime suffered the first of many later pains gained from what he perceived as a growing incompatibility with Hi-Q. It also came to his attention that Ratchet was not as dead as first thought, but may be in Hyperspace, as the explosion hit the Space Bridge. Nightbeat worked on trying to find a way to get Ratchet out of the warp, whilst Grimlock went AWOL with the corpses of the Dinobots, heading for the planet Hydrus 4 where a new fuel substance called Nucleon had been discovered that could conceivably resurrect dead robots. Triggerhappy and Mindwipe abandoned Scorponok, only to end up joining Shockwave's new team of presumed dead Decepticons- himself, Starscream, the Battlechargers and Ravage -who were intending to overthrow Scorponnok. On July 9th, Ratchet was retrieved- but he had somehow been melded body and mind to Megatron, and the nightmarishly conjoined robots went on a mad rampage before they could be subdued. Work was carried out to separate them, but doing so would mean having to keep Megatron alive. Meanwhile Grimlock found the Nucleon and, after hearing about how it could have unforeseen and maybe dangerous side-effects, not affecting any type of mechanoid species the same, he tested it on himself. Finding it satisfactory, he worked on reviving the Dinobots.

The Dark Universe Galvatron was finally brought before Unicron. Despite having to work for the Chaos-Bringer, Galvatron was already aiming to destroy him in revenge for taking him out of his native timeline and attempting to control him.

In November, Optimus realised that the only way the Transformers could stand against Unicron would be to unite as a race- and so he had the entire Ark crew surrender to Scorponok as a prelude to talks and an eventual alliance. The Decepticon's popularity rose sharply in the face of this. And as Optimus remained in his cell for months without talking with him, he realised that maybe Scorponok didn't intend an alliance...