Hey everybody! Arc III of Prime: Beast Saga is coming up pretty soon, so brave kid and I are getting ready to post a bunch of character bios in Wild Side.

(Part of the reason for that being that some of the characters aren't quite the way they were in the anime, and some of the characters have gone through name/identity changes.)

You know how sometimes when a movie or TV show is coming out, they'll do short commercials to introduce you to the characters? Well that's basically what this is.

Also, it's meant to sound like a newscast.

Prime: Beast Saga

Characters

Lio Convoy

"Hello everyone, and welcome back to Around Cybertron. I'm your host, Rook, here with Andromeda. Welcome back, Andromeda!"

"Thanks, Rook. It's great to be back! I tell you, it's been quite a stir around here with word of a possible resurgence of Predacon attacks. The Council assures us that the threat is contained in a distant solar system though, folks, so you've got nothing to worry about."

"That's right, Andromeda. And real quick, let's give a shout-out to our Mechs and Femmes in the armed forces, out there protecting us from the Preds. We appreciate it, guys. Come home safe!"

"And while we're on the subject of the Cybertronian armed forces, there've been some rumors flying around about the captain of the Yukikaze, stationed on the Planet Earth. We're here to set the record straight, right Rook?"

"Absolutely, Andromeda. Lio Convoy is an elusive figure, but Around Cybertron took the time to research his past, interview his friends and family, and we are here with an exclusive."

...

After the death of the last Prime, (an enigmatic figure who came some time after Optimus Prime. Both he and the Matrix of Leadership were lost to history), the highest rank a Maximal can attain is Council Member, and below that, Convoy. Very often, the Convoys chose to have their frames reformatted to resemble Optimus Prime, as a symbol of respect for a near-legendary figure from the past.

Lio bears the distinction of having emerged from the Well already looking like the famous Prime, something that set him apart as a child. While most of the generation post-Upgrade were made through the combination of a forged Spark and a protoform, in mimicry of many organic species, a quarter of the species still came from the Well of Allsparks. We interviewed Council Member Bantor, a former teacher of his, and this is what he had to say about Lio Convoy's origins.

Bantor: "Lio was actually fairly lonely as a sparkling, from what I know of him. The forged Maximals and the Well-sparks didn't always get along in those first few generations, you understand. They used to pick on him for not being like them, and Lio liked to hide in the museums and read about battles he really had no business knowing about at that age." (chuckles) "For all that he's a solemn sort, he's got a rebellious streak in him. Used to be, if you couldn't find Lio, he was either up a tree or trying to hack old historical records again."

It has been rumored (though never substantiated) that it was the Autobot Prowl—in his integrated Maximal body—who raised Lio to adulthood, and would certainly seem to account for his choice of beast-modes.

Lio grew up in the jungles that were planted around the ruins of Iacon, and joined the Maximal Advance Scouts when he was barely out of his youngling frame, taking the scout-rank of Cub. It was during this time that he befriended an older student, Apache, who would become an accomplished medic and an inseparable companion.

Apache: "Yes, well, I met Lio when we were both in the Academy. He wasn't looking where he was going during a drill, actually. He was trying to flirt with Botanica—she was a classmate of ours—and ran smack into me. Well, I was a hot-tempered fella and I challenged him to a fight. Poor Lio kept trying to apologize, but I tried to beat him up anyway."

Andromeda: "What happened?"

Apache: "He pounded me. But after that he took me to the medic's and took all the blame for the fight, even though I started it. I followed him like an orphaned turbofox after that!"

The Cub quickly established himself as an accomplished warrior with a sense of compassion that some felt had begun to be lost in the Advance Scouts. His superiors were just beginning to consider him for a promotion when the Predacons first began attacking the colony worlds, and his division was sent out to a forest planet in an attempt to quell the rebellion. Before they left, witnesses state that Alpha Trion approached the young soldier with the Energon Matrix—similar in form to the Energy Matrices all other Convoys carry, which connects them to Vector Sigma, but supposedly reverse engineered from the original Matrix of Leadership—telling him that in the eyes of the Council, he was already a Convoy.

While we don't know what prompted him to accept it, we do know that Lio Cub kept the Matrix a secret, likely because his bad-tempered commander, Leatherhide, would have felt gravely insulted that he had been passed over in promotion in favor of a comparative rookie. It was on this mission that he first came face to face with Galvatron.

In the slaughter that would later be known as Operation: Volcano Flight, the Maximal commander Leatherhide sent his scouts on a suicide mission that led to the deaths of twenty-seven young Maximals and thirteen combat veterans. He would have been court-martialed had he survived to return to Cybertron.

It was after the death of Leatherhide that Lio displayed an unusual ability to create and control a kind of energy pulse comparable to the kind Optimus Prime once used to silence Unicron during the War for Earth. Listen to what his old squad mates had to say about it:

Dive: "I was there when it happened. I swear, I have never seen anything like it! There's all this energon and death everywhere, about half my buddies died. Leatherhide, he goes running out there trying to lead a charge, and Galvatron just ripped him in half and threw the pieces at us. It was bad, ma'am just bad. Then Lio runs out there and sees Botanica, all crushed under the Pred's foot—they were friends, y'know. They used to pretend they were sweet on each other—and the next thing I know his optics are glowing like a supernova and WHAM! Out comes this blast of light and Galvatron went flying. It was incredible, and I've never seen anything like it."

Longrack: "Frankly, I thought it was terrifying. I mean, that much raw power, coming out of somebody our age? It's a scary, scary thing, because you don't know how that power is going to be used, or who is going to try to use him. You know what I mean?"

When asked about the attack in the aftermath, Lio was unable to explain what had happened. In recognition of his tremendous feat and repeated acts of courage, Lio was named a Convoy at the next Council meeting and given charge of a small team.

The years between his promotion and the crashing of the Yukikaze are shrouded in mystery, as Lio himself is a very private mech. What we know is that at some point before the Yukikaze was sent to confront Galvatron's crew, Lio Convoy imprinted a young spark that emerged from the Well. The subsequently named "Leo Jr." currently resides in an undisclosed location with friends of the Convoy until his father returns. We were allowed to briefly speak with him at the Cyclonus Memorial Park, under his current guardian's supervision. He's every inch his father's son, and like all toddlers, he's an irresistible little reminder of the benefits of peace.

Andromeda: "Do you miss your Sire a lot?"

Leo Jr.: "Um, yah. Miss'm lots."

Andromeda: "And what are you going to do when he comes home?"

Leo Jr.: "Go to zoo. Pet the driller."

Andromeda: (laughs) "You like the Old Cybertron animals, huh?"

Leo Jr.: "This my Spider-bot. Daddy gived him to me." (holds up a bad-tempered and squalling spider-bot)

Andromeda: "Uh...oh, oh dear…" (pushes camera away) "Okay, back to you, Rook."

After only a few short years, Lio Convoy was deployed to deep space with his team, to intercept the Predacon ship Darksyde after it broke Galvatron out of prison in the worst terrorist attack on Altihex since the Decepticon bombings in the first Great War. Shortly after confronting the ship, Maximal Command lost contact with the Yukikaze, and for days Cybertronians feared the worst.

As it turned out, in a turn of events more like something out of a Postbellum adventure film, both ships had crash-landed on the Planet Earth, and tenuous political alliances had to be made with the human beings for the first time since reign of Optimus Prime. Naturally, they stay out of the Maximals' way, and remarkably, with a mixture of primitive Earth tech and salvage from the Yukikaze, the team has been able to set up a steady base of operations.

Rumor has it that Lio Convoy has actually taken in three humans—whether as recruits, pets, or adopted Maximals, no one's really sure—and that they occasionally accompany the Scouts on missions. Council Member Cohrada has stated that there is also an unauthorized recruit who may have come from Velocitron, as he formerly sported a vehicle mode. During the last interplanetary link, we attempted to reach the Convoy to ask him, but he declined to comment.

Lio: "I have nothing to say on the matter. The Council has been informed of the circumstances surrounding the arrival of my recruits, and that is highly sensitive information. All you need to know is that every member of this team is here for a reason, and they're not going anywhere."

Andromeda: "And what about the Predacons? Are you any closer to bringing them to justice? How did you get a Velocitronian recruit when they won't even set foot on Cybertron these days?"

Lio: "I'm sorry, this interview is over."

Despite his sudden secrecy, the Convoy remained unfailingly polite throughout the interview, and is still the warm, heroic mech that we've all come to admire. Back to you, Andromeda.

...

"Thank you, Rook. You know who he really reminds me of? He really reminds me of the old holovids of Optimus Prime. The Council recently released some of the old recordings to the general public—you can find them at your local theater—and I gotta tell you, the resemblance is startling."

"Well, most Convoys do modify their appearance to look like him."

"There's that, but I mean something more like his personality is the same. You know, the even temper, the gentle nature, and let's face it: the fact that he's absolutely terrifying when you hurt one of his soldiers. Folks, if we had more soldiers like Lio Convoy, I don't know that we'd actually have a Predacon problem!"

"Ah, Andromeda, you're such a kidder! This has been an Around Cybertron news exclusive. Next: Energon-Magnetite pulses. Is your family prepared for the next one? We'll be back, after this.