Alright, it has been years since I have really written anything. I really want to get back into it and as I see it, probably my best way in is to spit out the ideas that have been sitting in my head for YEARS. I came up with the initial premise for this one sometime between 2015 and 2018. Wrote a couple of chapters and then stopped but... I have been sitting on the ideas for years. I don't remember everything, but I am going to summarize everything I can remember right here. If I come back to it, great, I'll delete this. If not... well I have gotten a couple of messages from people who actually likes it, so this would give SOME kind of closure. Either way, I can finally put these concepts onto the page. Just a fair warning, things written here might not EXACTLY gel together. This is based off ideas that have been floating in my head for half a decade or so, thus these are unrefined ideas.

Alright, here is the key plotline I can recall for what would have been "Season 1." The idea was that Skorponok was developing the Headmaster concept on Earth in order to test its viability for the war effort. The idea was that he was kidnapping humans for the testing phase. The "Master Warrior" characters from the Japanese toyline would have been the prototype victims. The more recognizable Headmaster characters would have been the result of him finally succeeding. The final battle of the season would later spill out into a city and be broadcast live, exposing the Cybertronians to the world at large. To elaborate on that escalation...

OK, so one thing to note is that the conflict during "Season 1" would have had a more relaxed tone at the start. For the two sides, Earth was just a distant outpost that Skorponok was using to run his experiments which the Autobots fought to stop out of principle. The stakes weren't to high. The war wasn't really "here". A fact that Ramjet and Blades would have been chaffing at as they were the most "warrior" minded members of the two groups.

A key subplot would have been a developing friendship between Beachcomber and Dropshot. I had difficulty remembering Dropshot's name initially, and so I had decided to make his name being misremembered a running gag. This would make him feel like an outcast. Meanwhile, Beachcomber would have been spending a lot of time out of the base doing his own thing, and one day accidentally run into Dropshot. They would bond over their feelings about being an outcast and eventually agree to try and do something to stop their war from doing any real damage to the Earth, something a spying Ramjet would have taken none to kindly to, as he had been kicked out of Starscream's personal seeker team and exiled to a minor outpost. He wanted things to escalate on Earth so that he had the opportunity to be re-promoted.

Things would have escalated after Blades showed up after one of those meetings. I don't remember if he would have actually caught Beachcomber or he would have arrived just after Beachcomber's departure. But I do remember this. Blades would have promptly murdered Dropshot. What I remember is that Dropshot wouldn't have put up a fight, beg for his life, and Blades would have casually turned Dropshot's own rocket launcher on him and blown his head of, derisively calling him "Drop shit" in the process. Ramjet would decide to use this to escalate things.

Ramjet would frame Beachcomber for the murder and promise vengeance to his teammates. Essentially, something would cause a large confrontation between the two sides (probably having something to do with the Headmaster project) and Tracer would have sniped Beachcomber in the forehead, killing him. In retaliation, Hot Spot would have used his hose as a lasso, and make Tracer crash, then promptly crushed his head underfoot before he could do anything more. After a big fight that forces the Protectobots to combine into Defensor, The Decepticons would have retreated, but called in the Combaticons (while revealing that Onslaught was Hot Spot's brother).

In the final fight, Blades would have killed Bombshock after boasting about the fact that HE was the one who killed Dropshot, which a hidden Growl heard and silently vow revenge. Somehow the truth would have been revealed, Hot Spot would have threatened Blades with a court martial for the way he killed Dropshot. Having gotten in trouble one to many times already, Blades would have deserted and fled the planet. There would've been a subplot where Growl goes rouge, hunts him down and kills him, then joins the Scavengers. Which would have also had Slugfest and Overkill on the team.

I don't exactly remember what would have happened to Skorponok. I believe that Ramjet would have literally stabbed him in the back and fled? I don't remember his ultimate fate though a stab in the back sounds a bit to survivable for the creator of the Headmaster process...

I know that Ramjet DEFINITELY would have died though, being shot down while fleeing the site and crashing hard into to ground, tumbling over and over while in jet mode. (If you are noticing a high body count, yea I think I came up with this in my edgy phase. Coincidentally, this was when Prime and IDW phase 2 were coming out and made me a fan). I think part of the reason for Ramjet's end was because each "season" would have its own big bad and Ramjet was technically the villain for S1. Heck, I wanted the main cast to be constantly shifting. (I guess think of what Skybound is currently doing).

After the battlefield was cleared up, both sides would be sent reinforcements. I know that Alpha Bravo would have been brought in to replace the disgraced Blades, but I don't remember who else, if anyone, got sent to the Autobots.

I DO know that Deathsaurus would have been sent in as the new military commander for the Earth offensive, signaling an escalation and a new big bad. I didn't really have any real plans for that. I just know that after that I would have revealed the Hydra Cannon from Armada and taking it down would have taken out most of the surviving season 1 characters.

To be more specific, Hot Spot would have been mortally wounded by Onslaught while trying to break into the ship. He would then grab Onslaught and deliberately fall into Earth's gravity well. Vortex and Blast Off would try to stop it, only for Hot Spot to repeat the trick he used on Tracer to crash Vortex into Blast Off, slicing the shuttle in half and causing them to all fall into the atmosphere and burn up. (I could easily keep this scene but have at least some of them survive. Maybe Vortex gets hurled away from Earth and Hot Spot lands on top of Onslaught, letting him survive long enough for help to arrive?)

Hotlink would've given Sunstorm an upgrade that made him more like his Dreamwave incarnation, which would cause Sunstorm to accidentally melt him (could easily change or have Hotlink's spark survive). He would've helped to fuel the cannon, but this backfires when Windcharger lures him into the barrel and then uses his powers to mangle it, causing it to fire on them both, ultimately causing the cannon to implode.

As for Finn? His plotline would involve a variation on the Key to Vector Sigma plotline. Essentially he would at some point go to Cybertron and be exposed to its energy, giving him some precognition abilities, making him the equivalent of the Oracle from Beast Machines. That is why I named him Phineas Gordon. Phineas was a blind king and a seer, and Barbara Gordon from the Batman comics is also known as Oracle when she is the woman in the chair.

Now for the miscellaneous unused plots.

At some point I would have addressed the three versions of the Seacon combiner. Pirahnacon is the original and each component is sentient, King Poseidon is made up completely out of drones, and God Neptune is a group of drones that somehow gained sentience.

I intended for there to be classic human characters in the story. I know I wanted to use Circuit Breaker at some point, but I only had definitive plans for two characters. Kicker Jones from Energon and Doctor Arkeville from the G1 cartoon. The later is what is important here. See, I would have introduced the key at some point and he would have been exposed to it. The exposure would have caused him to slowly turn him into a machine and drive him mad. I guess if I come back to this I can integrate his plotline with Circuit Breaker's...

I wanted to use the Wreckers at some point. I had a team lineup including Roadburner and Wheel Blaze (Because of the screw up in the old mobile card game Legacy. That game is why I chose the Decepticons for S1 that I did). The joke was supposed to be it was supposed to be Roadbuster that was invited, but the guy sending invites was incompetent. Yes, Wheel Blaze would've been the first to die, thus making a half white, half yellow fire truck. Bulkhead would have been invited, but they got the plane from Energon. I remember wanting Artfire (because cool name for a rarely used character, planned on giving him fire manipulation abilities), Broadside(because rarely used), Scoop and Minerva as a medic (had Junkheap planned as one as well at some point).

I know that the Requiem Blaster accidentally destroyed the Enigma of Combination, and the resulting backlash gave any Cybertronian in range the ability to freely combine. An idea that sounded cool in my head as a way to bring in whatever combiners and combinations that I wanted. Unsure if it is actually viable. Though for some reason I had also planned to reveal that Rook was the only Protectobot at Scramble City and was added later. I have written down that First Aid was at Delphi, Blades was a patient, Groove was a POW, Streetwise was part of security at Kima, and Hot Spot was security chief. Maybe the plan was to have the classic Defensor to be an early Autobot combiner prototype design to be a foil to Bruticus?

I had a pretty cool idea for a subplot involving the character Sparkstalker (I think I had him in my "Ode To the Obscure" fic). Basically I took the implications of his name to their logical extreme, and turned him into a Jurassic Park velociraptor-like creature who has a spark extractor built into his throat (One that looks like the one Lockdown uses on Ratchet in Age of Extinction). He has a ship FULL of the sparks of bots on both sides he has hunted.

The Heatseekers are all close friends. Hotlink is an inventor/mechanic, Bitstream is a weapons aficionado, and Sunstorm has a screw or two loose due to an upgrade going to well.

Punch/Counterpunch would show up in at least the final arc (A Unicron story naturally). It would be revealed that he is a sleeper agent with Sideways as his handler. In each form, he truly believes he is loyal to the faction he is pretending to be a part of. In reality they were twins merged into one body by Unicron.

Speaking of this, I know I had wanted to give Trailbreaker a prominent role at some point and he would have an epic death where he is on a planet Unicron is about to consume, he gets super juiced up, stands on the summit of the tallest mountain on the planet staring down the chaos bringer while he proclaims himself to be the shield of the Autobots. Injured, he includes his spark energy into his final effort to shield the planet in a scene reminiscent of Starscream's death in Armada. He successfully shields the entire planet long enough for Unicron to be driven elsewhere. He falls back, already dead, with a smile on his face, and falls off the mountain.

The last thing I can think of is... a rather mean subplot regarding Kicker Jones and Energon Ironhide. Essentially, the later would be renamed Ironsides and would be part of a combined team of young Autobots and human recruits trained to work together. I remember his love interest from that show would've been teamed up with Arcee and Outback would've been teamed with an Australian man who was VERY annoyed by the fact that Outback is a massive Austrophile.

Anyways, Kicker was the maverick of the group but kept getting away with things because he was the son of one of the project directors. This would eventually come to bite him when he and Ironsides snuck into Sparkstalker's ship, which gets Kicker killed and Ironsides reduced to a head. Dr Jones would've placed in his lab and abuse the poor guy calling him "Scrappy". I don't remember how, but Kicker's body would've been combined with Ransack's body and... I think a Jetfire style jet and turned into... Kickback. Yea, I don't exactly remember where I was going with that. I know Ironsides was supposed to get a redemption arc... but I honestly forgot what it was. I think he got a new body and became Armorhide... but I am unsure.

And with that... that is what I can remember off the top of my head. Honestly, a part of me believes that if I really tried and got back into the writing groove I had back in the late 2010s, then I could theoretically salvage most of this. I kind of want to. But what do any of you think?