September 30, 2015
Q: Dear Vector Prime,
What is the whole story of Air Attack Optimus Primal? What the heck does "spirit guide" even mean?
.
.
A: Dear Incorporeal Inquisitor,
The whole story? That might take quite a while. Air Attack Optimus Primal is one of the most important non-singularity beings in the multiverse, a time-faring hero who is surely well-known to you as the Beast Warrior of Primax 496.22 Alpha. But, if you really desire to know the entirety of his tale, post Beast Wars, then let his tale be told!
After the Beast Wars ended, the victorious Maximals left prehistoric Earth, travelling forward in the time to their home, the (from your perspective) future Cybertron. However, while they were passing through the timezone of the early 21st century, their shuttle was struck by temporal interference-waves caused by Binaltech Ravage’s alteration of history, causing it to drift into the Beta stream of the BT World. In this splinter reality, the Maximals were observed by Unicron, who shattered their shuttle with his “Stare of Chaos” and scattered the entire crew, including Megatron, into Transwarp space. The Autobots of BT World attempted to repair the timeline, but such a feat proved beyond them.
Fortunately for history, when the Alternity repaired the timeline and restored the OG World as a timeline discreet from the BT World, they also restored the future of Primax 496.22 Alpha, in which Primal's Maximals had returned to their Cybertron and participated in the Spark War. Unfortunately, this left the “shipwrecked” Primal surplus to requirements, a temporal anomaly without a home—a rare but occasional risk time-travelers sometimes face, as can be observed in the Offworld Zone on Axiom Nexus. Sympathizing with Primal, but recognizing that his existence posed a danger to causality, the Alternity determined to offer him a greater purpose within the Multiverse as a means of atoning for the partial sense of responsibility they harbored over his plight.
Meanwhile, agents of Alternity detected the "shipwrecked" Megatron, who, hurled from the shattered shuttle, had become stranded in the future time period of Viron 102.0 Beta. As was the case with his counterpart in the OG World, this Megatron also schemed to conquer the Viron Cybertron, joining forces with the ruthless Cryotek to better learn about the new world he found himself in. The Alternity shepherded the shipwrecked Optimus Primal, Rhinox, Rattrap, and Silverbolt to this dimension, then activated and directed the Oracle to serve as Primal's guide in the “Allspark Battles” that followed. As the battles progressed, Primal took numerous forms, his final, ultimate configuration equipped with sky-soaring jets, for attacking the towering form that his arch-enemy had taken: “Megahead Megatron”. “Air Attack” Optimus Primal fought with his all power and spirit, and finally triumphed over Megatron and his Vehicon hordes.
In response to Megatron's defeat, Cryotek launched his own stratagem. Like Megatron, he sought mechanical purity, but in a different and much more drastic way. Cryotek believed that Transformers’ sparks were NOT their life essence, but rather symbiotic, leech-like creatures, the Parasites (his thinking no doubt influenced by his own mutated, humanoid-shaped spark). He planned to eliminate all sparks from Transformers’ bodies, replacing them with physical operating systems which he had created, based partially on Megatron's own research into shell programs and spark extraction. Ominously, he had already conducted successful field tests on his own men.
(To digress a moment, from a multiversal viewpoint, Cryotek’s beliefs are not wholly wrong; there are a small number of Transformer races that lack sparks, such as the cyborgs of the Gargent Cluster, and additionally, there do exist many streams where the living sentient Transformers within function with just supremely complicated personality programs and no outside Spark. In fact, there are examples of such beings even with streams where Sparks are the norm; the Dinobots of Primax 984.17 Alpha are an excellent example of such, at least for the first few years of the conflict. Nevertheless, had Cryotek’s plan been successfully executed in this Viron universe, it would mean nothing short of galactic genocide—entire planets would filled with walking, talking corpses.)
Cryotek knew to be cautious in dealing with the ones who had defeated Megatron, and settled on hit and run tactics, using Megatron's Transwarp technology to attack the Autobots sporadically trough time and space with his stealthy Automatic De-Sparkers. Needing allies, he contacted Galvatron—then active on early 21st century Earth—who offered him refuge aboard his ship, the Megastar, in exchange for a body upgrade. Thus, by Cryotek's hand, the Predacon leader became “Megatron Megabolt”.
Meanwhile, hundreds of years in the future, Optimus Primal found the victims of Cryotek’s horrendous experiments and resolved to stop him, no matter the cost. Having already perceived that a greater power was behind the Oracle, Primal demanded it send him after Cryotek; the Alternity revealed their true form to Primal and agreed to his request, if he would join the ranks of their elite agents, the Protectors, in return. Primal accepted the offer and was sent to Earth with a single guide from that time period. To minimize the risk of paradox, Optimus could only assume a corporeal form to engage with Cryotek; against the threat posed by Megabolt Maximus—the fortress under control of Megatron—Primal could only act as a spirit guide. The battle was arduous, but in the end Prime and Primal emerged victorious, with Megatron and Cryotek decisively defeated. And so, Optimus Primal’s eternal missions as a Protector had begun.
Optimus Primal's first mission was to help hunt down the multiversal menace called Hytherion, the Ultimate Kronoform, just one of the many threats he would face during his time as a Protector. At one point, he was dispatched to observe the trial of the ancient inventor Primacron, who the Alternity suspected was responsible for creating the Hytherion. Primal watched as the Galactic Court on the planet Millaath examined the destructive acts Primacron was responsible for, and although it was eventually deduced that the Alternity had been incorrect and that the alien had no involvement with the Hytherion, Primacron was no less a danger to the universe. In the course of his trial, Primacron learned of the existence of universes where robots were created by a supposedly divine entity, and after his exile by Autobots, he explored and researched those realities. Concluding that such a prospect was cosmic madness, he started to menace those universes by an unspeakably terrible method. Multiversal custom and law forbids me from speaking of his invention specifically, but it can cancel dimensional frequencies and delete universes themselves with a relatively low energy cost. Primal and the Protectors detected his experiment and rushed to stop him, but Primacron, tired of having others fight his wars for him, joined the battle personally with another invention, Solduron: the Macro-Avatar, a nigh-invincible armor that even the Protectors were no match for. Optimus Primal was utterly defeated and his physical body totally destroyed, but his experience as a non-corporeal being allowed him to persevere, and his wisdom, amazingly, led Primacron to realize futility of his actions. The brilliant scientist withdrew from Newtonian space for an indeterminate period of time.
Although Primal's body was lost, the Alternity kept him active and even entrusted him with his most important mission yet: to safeguard their own existence. The Alternity enhanced Primal’s Spark for this task, giving it the ability to manipulate chronal energy. Through the Dinobot Island Anomaly, Primal arrived on the BT World in the year 2005, where he fused his Spark with Nemesis Prime’s body and used his new abilities to correct the flow of time, restoring the OG World whilst maintaining the BT World, and thereby ensuring the Alternity would come to be. He remained in BT World as a bodiless Spark, housed within a sustenance crystal, then, during the final battle of the Binaltech War, he fused with the great Optimus Prime himself, and together they defeated evil Nemesis Prime with their combined Spark Powers. After this triumph, Primal regained his physical form within a specialized Binaltech Body, based on a spare Optimus Prime unit with black and white colorations; he strongly resembled his old Maximal self.
Once again made metal, Primal sought guidance from the Alternity, only to find himself isolated and unable to reach them. The Earth of BT World—indeed, the entire solar system—had been trapped within a Quintesson Quadrant Lock. To minimize global panic, Primal informed both his fellow Autobots and humankind what happened. When the Lock was finally broken, over 900,000 years had passed from the perspective of the outside universe, with only a few months having passed inside. This was an era watched over by the Alternity—to my shame, I was unaware of what had transpired here until much much later.
Shortly after, he was tasked by... well, by me... to find some documents. These diagrams were the key to birthing the Alternity's successor. The Planicrons—the cosmic beings of the two-dimensional Cybertron—had reached out into the ether and found me, utilizing my unique biology to inform me without words what was needed for them to Transform and Transcend. Astonishingly, the Timaeus Project—an amazing example of the Power of Industry, the incredible synergy between advanced Cybertronian technology and human inspiration and tenacity—had created exactly what the Planicrons needed, but they lost track due to the Quantum Lock. Primal's keen insight allowed him to help locate the ultimate pinnacle of Human/Cybertronian technology: the blueprint of a Critias Gate. With the critical gate located, Primal left to join the final battle against Megatherion, to give the Planicrons time to pass through the Gate and evolve themselves into higher-dimensional life forms. Primal and his Protectors, and Ex-Alternities, struck down Megatron’s Auto-Avatars, weakening Megatherion enough for the evolved Planicrons to defeat the evil Megatron Aggregate. So it was that the changing of the guard of the multiversal shepherds was accomplished.
Interestingly, in his billion year career as a Protector, Optimus Primal witnessed both the beginning and the end of the Alternity over an extremely short period, from his perspective. He and the Protectors’ fate is still unclear, as the new guardians—nicknamed Flaternity, though they prefer to be called “Alternity II”—are still adapting to their new circumstances. But I have no doubt that Optimus Primal, inter-dimensional champion from the very first, will rise to do his duty. 
