What Lies Beneath

• Writer - Simon Furman
• Penciler - Joe Ng
• Inker - Elaine To
• Colorist - Jong-Im Lee
• Colorist - Stuart Ng
• Colorist - Josh Perez
• Lettering - Ben Lee

Summary

  In western Australia, Scorponok's Decepticons are destroying Alterenergy's mobile command center, coercing Rad into agreeing to lead them to an energon deposit. Meanwhile, as Kicker and Alexis leave the destroyed Alterenergy site (from last issue), they join up with Optimus Prime and the Autobots and quickly brief each other.

  A few hours later, at the Gregory Salt Sea, Tidal Wave guards a captive Rad while Scorponok, Insecticon, and Battle Ravage meet the approach of Optimus, Jetfire, and Ironhide. The Autobots are ambushed from behind by Divebomb and Cruelock, but vault over their attack, then counter with the surprise appearance of Inferno and the Omnicons. They quickly overload the Decepticons with energon, and Scorponok orders the Decepticons to close in with melee combat.

  Meanwhile, Tidal Wave congratulates Rad for leading them to a vein of energon, and gets sucker-gunned by Hot Shot and Strongarm. Tidal wave quickly recovers, but Skyblast draws his cover while the Autobots give Rad an armored suit for protection. Kicker then tells Hot Shot to order an immediate withdrawl, and the Autobots clear out just before the vein of unstable energon explodes!

  From afar, Scorponok screams outrage at this latest setback. Before he can do anything else, however, dimensional gates open, dragging his Terrorcons to answer to Alpha Quintesson for their failure!

  As the humans and Autobots reunite and reconcile with each other, Strongarm explains that they arrived quickly by maneuvering around the Cybertron Council. Rad then asks if the Autobots are leaving, and Prime says no -- they're going to stay this time, and the whole world will know about it...