Legends Comic: Bonus Edition Vol. 31

It's Fortress Maximus vs. Metroplex as Tarantulas tries to get his hands on the newly finished battleship Maximus.

Synopsis

Fortress looks back on his past as a non-transforming weapons engineer who left Cybertron with his comrades four million years ago, crash-landing on the inhospitable planet Master. As they did their best to survive, they witnessed another starship crash nearby: studying unknown technology from the wreckage, Fortress was able to develop Headmasters. He went on to construct the battleship Maximus, which was lost in the blackball incident, so now he's rebuilding it in the form of their company HQ. Unfortunately, the construction costs were so high they had sell off their old HQ, Metroplex, to the Decepticon Tera-Kura Co. While Metroplex accepts this, asking the other Autobots to return home on the Maximus, Ultra Magnus, Chromia, and Alpha Trion refuse to leave him behind and instead join the Decepticon company. Tarantulas would rather have Maximus than a sentient office building, however, and plots to steal it by using the Master Sword.

Chromedome has had enough of the Decepticons' encroaching and asks Fortress to wipe them out, calling him a coward when he argues for a peaceful solution, only for Fortress to collapse mid-conversation. As he lies bedridden, he tells Chromedome the story of why he's ill, starting with the origin of the Headmasters when he discovered the remains of the original "Headmaster system" in the crashed ship. While adopting this technology let the people of Master use large and powerful bodies, they still had to train extensively to develop a type of telekinesis needed to control them, but his Maximus is different, requiring a perfect balance of both physical telekinesis and mental telepathy to control. Attaining such a synchronization drains his life force, which is why he avoided becoming Fortress Maximus until the very last minute during the buridanka incident. In tears, Fortress acknowledges that he's a coward who only thinks of his own safety and asks Chromedome to laugh at him, but Chromedome tells him to cut it out: to him, Fortress is the greatest of commanders, having saved his troops many times since then and only kept this secret so that they wouldn't worry about him.

Meanwhile, Weirdwolf has taken over Fortress's transtector and tries to transform Maximus with the Master Sword, but is ill-prepared for the sensation and is knocked out. While Fortress recovers and takes his body back, Tarantulas goes for plan B: deactivating Metroplex's consciousness and using the city-bot to take Maximus by force! Fortress transforms the base into battleship mode and it takes flight, but is interrupted in grabbing the Master Sword by Chromedome, who offers to take his place and save him from further loss of life force. He refuses, as Chromedome would fail just like Weirdwolf, but assures his soldier that he will not die. He completes the transformation into Fortress Maximus and fires on Metroplex with his many weapons before using the Master Sword to stab him with such precision as to destroy Tarantulas's control device without injuring his fellow Autobot. He warns Tarantulas that Metroplex may be theirs for now, but next time he tries something like this, he'll find himself cut down by the blade of justice. As he's arrested and taken away, Tarantulas mutters that with Fortress's condition, there may not be a "next time".

In the aftermath, Chromedome asks Fortress if he's okay, and he responds that he's feeling much better after getting his secret off his chest and is satisfied as long as he can protect the Legends world.

Featured characters

(Characters in italic text appear only in flashbacks.)
(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• The events of Brave Maximus crashing on Master in the past and inspiring the Headmasters was briefly told in the Teletraan 15 Go! Go! manga and Kiss Players radio drama. This story outright recreates the panel from "Sparkbots Volume 3" showing Fortress and the rest witnessing the crash.
• Ultra Magnus in particular doesn't want to leave Metroplex because he's the City Commander.
• Fortress first transformed into Fortress Maximus and fought the buridanka in "Head On!! Fortress Maximus".