Changing Lanes

When the battle for Cybertron reaches its turning point, Battle Ravage strikes!

Synopsis

Despite Overdrive's investigations into his attempts to meddle with the flow of time, Battle Ravage manages to avoid detection, and puts his next scheme into motion by hijacking Wheeljack's shuttle when the Autobot engineer is returning to Cybertron. Setting the craft down in Decepticon territory on the Transformers' home planet, Battle Ravage sets to work locating the remains of the Kronosphere, a time machine invented by Shockwave.

Meanwhile, the battle for control of Cybertron between Optimus Prime and Megatron's force is reaching fever pitch, as Megatron makes his big push to complete his planetary takeover. Realizing the Autobots have no chance of victory, Prime is about to order his troops to withdraw to their bases on Cybertron's moons, when suddenly, Megatron's approaching armada is surrounded by a sphere of light, and vanishes. Although the Autobots do not understand what has happened, they do not look a gift horse in the mouth, and are quickly able to rout the leaderless Decepticons. In truth, however, this strange event is the work of Battle Ravage, who has repaired the Kronosphere and used it to teleport Megatron and his army outside of time. With this action, the time-tossed Decepticon has successfully changed history: now, the Autobots will be left to face the approaching threat of Unicron alone, after which the Kronosphere's homing device will summon the Decepticons back from beyond time, and they will be able to defeat the weakened Autobots and ensure Decepticon domination of the future!

Until that time, however, Battle Ravage realizes that the remaining Decepticons will need a leader to keep them in order. He infiltrates the facility housing a shelved Binaltech project experimenting with molecular reconfiguration technology known as the "Transmuter", and installs the personality component of Shockwave (whose body was destroyed in the battle for Cybertron) into the body stored there. Shockwave is thus resurrected to lead the Decepticons until Battle Ravage's plan can come to fruition.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• This chapter of the Binaltech story was printed in the pack-in booklet included with the Shockwave Binaltech toy. The story of his transformation into a Binaltech warrior is covered in the bio and Tech Specs also published in the booklet, rather than in the story chapter itself.
• The title of this chapter takes its name from the 2002 movie.
• The Kronosphere appeared in the Generation 1 cartoon episode "War Dawn".
• The Autobots were operating from the moonbases mentioned in this episode at the start of The Transformers: The Movie. Due to Battle Ravage changing history, however, the Autobots now never have to retreat to them.
• The Transmuter used in Shockwave's Binaltech body appeared in the two-part G.I. Joe episode, "Worlds Without End".
• With this chapter, the Binaltech story diverges off from established cartoon continuity, becoming its own parallel universe. This doesn't stop the story continuing to make loads of references to the cartoon, however, and indeed, the very notion of the story being an alternate universe will continue to drive events for most of the remainder of its lifespan.

References

• Complete text of "Changing Lanes"
• Author-endorsed translation of "Changing Lanes" at Ben's World of Transformers (archived)