Widow's Edge

The looming threat of Unicron coincides with the appearance of two mysterious Transformers.

Synopsis

Two days prior, an EDC shuttle carrying three Binaltech bodies for an experiment mysteriously disappeared outside the Solar System. Hiding in his Earth base, Shockwave intercepts a signal announcing the shuttle's disappearance, the only news from outer space he's received in a few days. Immediately, he sends out a warning throughout the planetary surveillance network warning of the threat that Battle Ravage provided snippets of future information for—the evil planet-sized Transformer, Unicron.

Once the time for Unicron's coming has arrived, none of the expected incidents have occurred. Suspicious and dissatisfied, the Decepticons' mistrust paves the way for a mutiny led by the returned Starscream. However, this is interrupted by the arrival of two mysterious visitors clad in the bodies of those from the disappeared shuttle. They identify themselves as Blackarachnia and Decepticharge, who uses his electromagnetic powers to hold everybody else in place. Blackarachnia, while uninterested in the entire affair herself, declares that Unicron is very aware of the Decepticons' attempts to use him for their petty schemes and doesn't particularly like it. If they want to avoid his revenge, Blackarachnia says, they must help the duo defeat Optimus Prime and destroy the Matrix!

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• This chapter of the Binaltech story was intended for the planned Binaltech BT-16 Blackwidow toy, a redeco of Alternators 14 Decepticharge. The toy would go unreleased, replaced in numbering by Skids; the corresponding story went unpublished and "Darkest Hour" took its slot. It would make an appearance in The Transformers: Binaltech Stories, an unofficial compilation of Binaltech material by writer Hirofumi Ichikawa before finally seeing official release in Transformers Generations 2019, which concluded the Binaltech saga and Blackarachnia's story with "Outlier". The events of this story would also undergo further elaboration in an Ichikawa-provided answer to the Facebook edition of Ask Vector Prime.

References

• Text of "Widow's Edge"