« The Transformers: Monstrosity #6 »
"Underworld"
Publisher	IDW Publishing
First published	May 8, 2013
Story by	Chris Metzen & Flint Dille
Art by	Livio Ramondelli
Letters by	Tom B. Long
Editor	John Barber
Assistant editor	Mariel Romero
Continuity	2005 IDW continuity
Chronology	Before the war

Optimus Prime investigates what happened to the Dynobots while Jetfire's team digs up further mysteries.

Synopsis

While exploring the caverns beneath Toraxxis, Jetfire's science team find ancient writing on a wall depicting Transformers fighting a large monster. As they discuss what it might mean, believing it to be a warning of some sort, an earthquake strikes and send the team falling to a lower level where they find a pool of raw energon predating the destroyed refinery by millions of cycles.

At Metroplex, Optimus Prime is looking up info about the Dynobots, curious about their recent reemergence and Grimlock's strange alt-mode. Wanting to hear the team's story from the viewpoint of one of their fellow soldiers, he brings in Kup, who tells him that the Dynobots were once model soldiers in Nominus Prime's Primal Vanguard specializing in heavy weaponry, demolitions and sabotage, but vanished one day after completing a mysterious mission. Having heard his side of the story, Prime proceeds to open up the top secret files regarding the Dynobots' final mission.

Studying the energon pool, the Autobot scientists find that it's seemingly self-replenishing, but Perceptor believes there to be something odd about it. His observance is confirmed when another earthquake sends Ratchet falling into the energon, causing him to temporarily regress into a mindless beast and attack his own comrades. The others calm him down, but before they can study the energon further they are attacked by strange monsters.

Meanwhile, Optimus Prime finds that the Dynobots, or the Vanguard Covert Strike Force as they were formally known, had been sent to the Toraxxis Plains prior to the refinery's construction to investigate rumors of underground terrorist bases, but were instead attacked by vicious "cyber-morphic predators" living in the caves. Their field medic, Skar, had the team use "dynamic alt-mode adaption"—a method of scanning new alt-modes in the field—to take on new modes based on the monsters and escape, though he himself was killed in the process. On returning home, the remaining Dynobots were placed in quarantine so that their new alt-modes and Skar's dynamic adaption theory could be studied. Their grief over the loss of a comrade and callous treatment by their superiors caused the team to snap and run away, disappearing off the radar until recently. Having heard all this, Kup believes the Dynobots must be put down before their alt-modes cause them to go berserk, but Prime has faith that they can be saved.

Overwhelmed by the predators, the science team escape by blowing a hole into another cavern containing what appears to be a large structure. Noting that the creatures refuse to enter the cave out of fear, Jetfire goes to have a closer look and finds that it's not a building at all: it's the dormant form of an ancient, monstrous Transformer.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• The computer Optimus Prime uses to look up the Dynobots' files is called Teletraan, but isn't given a number.

Reprints

Other than collections of the full series.

• N/A