Schism (story)

« Reaching the Omega Point, Chapter Two »
"Schism"
Publisher	3H Enterprises
First published	June 1999 (BotCon 1999 confirmation letter)
Cover date	July 16–18, 1999
Script	Simon Furman
Continuity	3H Beast Wars continuity

A failed assassination attempt leads to a miraculous birth and a tussle through time.

Synopsis

A victim of a devastating battle, the Cub, lies dying, his battered body so wrecked that he barely registers the presence of others standing over his remains. This was to have been his Ko-tu ceremony, which was to have led to his becoming a Herald of Shokaract, like his brother, Cataclysm.

The Cub had been sent into the ruined Badlands as part of his initiation ceremony. He was to hunt down and prove himself against the Maximals and Predacons who still resisted Shokaract's absolute rule. Each Herald-to-be was assigned an "alpha target" to kill; the Cub's was the legendary Veteran, an authority figure of the resistance so ancient and mysterious, and rumored to be the last living Autobot. The Cub eventually discovered his target, but his would-be victim deftly overcame the attacks and struck back, taking the fight to the air. After a tense duel, the Cub was defeated, rendered helpless at the mercy of the Veteran. However, tired of war and death, the Veteran spared the Cub, much to the Cub's chagrin, who knew what fate awaited himself for his failure.

The Cub's prone, dying body is examined by the rebels, including the Veteran and the Predacons' leader Sandstorm. A unique individual among his peers, Sandstorm had suggested that the Veteran merge his spark with the Cub's in order to access the Cub's memories to gain insider info on Shokaract's plans. After having failed to kill the Veteran, the Cub had been sentenced to a trial-by-combat with Cataclysm to restore their family's honor. The "battle" was ridiculously skewed, eventually resulting in Cataclysm ripping his brother apart, leaving him in his current state that the rebels stand looking over. After some reflection, the Veteran consents to Sandstorm's plan.

On Protos, it has been 200 years since the Chronarchitect's warning. Leonicus muses on the rise of Shokaract, known as the alternate name of Point Omega, and the sending of four members of the Covenant to find the cause of Point Omega. Only three have returned.

As the Veteran attempts to fuse his spark with the Cub's, a battle of wills commences between the two on the mental plane. The Cub refuses to allow himself to be "possessed" by the Veteran, while the Veteran insists that the Cub will not cease to be from this fusion, that it will save the lives of the Cub and many others. The Cub concedes and the merge occurs. Windrazor is born.

In the Empire Room at the Royal Palace at Corumkan, Cataclysm prepares to enter a transwarp portal to the distant past. He had been assigned to discover Antagony's fate after never returning from her own journey into the past, as well to locate something called the Dark Essence. He had not been told exactly what the Dark Essence was, only that he was find it, determine its status, and take the necessary steps to safeguard it. Success would reward him the rare honor of Herald Maximo, while failure would strand him in the past forever. But just as he sets foot into the portal, a commotion of blaster fire erupts from outside the room. As Windrazor bursts into the room and attacks, Cataclysm recognizes his brother.

In the Badlands, Sandstorm gathers a force of Maximal and Predacon rebels and reflects on Windrazor's revelation of Cataclysm's mission. Though Windrazor had been the only one who stood a chance of reaching Cataclysm in time to stop him before it was too late, Sandstorm knew there were still too many unknown variables in their situation, and is now prepared to carry out a backup plan in case Windrazor fails. The time has come for him to tell his squad of their destination: A mythical realm known as J'nwan.

Windrazor charges into Cataclysm, sending both of them into the portal; the two battle in the quantum tunnel leading to the past. Though Cataclysm proves himself Windrazor's superior in combat, Windrazor successfully dodges a blast from Cataclysm's shoulder-mounted pulse cannons, which instead strikes the tunnel itself, rupturing it. Windrazor kicks Cataclysm towards the rupture, which pulls him into overspace, where his constituent particles disperse.

Windrazor struggles to resist the same pull of the rapidly-spreading tear in the tunnel, but soon emerges from the timestream on a strange planet. He takes stock in his surroundings and immediately sees a dragon rising out of a volcano. Windrazor realizes he has arrived on prehistoric Earth, during the Beast Wars.

To be continued…

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Quotes

"I'd ask why, but I already know. You're not the first to try and take my scalp, and chances are you sure won't be the last. I should finish you, of course, you wouldn't have hesitated. But what would that accomplish? Another battle statistic, another casualty of war. I've personally accounted for so many of those, seen so many lives snuffed out, and I just can't do it any more. I'm sorry, but I just can't."

—The Veteran spares the Cub's life.

The Veteran: "Stop fighting me, I'm trying to save you!"
The Cub: "No. No, you're trying to possess me, and I will not allow that. I choose death."
The Veteran: "Listen to me, if you come with me you come on your terms. I'm tired of death, and your one life may hold the key to saving countless others. Whatever it takes, whatever the cost to me, you will not perish!"
The Cub: "Do you know me? Do you? I'm the wild child, the enfant terrible, the tiger by the tail. Think you can handle me, old man? Think you can call the shots? Turn your back on me for an instant, this big bad wolf will eat you alive."
The Veteran: "I seem to remember your bark's worse than your bite, but you're welcome to give it your best shot. Now, are we done chewing each other out?"
The Cub: "Not by a long way, I'd imagine."

—The Veteran and the Cub have a heart-to-heart in the mental plane.

Notes

Production notes

• Mentioned characters: Shokaract, Optimus Prime, Primus, Megatron, Megatron, Straxus, the Liege Maximo, Antagony
• This story was originally sent out in registration confirmation packets to pre-registrants for BotCon 1999 ahead of the convention.^[1] It was later posted on BotCon Online after the convention on August 22, 1999,^[2] and again to the (now defunct) BotCon: Beyond website on December 8, 2000.^[3]
• The BotCon 2000 comic book contains a recap of this story, featuring an illustration (seen right) of the birth of Windrazor. This recap was later posted on BotCon: Beyond website on December 8, 2000, and later moved to BotCon Online on November 13, 2001.^[4]
• The full formal titles of both this chapter and its series have varied over years depending on the source:
  • When the first printed version was mailed out in the BotCon 1999 confirmation packets, it was originally given the series title of "The Omega Point: Part Two" and the chapter title of "Schism".^[1]
  • The second printed version included in the BotCon 1999 program guide retitles the series as "Reaching the Omega Point" and this chapter as "Chapter Two: Schism"; said titles were likewise later used in the original BotCon Online version posted on August 22, 1999.^[5]
  • The BotCon 2000 comic recap of this story refers to it as "Reaching the Omega Point: "Schism" (recap)"^[6]; this title was retained when said recap was later posted to BotCon: Beyond^{[citation needed]} and later still at BotCon Online.^[7]
  • When BotCon: Beyond went live on December 8, 2000, the series and story titles for the version put on that website remained unchanged from the previous BotCon Online version, which matched those of the second printed version from the convention.^{[citation needed]}
  • When BotCon Online was revamped on November 13, 2001, the new Storyline section of the website rendered the series title as "Reaching the Omega Point" and titled the story itself as simply "Part 2: Schism",^[8] both of which have remained unchanged throughout all proceeding updates made to that section.^[9]
  • However, also after the 2001 revamp, the story's actual webpage changed the series and story titles back to their original, very first titles of "The Omega Point: Part Two" and "Schism",^[10] with the latter remaining unchanged to this day.^[11]
  • Finally, when BotCon Online was given several updates on December 12, 2003,^[12] the series title on the story's webpage was partially italicized as "The Omega Point: Part Two", its final and current rendering.^[13][11]
• Windrazor's toy bio claims his younger part to have been a Maximal, rather than a Predacon as shown in this story.

Continuity notes

• Two hundred years are said to have passed since the events of the previous chapter. By this point, Shokaract (to whom we were first introduced back in "Herald") and his empire reign supreme. A later chapter will reveal that Shokaract's empire exists in the 32nd century, which would place "Covenant" (and, by extension, the time of Beast Machines) in the 30th century. However, Transformers: The Wreckers would later place Beast Machines during the 24th Century, retconning away this 30th century implication. A simple fix for this discrepancy would be to consider the single scene with the Covenant in this story to be set not in the 30th century, but the 26th century—six hundred years before all the other scenes set in the 32nd century—since the Covenant are still watching the rise of Shokaract's empire in their scene while, in all other scenes, the empire is already long-since established.
• It is revealed here that Shokaract possesses a rather formidable weapon, and the fact that his name is eerily the same as the alternate name of Point Omega is reiterated. Hmmm...
• What's more is that, of the four members of the Covenant who were sent through transwarp portals, only three had returned. Meanwhile on Cybertron, there's something different about this Sandstorm guy compared to the other Predacons. Something old about him...
• Speaking of the Predacons, their alliance with the Maximals in a resistance against Shokaract was also previously established in "Herald".
• The Cub is formally introduced here as the "fission-brother" of Cataclysm. Both were previously introduced in "Herald", but it is here that we are given the Cub's name of... "the Cub". Furthermore, the Cub's alpha target being the Veteran was previously arranged by Antagony, a notion also first established in "Herald".
• The Badlands make their debut in this story as a ruined landscape where one of Cybertron's city states once stood. The Badlands would later be affirmed to be deep within Decepticon territory in later fiction, in which writer Simon Furman would also associate the Badlands with Kaon. Thus, while it is not stated, it is possible, retroactively-speaking, that the Badlands of this story now lie on the site of what was once Kaon itself.
• Cataclysm's wariness of time travel was previously established in "Herald".
• The Dark Essence is established here enigmatically, as merely something of particular importance to Shokaract. Its true nature will be made known in the next chapter.
  • Though, the shortened version of "Herald", which wasn't released until long after this story, would retroactively declare Antagony's mission in that story to have been about her searching for the Dark Essence, hence Cataclysm's continuing that mission in this story.
• This is the first story to introduce the substance known as protomatter. Here, it is presented as the substance that the pool-like entry surfaces of transwarp portals are made of. Later fiction, however, would depict protomatter as the base component material of protoforms, or of Transformer bodies in general.
• Likewise, J'nwan is also first mentioned in this story. The packaging of Sandstorm's toy featured a Predacon War Journal entry written by Sandstorm, which referred to J'nwan as "the last stronghold from the Great War many millennia back," located in "the most desolate part of Cybertron, cursed by Primus, and left well alone." This will be further explored in the next chapter, and again a year later in "The Last Days of Optimus Prime", an unofficial comic written by Furman for Transforce 2000. Its name is also an obvious, Furmanesque pun.
• By this point in time, the Beast Wars are apparently well-known history, to the point that Windrazor can ID Megatron's dragon form on sight. However, there may be a very important real-world reason for this. See the next chapter for more on this.

Continuity errors

• In order for the rebels to learn about Shokaract's plans, Sandstorm wants the Veteran to merge with the Cub because the Cub was privy to such knowledge from his having been an up-and-coming Herald of Shokaract. However, "Terminus" would later reveal that Sandstorm is secretly another Herald himself. If the Cub, who was only a would-be Herald, knew of Shokaract's plans, then there is no reason for Sandstorm, a full-fledged Herald, to have not already had access to this information himself, making his entire ordeal of wanting the Veteran to merge with the Cub completely ludicrous (well, moreso than it already was).
• Like in the previous chapter, the Chronarchitect is stated here to be "another of the old gods". That chapter also declared that the other gods who existed alongside Unicron only did so in the old universe that Unicron ate (and all of whom were eaten by Unicron as well). Primus was apparently the only one of his kind created in the new universe, just for the purpose of countering Unicron. And said new universe was also stated to be too delicate for beings like Primus and Unicron to exist in it, so it's not entirely clear how exactly the Chronarchitect is supposed to fit into any of this.
  • However, the previous chapter also described the Chronarchitect as existing in an abstract manner, so if he weren't a physical being, he may not have been eaten by Unicron and wouldn't have affected the new universe by his existence.

Other errors

• In all online versions, the first line of the fifth paragraph after the first break contains an extra "the" in the phase "No one, save possibly the Veteran himself, knew exactly who the he was..." This error is not present in the BotCon 1999 printed version.
• In the nineteenth paragraph after the first break, in all versions, the word "was" is missing from the phrase "but it too late."
• In the twenty-second paragraph after the first break, in all versions, the words "any more" should be one word, "anymore".
• In the eighth paragraph after the second break, in all versions, the word "contemplations" is rendered as "contemplation's"; the apostrophe is unnecessary.
• In the convention printed version and the original 1999 BotCon Online version, the last sentence of the fourth paragraph after the third break ends with an extra space before the period: "come ." instead of "come." This was corrected in the new Botcon Online version after the website was revamped on November 13, 2001.
• In both the BotCon: Beyond version and the 2001–Present BotCon Online version, the first paragraph after the sixth break begins with a random, pointless, lowercase "v" spaced before the first sentence.
• There are two instances of an American English/British English spelling discrepancy between the convention printed version and all online versions:
  • In the last sentence of the twelfth paragraph after the first break, the word "maneuver" is spelled the American way in the printed version, while the online version spells it as the British "manoeuver".
  • In the very last paragraph, the printed version spells the word "sulfur" the American way while the online versions spell it as the British "sulphur".

Transformers references

• The concept of Transformers downsizing for energy efficiency was originally presented by the Micromasters in the Marvel Generation 1 comics. For the first time ever, it is mentioned here in a Beast Era setting as a transitional process that an Autobot can undergo to become a Maximal. This idea likely stems from the Beast Wars episode "The Agenda (Part 1)", wherein the Decepticon Ravage was said to have secretly been rebuilt into a Predacon. A year later from this story's publishing, the Beast Machines episode "Sparkwar Pt. II: The Search" would refer to something called "the Great Upgrade from Autobot to Maximal", which fans would conflate with both Ravage's Predacon rebuild and the energy-efficient downsizing concept mentioned in this story, all to insinuate that the "Great Upgrade" referred to a mass downsizing of the entire Autobot/Decepticon population that resulted in them all becoming Maximals and Predacons (see here for more details).
• So... the Veteran. This story goes well out of its way to avoid explicitly giving away his true identity, but there are several clues littered throughout the story that indicate him to be the Generation 1 Dinobot Swoop:
  • He is rumored to be the last active Autobot who fought against the Decepticons on Earth alongside Optimus Prime himself. While the contemporaneously-released "Herald" confirmed that the Veteran is indeed a Maximal, he is also rumored in this story to have undergone several body changes and downsized to a more energy-efficient size, suggesting he underwent the aforementioned upgrade from Autobot to Maximal at some point in his long life.
  • Upon reflecting his place in the current world, the Veteran realizes a specific irony in his old age having rendered him a "dinosaur".
  • Though it is given in a vague manner, the story describes the Veteran as having once had comrades-in-arms, which would be his fellow Dinobots.
  • His weapon of choice is his trusty energon sword. Though Swoop originally wielded a thermal sword, the name "energon sword" is notably one letter off from "energo-sword", the signature weapon of Generation 1 Grimlock. Being the big Grimlock fan that he is, it is possible that Furman had the energo-sword in mind when writing about the Veteran's weapon, or that he simply forgot exactly what kind of sword Swoop originally had and just remembered Grimlock's weapon more easily.
  • The Veteran's alternate mode is that of a winged creature with three hooked talons and a beak, with the talons forming in place of his robot mode legs. And his colors are said to be crimson, cobalt, and chromium--red, blue, and silver--a known color combination for G1 Swoop. Though it is the wings that are described as crimson-colored (whereas G1 Swoop's wings were silver), it was mentioned that the Veteran did change his appearance many times over, but apparently didn't change the kind of creature he turned into.

The following year, "The Last Days of Optimus Prime" would explicitly declare Swoop to be the Veteran. However, according to Glen Hallit, what he originally had in mind was for the Veteran to be "a nameless character, an old codger who fought in the Great War".^[14] This interpretation of the character never caught on, with Swoop becoming the most widely-accepted identity of the Veteran.

• Among the tyrants that the Veteran reminisces about are "the Megatrons," Straxus, and the Liege Maximo.
  • The plural "Megatrons" suggests that, in addition to Generation 1 Megatron, the Veteran had known of Beast Wars Megatron and his reign over Cybertron during the Beast Machines cartoon. At the time of this story's convention release, said cartoon would not have debuted on TV for another two months, but the first episode did receive an advanced screening at BotCon 1999, and people knew that the show was coming, so it is not unreasonable to believe that Simon Furman was privy to at least the most basic information about Megatron being in control of Cybertron in the show.
  • The Veteran's knowledge of Straxus, however, raises a few questions since, prior to this story's release, the Veteran (well, Swoop) had never appeared in any story that had also featured Straxus, let alone any story that had featured him as a tyrant on Cybertron. Though, this is technically not a continuity error, per se, since this story is part of the 3H Beast Era continuity, in which the Veteran could conceivably have known of Straxus.
  • As for the Liege Maximo, it would not be until the release of Simon Furman's pseudocanonical Transformers novella "Alignment" that we would learn of how Furman intended for the Veteran to know of the Liege Maximo and the threat he once posed to Cybertron.
• Windrazor sees Megatron rise out of a volcano on his dragon form, just as Megatron was seen doing at the end of the Beast Wars episode "Master Blaster".

References

External links

• The Omega Point: Part Two - "Schism" on the BotCon Online archives
• BotCon 2000 comic Reaching the Omega Point: "Schism" on the BotCon Online archives