ALLEGIANCE: Autobot
FUNCTION: Courier

"When you care enough to send the very best."

PROFILE: Outrun lives for speed. He predates, and isn't as advanced
or as fast as Blurr, but that doesn't bother him a bit; even Blurr
can't be two places at once, and he serves with Ultra Magnus. Outrun
is Optimus Prime's datacourier, his avenue of communication when
transmission of data is unsafe, and he is well aware of the importance
of that job. He is very proud of his record - in all his years of
service, he has never once failed to get a message through in time.
This record has given Outrun a bit of an ego, and he is known to be
boastful about his speed, his maneuverability, and the fact that he's
a member of the Old Guard, the inner circle of Autobots who went to
Earth with Optimus Prime.

The truth is, Outrun doesn't have fond memories of Earth, unlike some
of his fellow Autobots. Having honed his skills at speed and maneuver
in the metallic canyons and towers of Cybertron, he's totally lost in
the wide open countryside of Earthlike worlds, unlike, say,
Trailbreaker or Hound. On a paved road in the middle of nowhere, he
is uneasy; in a town, merely uncomfortable. But put him on a
sprawling multi-lane superhighway and he slips easily into the
routine, and throw him into the middle of the tangled maze of a city's
inner streets and he's in his element. Surrounded by the concrete and
steel towers of the city, Outrun is fearless and very nearly
invincible. That this is probably at least half psychological
concerns him not at all.

Outrun's missions take him alone through hostile territory, and that
means he knows how to take care of himself. He prefers to outrun and
outfox the enemy rather than fight him (hence his name), but if he is
cornered, Outrun is far from helpless. In one of his most famous
pre-Earth exploits, he is said to have brawled his way through most of
a company of Decepticon Sky Soldiers before jet-jumping from the
parapet of Vilnacron Tower to safety. This is a slight exaggeration,
but knowing that his reputation keeps him out of trouble as much as
his actual skills, Outrun doesn't mind at all.

ABILITIES: Outrun is one of the fastest Autobots, and can maintain his
great speed for one of the longest periods of time among them. Using
his jet thruster's afterburner, he can manage brief sprints of up to
450 mph, but even without the afterburner engaged he can maintain a
cruising speed of 300 miles per hour almost indefinitely, given
sufficient fuel. Thus, anyone he can't actually outrun, he can
outlast.

Despite his speed, Outrun has great patience and concentration - after
all, a mistake or impatience during a high-speed chase can be fatal.
He is among the most maneuverable of Autobots, capable of making very
sharp turns corners at unreasonable speeds. He also has an unerring
sense of direction and location - he knows exactly where he is in
relation to the things around him on both a small and large scales.
It is impossible for Outrun to become lost in a city.

In robot mode, Outrun retains his fantastic reflexes, reaction speed,
and kinesthetic sense. He knows exactly where every part of his body
is at all times. As such, he is a master transformer, able to perform
partial transformations - for example, he can deploy and use either of
his arms while remaining in a reasonably functional vehicle mode.
(Using both would rob him of both front wheels, which stretches the
definition of "reasonably functional".)

Outrun is armed with a heavy blaster rifle and a medium-range missile
launcher which can fire a variety of nasty projectiles. His car
mode's jet thruster ends up on his back in robot mode, giving him the
ability to make jet-assisted leaps of up to two miles. In car mode,
the heat and flame of the thruster's exhaust seriously discourages
close pursuit.

WEAKNESSES: Outrun's tires are his most vulnerable component;
destroying them renders him immobile in automotive mode, forcing him
to proceed on foot. He uses a considerable amount of fuel when moving
at speed, and shows up well on thermographic and magnetic sensors.
Since he is built for endurance as well as speed, his armor is heavier
than might be expected, but it's still fairly light. He isn't
particularly strong in robot mode.

STATISTICS (calculated on Cybertron Standard Evaluation Scale):

STR 4  INT 7  SPD 9  RNK 5  END 10  COR 8  FRP 5  SKL 8

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[ ED. NOTE: Outrun's vehicle form is the Rocket ZX from San Francisco
Rush 2049. I envision his transform as kind of a cross between the
Sideswipe/Red Alert and Jazz/Prowl style, the old "stand up the car"
style with the arms folded under the hood in car mode and the front
wheels on the shoulders. --G. ]

ALLEGIANCE: Autobot
FUNCTION: Intelligence

"I was never here."

PROFILE: Eclipse was one of the original Autobots who accompanied
Optimus Prime on the voyage that would involve Earth in the
Cybertronian Wars. In 1999, when the Autobots and Decepticons reawoke
on Earth and resumed their hostilities, Eclipse was one of the
Autobots most impressed by the small, fragile but clever inhabitants
of this new world, and one of the first to recognize that, as
uninvited guests upon the planet, the Autobots should take steps to
establish friendly relations with human authorities.

Optimus Prime thus assigned Eclipse as the main Autobot liaison to the
organization established by the concerned human governments of Earth
to monitor the Transformers' activities on Earth, assist the Autobots
whenever possible, and keep the general populace calm: the Overwatch
Agency, more commonly referred to as the Men in Black.

In this role, Eclipse spent more time among humans than his own kind,
and more time as an automobile - one of the Men in Black's trademark
black Ford sedans - than as a robot. He traveled the North American
continent with two human partners, Overwatch agents Ken Stanfield and
Jim Edwards, keeping tabs on the activities of the Decepticons and
suspected human collaborators. He spent time in Overwatch's labs as
part of Optimus Prime's technology transfer program, letting human
scientists examine his workings. And he loved every minute of it.

When Overwatch merged with the Worlds Welfare Work Association in
2003, Eclipse, Stanfield, and Edwards took their act on the road,
branching out from Earthbound activities to sneak-and-bust operations
all over the civilized galazy. It was the happiest time of Eclipse's
life.

Eventually, though, the party had to end. First Stanfield and then
Edwards came to the ends of their natural lives, and though Eclipse
genuinely tried to start over with new partners, it just wasn't the
same. He retired from the 3WA, returned to Cybertron, and threw
himself into the job of field operative with the newly established
Autobot Intelligence Service. This agency's job was and is
to keep Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobot leadership apprised
of the new, and much more complex, galactic scene in which the
Autobots have been players since the Earth-Cybertron axis brought them
into the mainstream of galactic governments in 2006.

Eclipse is senior enough to warrant a staff position with AIS, but he
wouldn't leave the field for anything. Laconic and often gently
sarcastic when he does speak, he is a persistent, reliable, and
smoothly competent special agent, adept at anything from simple
information-gathering to illicit reconaissance, sabotage and even,
should the situation require it, assassination. He believes that
planning is important, but improvisation when plans go wrong is
critical, and works hard to be adept at both.

Eclipse is very fond of humans and human-like species, and enjoys
working with them, though he is prone to compare any humans he works
with to his first human partners. Like Kup, Eclipse is reminded of
some other situation by almost any situation he finds himself in;
unlike Kup, he doesn't feel compelled to tell a story every time that
feeling strikes him.

ABILITIES: Eclipse is quite stealthy, especially for his size. In car
mode, he has the knack of blending seamlessly into the background, a
completely forgettable shadow in a crowd, even though his automobile
form is now extremely unusual, being a 400-year-old antique design.
People who have taken note of him in his car form still generally
remember only that they saw "a nondescript black sedan, kind of old."

Not that many people who have spotted Eclipse remember him at all.
From his headlights, he can produce a flash of light that can blind or
confuse most species and, if executed properly, even erase the
short-term memory of most sentient lifeforms who look directly at it.

As a Triple Changer of sorts, Eclipse is one of the few Earth-converted
Autobots who can still assume his original Cybertronian car form. Ironically,
this form is sometimes less conspicuous in the modern galaxy than his
black sedan Earth mode. Twin jet boosters give his Cybertron form blazing
speed, but thanks to imperfect energy transfer from his Earth-converted
power systems, his endurance suffers. He can only sustain the form for a
short time, after which he must return to his Earth form to
recharge.

In robot mode, Eclipse wields a photon rifle with a long-range
telescopic sight attachment and carries a Type 3 de-atomizer pistol as
his sidearm.

WEAKNESSES: Eclipse's Earth car mode is not very fast, and using his
Cybertron mode can exhaust him, leaving him vulnerable.

STATISTICS:

STR 7  INT 9  SPD 6/9  RNK 7  END 8/5  COR 8  FRP 7  SKL 9

(NOTE: Stats before slashes are for his robot and regular car modes;
after slashes, his Cybertron car mode.)

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Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter
"Why else would they try to kill me?"
"Is this a multiple choice question?"
- Bester and Susan Ivanova