Transformers: Robots in Disguise “Ghosts and Impostors” goes Old West this week. A time where men were men, women were women, and a wagon full of TNT was totally not dangerous in the least. Where there was nothing like a nice piece of hickory.
Anyway, Denny and Russell get back from a horrible trip out in the middle of nowhere, and it clearly rained like crazy, because they’re somehow soaked hours afterward. This gets Strongarm, Sideswipe and Grimlock talking about their favorite places back on Cybertron. Grimlock mentions the Acid Wastes, to the surprise of everyone else. He just loves the sunsets there, guys!
Bumblebee tries to argue the case that Earth is beautiful too, possibly more so than Cybertron. This naturally gets countered with laughter. Bee makes the executive decision that he’s going to show them, goddammit, and decides to take them on an educational trip since they haven’t had any Decepticon activity lately. He tells Fixit to send them somewhere random, which he should really know is a mistake. I mean, it’s not like he might accidentally send them to the bottom of the ocean again, or something, right?
Bee has Fixit send them somewhere slightly less random, and they wind up near an old ghost town. Bee is enthused, but the rest of the team doesn’t see the charm. He tries to convince them that the history of the old west was exciting and interesting. The rest of the team don’t think so, and Bee walks off on his own to look through the town. He gets the feeling that something is there with them just as Grimlock calls him back.
A tour bus is rolling up to the town, so Bee has the team hide. It’s the usual bored tour guide routine; just as she gets done with her usual script, though, things start happening. Gravestones wiggle, parts of signage fall, and Strongarm approximates the sound of a train whistle. This scares the entire tour off. When the team meets back up, Bee tells them that he sensed something earlier. Considering that tours apparently come by the town regularly, They figure they ought to do something about it. Bee asks Fixit if there were any prisoners that could turn invisible; while there weren’t any, Fixit tells him that there was a Shifter spy imprisoned on the ship by the name of Pseudo. Pseudo earned his ticket by selling off Cybertronian secrets to other worlds, and as a Shifter, he can turn into literally anything of the same approximate mass as himself.
Pseudo hears all of this, and decides that he won’t go quietly. He shows up with the others when they meet back up after searching for him, but he makes a huge mistake; he decided to impersonate Drift. Drift quickly demonstrates himself as the genuine article by by having his students pop off his arms. Realizing he done goofed, he heads for the mines, the team in pursuit. They make the same mistake of splitting up again to search the mines. This allows him to get a few good sucker punches in.
They eventually get him in a dead end disguised as Grimlock. They’ve clearly watched their fair share of shape shifter movies, because they know to ask a question that only the real Grimllock would know the answer to: what he thinks of the Acid Wastes. Pseudo naturally fails the test, but gets away by psyching them out and shifting around.
He tries to beat a retreat by changing into the old steam engine and following the railway out of town. They almost lose him when the canyon narrows too much for them to follow, and they have to go up on the cliffs. Bee, however, has Grimlock launch Jetstorm and Slipstream at the sucker. They wreck the track, causing Pseudo to crash and knock himself out.
Just as they’re about to warp back with their catch, they notice the beautiful sunset over the desert and realize Bee was right.
Final Thoughts:
- When it’s too quiet outdoors, it’s usually a sign that a large predator or someone has scared off the smaller wildlife and is lying in wait. The more you know!
- More volcano inspired horror!
- I expect Sideswipe to go around telling everyone he’s two days away from retirement next.
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