LGEX Headmaster Set Chapter

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"LGEX Headmaster Set Chapter" LGEXヘッドマスターセット編 (LGEX Headmaster Set Hen)
First published	February 17, 2017
Manga	Hayato Sakamoto

The Autobot Headmasters join forces with the Headmasters from another world to battle their version of Scorponok.

Synopsis

The speedy Flywheels, reduced to a pickpocket after having quit his job to join Astrotrain's ill-fated company, seeks out two other Headmasters who met with the same fate: the part-time waiter Grimlock and construction worker Brawn. He offers them jobs at his new workplace, a shopping center outside of town known as the Hive, claiming his employer can furnish them with transtectors. Meanwhile, at Autobot Axalon Trading Company, Chromedome, Hardhead, and Brainstorm are working overtime performing maintenance on their transtectors when three people identical to them burst in. Introducing themselves as Headmasters from another dimension, the strangers demand to borrow the transtectors, and restrain the Autobots with energy ropes when they refuse.

Flywheels brings Grimlock and Brawn to the Hive to meet his boss, Zarak, who is pleased that he has brought him new soldiers. When Flywheels affirms his loyalty to Zarak, the Autobots are confused since the alien is not Flywheels's leader, Scorponok, so the Decepticon explains that Zarak is a parallel version of his leader and that the Hive is in fact a giant scorpion robot named Scorponok. At Axalon, the foreign Headmasters trap Chromedome and the others in their transtectors' vehicle modes, but not for nefarious purposes, as it turns out they need somebody to pilot the bodies while they form the heads. They explain that in their own world, their head modes don't control bodies but work in tandem with them, making the resulting Headmasters twice as powerful. As Scorponok begins rampaging across the city, one of them asks their counterparts to lend them their strength in defeating him.

Weirdwolf mistakes the attacking Scorponok for his leader, MegaZarak, but the ever-helpful Waspinator is quick to point out that it's Scorponok, a Nebulon-piloted robot from an alternate Headmaster story called "The Rebirth". Unlike Flywheels, Weirdwolf refuses to accept this Scorponok as his leader and fights back, but is quickly dealt with. The Headmasters from both worlds arrive to help, with the otherworldly half explaining that they're heroic Nebulons who followed Zarak in order to stop him from conquering the Legends World. As they take on Scorponok, the Nebulons form the transtectors' heads while the native Headmasters remain in their cockpits, a process Chromedome calls "Double-Headmasters" and Flywheels "2-in-1". Grimlock and Brawn are angry with Flywheels for tricking them into joining the bad guys, and the Decepticon's attempt to reiterate that they can get transtectors out of it is met with Grimlock's fist to his jaw.

Inspired by the "2-in-1" comment, Chromedome asks Butla, who's been visiting him since their previous interaction, to combine with Grimlock into a T. rex. Brainstorm similarly gifts his Synapse to Brawn, and all together the Autobots overwhelm Scorponok. Flywheels offers use of his head mode to make Scorponok a Double-Headmaster as well, but the prideful Zarak refuses to combine with anyone and swats him away, and is subsequently blasted into a portal back to his home universe by the Autobot Double-Headmasters. Before the Autobots' new friends return home as well, Hardhead asks if they truly are Nebulons, to which they respond by removing their helmets, revealing themselves to be green organic aliens. Joking that the Transformers are just as "alien" as them, they leave. Some time later, Flywheels proves to have learned nothing when he approaches Grimlock with a new make-money scheme.

Featured characters

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Notes

• Brawn, Flywheels, and Grimlock were not seen back in "Headmaster Chapter Prologue", making it uncertain if they lost their larger bodies from the same incident that befell everyone else in the current storyline, but the subsequent "Targetmaster Chapter Prologue" would confirm that they were present for the black hole battle during "Headmasters Chapter Prologue".
  • Brawn died in 2005 back in The Movie. How he came back to life in the intervening years goes unexplained.
• Windblade's waitress uniform is emblazoned with 風, the kanji for "wind".
• As noted by Waspinator, Zarak and the other Nebulons (who go unnamed in-story but are Stylor, Arcana, and Duros) are from "The Rebirth". Scorponok is even referred to in Japanese as "Scorpion" (スコーピオン Sukōpion), a name only used for him in the Japanese dub of that story. The connection isn't perfect, though, as the Nebulons' head modes aren't really based on their Rebirth appearances (Duros has a mouthplate, for example).
• Grimlock is probably working as a waiter because of his stint as one in "Madman's Paradise".
• Scorponok playing the role of a shopping center is a gag derived from a line of dialogue in "The Rebirth", in which Galvatron derisively referred to the giant robot as an "oversized shopping center."
• Flywheels's "2-in-1" comment comes from the Japanese name for the Duocons.
• Grimlock and Brawn's combination with Butla and Synapse refers to their sharing molds with the accessories the Autobots came with in the Titans Return line.
• Megaempress appears on a Valentine's Day-themed billboard.