The Girl Who Loved Powerglide

by Ragey

Up on top of Hybrid Technologies, a birthday party is taking place much to the dismay of those who have more dignity than that, only for their whining to be interrupted by the new chairman and birthday girl arriving. Astoria Carlton-Ritz berates the two for not enjoying themselves and goes into a tangent about how this company feels like a prison for her, turning on the waterworks.

This mood swing is interrupted by Ramjet, Thrust and Dirge flying over the place and raining pain, destroying decorations and whatnot for no apparent reason. Powerglide happens to see this with his magnifying vision and rambles off a list of what they could potentially be after, whether they're taking hostages or stealing technology, but he's almost disgusted that they're after nothing more than Astoria.
 

Powerglide swings by with a rope and whisks Astoria out of there, prompting the three Seekers to chase after. Needless to say, Carlton-Ritz is shocked to see no pilot on the plane, and attempts to fly it herself by pushing random buttons, which only makes Powerglide go out of control. He eventually regains control and just tells her to shut up, don't push nothing and enjoy the ride.

Flying under a highway they manage to lose the Decepticons and hide in a parking lot, where Astoria sees that Powerglide is an Autobot. She's overjoyed at this and wants to go sightseeing with him, but Powerglide demands to know why she was targeted by the Decepticons. She states she was chairman of the board of Hybrid Technologies after her father died (or "kind of died" as she says) so she's expected to know about the technology that's going on in there. They return to the city base to inform Optimus and the others.
 

After a fruitless debate between Prime and Powerglide on what the Decepticons could want with Astoria, she hangs out with Spike as he's fixing machines, but pretty much ignores his side of the conversation and wants to know more about Powerglide. He describes him as a blow-hard while Astoria goes into a lovey-dovey ramble about how fabulous he is, only for Spike to fumble when screwing a nail, and then set an engine on fire when trying to fix the problem.

Spike tells her to stand back as he tries to fan it down with a towel, only for the girl to stumble into a small crane holding an engine and sending it into the windshield of another car. She laments that she doesn't get along well with machines, which Powerglide totally agrees with before going about his command of taking her base to their main headquarters.

As Megatron berates his jets for being such nincompoops, Astoria and Powerglide stop off at a carnival for ice cream and merry-go-rounds. In trying to drag her away and get moving, Powerglide tugs at her necklace and suddenly makes her very very mad indeed. She explains that before her father died, she was given this necklace, so it's kind of very significant. Powerglide gives a half-assed apology before scooting them on ahead again.

However, Ramjet, Thrust and Dirge are here again, and this time they will not lose!

Except the two merely split up, Astoria hides behind a garbage can and all three go after Powerglide. Ramjet picks up the entire merry-go-round and hurls it at the Autobot, who dodges out of the way as it quite literally implodes on impact with the ground, but a flung horse cracks on his bonce. Further demonstrating their uselessness, Powerglide blasts a drinks machine, sending an ungodly torrent of cola out of it to immobilise the Decepticons, followed up by blasting a big top tent to keep them occupied further.

They take to the skies, but it isn't long before the three catch up and ram him down, busting his wing and forcing him to land in a barren canyon location, but not without transmitting his coordinates to Autobot HQ. He makes it down okay, having lost the Decepticons briefly in the clouds, as Astoria complains about her affections for him, caring about him for saving her and all, but getting none of it back from him.
 

Powerglide attempts to admit that he's not a complete ass face, but is interrupted by the three Seekers arriving again and knocking him down a chasm with some missiles and covering him with rubble. Astoria's screaming for her Autobot chum gives away her location, Dirge locking her in his cockpit and the three blast off, but Powerglide unearths himself and attempts to chase after, only to fall unconscious.
 

Conveniently, Ratchet and Wheeljack arrive on the scene to get him back to the Ark for repairs, but upon receiving them he leaves before the procedure can be finished, claiming he's fine as long as he can fly. He reports to Prime who informs him that they haven't heard anything from the Decepticons, only for Teletraan-1 to alert them to an atmospheric disturbance ten miles above sea level of the Northern Atlantic. Decepticons, no doubt!

Up on the Decepticon sky platform, the Constructicons have finished work on the energy transductor, which will turn the world's magnetic field into raw energy once they find out what Astoria knows! Of course, finding out anything from her proves difficult, as she essentially knows nothing about Hybrid Technologies nor it's incredible formula and is more concerned about what rude hosts she has. However, Megatron has a better way of extracting the information he needs...

The psycho-probe! It's said to be a very unpleasant experience, but this doesn't faze the girl at all...

And so she is treated to unimaginable pain.

That is, if the thing worked. No information is extracted so Soundwave is told to run the process again, as Astoria reminds them about her shaky relationship with machines. They try again to no success as Megatron pulls a Victor Meldrew. Soundwave tries to repair the device, but outside Powerglide is making his way towards the platform with the force field surrounding it forcing him back.

The Decepticons try once more, Rumble and Soundwave holding the wires in place as Megatron reminds the girl that 90,000 volts will cruise through her brain during the procedure, but she laughs it off. Even more so when the device just electrocutes the two lackeys rather than their victim, but upon hearing that an Autobot is approaching they decide they have better things to do.

The bad guys laugh at Powerglide's struggles through the force field, but Astoria wriggles her hands out of the binds and releases herself, and seeing what's causing the force field, removes her necklace containing the secret formula and hurls it at the tower. This causes it to explode through some nasty reaction of some sort. The Decepticons immediately decide to retreat.

Powerglide lands safely despite the precarious collapsing nature of the whole platform to berate Astoria for destroying the place and almost killing herself, but she explains it was to save him. "Can the mush," Powerglide mutters and shoves her away, and nearly kills her in the process because the whole place is tilting and collapsing and whatnot.

He makes up for this booboo by rescuing her and offering a parachute for her to escape on, but hearing that he has a plan to sort the mess himself she refuses the parachute and stays with him. They enter the control centre and fix the wiring, allowing them to steer it to safety, but it's still not responding!

"Huh? I fixed it perfectly! What could've gone wrong?"

...

:o

Having thrown her out of the room, the thing works perfectly and Powerglide wastes no time in reprogramming a new flight course. However, they're still heading downward so Astoria climbs aboard her chum and they make themselves scarce.

Meanwhile, Megatron, Rumble and Soundwave return to base and say that although their mission failed, at least they got home safely and left Powerglide with one sticky situation to get his way out of!

Until that sticky situation lands right on top of them.

Brought down to the city safely, Powerglide asks Astoria what Megatron was looking for and finds that it was all about the necklace. He feels that makes no sense at all. What's new? Powerglide reluctantly asks if he can see her again the next time they're in town, which over joys Astoria and nets him a hug and a kiss.

She heads off in the limousine as the others laugh at show-off Powerglide falling victim to the power of lurve, but he offers them all knuckle sandwiches if they don't shut their pie holes. He then nips away quietly and shows off his flashing LED heart to the audience.

The scale in Transformers is always screwed up, but this one really takes the biscuit; a plane on a merry-go-round, and a plane and a car inside an ambulance!

Dirge is often shown to be very happy in this episode. Which is odd.

The very first line in the episode makes use of the word "bloody." Nothing major in America, but strong enough to get a "one use of mild bad language" warning on the back of the UK box.