Transformers Dino Destruction

An end with a new beginning

In the early days of the war, Divebomb chafed under the leadership of Optimus Prime on Cybertron as part of the Elite Flying Corps. He was humiliated by a Decepticon who took his name, and worse, he was rescued by the commanding officer he hated.
He joined up with four other Autobots to form a rogue group of warriors who each felt that Optimus Prime was an inferior leader, so they secretly made plans in the event that they wanted to leave Cybertron. To that end, they snuck into a Decepticon spaceport, stole three of their battlecruisers, and parked them in the Rad Zone. Despite disliking Prime's leadership, they all somehow wound up as part of his crew aboard the Ark to clear a path for Cybertron through the asteroid belt it was passing through. Weakened by the mission and ambushed by Megatron's Decepticons, Prime crashed the Ark and all aboard into the nearest planet.

Shortly after the crash, the Ark's computer detected Shockwave landing on the planet in the Antarctic land-out-of-time that would one day become known as the Savage Land. The Ark used the last of its capabilities to revive these five warriors and rebuild them to transform into the Savage Land's dominant life form: dinosaurs. The Last Stand They were then dispatched aboard a shuttle to deal with the Decepticon and in the battle they trapped in a tar pit and remained dormant until Ratchet revived them in the 1980s. They returned with him to confront Megatron, but the Decepticon leader made short work of the Dinobots, leaving Ratchet to defeat him alone.

On their way back to the Ark, the Dinobots encountered humans for the first time and Ratchet told them a story about the battle on Sherman Dam. Decepticon Dam-Busters! When they arrived they were confronted by the battle droid Guardian, reprogrammed by Shockwave to defend the spacecraft against any intruders. After beating the snot out of Swoop, the mechanoid ran into the depths of the Ark and the other Dinobots set after it. The Wrath of Guardian! Realising that Guardian was armed with a thermonuclear bomb, Ratchet and Wheeljack managed to prevent Grimlock from destroying Guardian by remotely activating the headless body of Optimus Prime and knocking Grimlock's gun away. As per Shockwave's programming, Guardian came hunting for the Autobots and engaged them in battle while the bomb counted down to detonation. Ratchet repaired Swoop just in time to fly Guardian far from the Ark, but he cut it far too fine and was seemingly destroyed in the explosion. Upset at the loss of their comrade the other Dinobots left, heading north. The Wrath of Grimlock!

A human scientist called Peter Morris recovered Swoop's remains from Lake Dena and used his neural relay link to control the Dinobot. When this was discovered by a security guard, Morris used Swoop to kill him, then decided to finish off the rest of "Blackrock's robots". With the element of surprise (and missiles) on his side, the human-controlled Swoop wrought havoc amongst the Autobot lines but his hated former commander Optimus Prime managed to snap him out of it and once free of the neural relay link, Swoop returned to Morris's lab to seek vengeance against the human. When the Autobots followed, Swoop once again began attacking them mindlessly and they were forced to subdue him with Morris's help. Examining the Dinobot, Ratchet diagnosed that his primary cybo-dendrons had burnt out due to having spent four million years in a tar pit. Realising that the other Dinobots were most likely undergoing the same condition, Optimus Prime announced that the Autobots would have to round them up.

Splitting into teams to search for each Dinobot, the Autobots spread out across the country. Mirage, Brawn, and Trailbreaker managed to track down and deactivate Snarl (with a little help from the United States military) in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, but were spied on by Laserbeak who reported the situation back to Soundwave. In Littlewood, California, Sludge had been discovered by a human news team led by Joy Meadows while Windcharger, Gears, and Cliffjumper searched fruitlessly for him, but all four Autobots were ambushed and captured by Soundwave, Skywarp and Scavenger. Jetfire, Jazz, and Ironhide had better luck capturing Slag in Old River Valley, Idaho, detecting the spy Laserbeak and using him to block Slag's flamethrower breath. Meanwhile, Soundwave had located Grimlock in Doonstown and set Sludge on him, turning the town into a war zone and leading to Bluestreak, Huffer, and Sideswipe being taken out of the fight. Further Autobot casualties were only prevented by the arrival of Optimus Prime with reinforcements from the Ark and all four Dinobots were left in a vegetative state.

Ratchet returned the Dinobots to the Ark and repaired their cybo-dendrons but they remained in their respective comas, each dreaming of fighting against their own personal demons. Victory! When they did wake up, they were confined to the Ark because their alt-modes were too conspicuous but then Sludge saw Joy Meadows on a television broadcast and the Dinobots decided to up sticks and look for her anyway. They found her in the middle of a Triple-I ambush and rescued her, agreeing to provide an interview regarding the truth about the Transformers' presence on Earth. Swoop left to pick up Joy's camera crew but was tagged with a homing beacon by Triple-I, which led the Decepticons straight to them. After a brief but fierce battle in which the Dinobots were aided by the mechanoid Centurion controlled by Professor Morris, Soundwave located Joy's incriminating footage and destroyed it. With no cause left to fight, the Decepticons left the Dinobots and Centurion to sulk.

A short time later, Centurion discovered the re-arrival in the past of the time travelling Galvatron but the future Decepticon leader was too powerful for him and tore the mechanoid limb from limb. This angered Grimlock and the Dinobots who attacked Galvatron in turn, but even with the assistance of Blaster's resistance cell, Professor Morris's neural relay link and Shockwave's Decepticons it was a close-fought thing and only Galvatron's reluctance to fire on his own troops brought it to an end. Leaving the Cybertronian Autobots with directions to the Ark, the Dinobots gathered up Centurion's remains and carried on their way.

The Dinobots continued hiding out in the Cascades, stealing fuel from humans and sending Swoop out to spy on the Autobots at the Ark. Learning that Optimus Prime was dead, Grimlock decided to return and seize command for himself. Bursting into the Ark, he denounced Prime's style of leadership as weak and insisted only the strongest should lead but was soundly rebuffed by the assembled Autobots. Meanwhile Ratbat, the Decepticons' fuel auditor on Cybertron, had sent Trypticon through the space bridge to annihilate the Earthbound Autobots once and for all. Outside the Ark, the Dinobots stood back and watched the slaughter for a while until Trypticon threatened Rachel Becker, a palaeontology student who had taken an interest in the local Transformer activity, which drove Grimlock to defend her. Following their leader's example, the other Dinobots charged, battling Trypticon until his fuel quota for the trip was expended and Ratbat recalled him to Cybertron. For showing courage and compassion in during the battle, the grateful Autobots then elected Grimlock as their new leader.