Smokescreen's boasts about his destiny turn out to be more than meets the eye as the race gets more desperate.
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: Starscream's attempt to process the Red Energon just gives him barely enough for at least two doses.
- Big "NO!": Bulkhead, as Soundwave gets away with Smokescreen.
- Bring It:Bulkhead: You love doin' your dirty work from a distance, don't ya? Too bad you don't have the ball-bearings to fight up close and personal.
Dreadwing: In this particular case, I will be all-too happy to make an exception. - Call-Back:
- On the subject of Soundwave locating the Autobot base, Megatron recalls a recent accumulation of evidence of where the human allies live.
- Before setting off an explosion, Dreadwing recalls how their last encounter ended. Too bad for him that Bulkhead remembered.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Knockout is able to secure an Omega Key that Arcee and Bumblebee arrived to collect, but Knockout possessing Soundwave's Resonance Blaster easily blows them out of the water and he goes home finally not empty-handed. Megatron is about to congratulate Knockout on his rare victory, but asks if it's not a decoy and has him research it.
- Downer Ending: Knock Out and Starscream are now in possession of the second and third Omega Keys. When Megatron finds out the latest Autobot Smokescreen, holds the secret of the last Key (still unaware of its identity), he has Soundwave abduct him. Thanks to Arcee tearing him down after coming back empty-handed, he stormed off and was an easy target.
- Evil Is Petty: Knockout wants to go into the field in the hopes of getting some payback, especially for his last encounter with Bumblebee and Arcee.
- Forgot About His Powers: Arcee berates Smokescreen that he couldn't do anything against Knockout and his Resonance Blaster. Except Smokescreen has the Phase Shifter, meaning the Resonance Blaster would have no effect on him.
- He's Back!: Bulkhead's back in proper fighting shape, giving Dreadwing a hell of a fight.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Subverted. Dreadwing attaches a bomb onto Bulkhead's back and then they fight. At the conclusion, Dreadwing pulls out the trigger but only when he presses it does he realize Bulkhead discreetly took it off and put it on his own back instead. Panicking, Dreadwing rips it off and throws it in the sky while Bulkhead retreats.
- Internal Reveal: Starscream overhears Bulkhead talking about the Omega Keys being used to restore Cybertron.
- Jerkass Ball: Arcee grabs it very tightly when she verbally beats down Smokescreen.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: Arcee indulges in the verbal variety, while Smokescreen is already feeling rotten about losing one of the Omega Keys. She takes it upon herself to rub more proverbial salt in the wound by scolding him about not taking on too much of the burden all at once because of his belief that he's destined for greatness and can handle the responsibility. Even Optimus tells her to shut up, but she completely ignores him.
- Living Macguffin: Smokescreen is revealed to have the final Omega Key.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Arcee's verbal beatdown of Smokescreen is what leads to him getting captured by Soundwave.
- Properly Paranoid: Megatron notices the key Knockout recovered is an exact duplicate of the one Optimus recovered last time. He quickly suspects it's all part of a larger puzzle.
- Pun: "Who knew that sound waves could be such a... knockout!"
- Rage Quit: Smokescreen has a tantrum and leaves the base after Arcee gives him a rather cruel verbal beatdown.
- Scenery Porn: The mountain forest is very pretty to look at.
- Super-Speed: The Red Energon that Starscream stole in "New Recruit" grants the renegade Decepticon this power.
- Too Good to Be True: The fact that Knockout was able to finally secure a relic, an Omega Key, THIS TIME after a string of failures is what Megatron claim this must be the case and infer it could be a decoy. Knockout claims that the Autobots fought too desperately for it to be a decoy.
- Villain Ball: Knockout and Dreadwing both stick around to fight the Autobots rather than taking their relics immediately. Knockout actually wins his fight and retrieves the relic, thanks to the resonance blaster, but Dreadwing doesn't.
- Wham Shot: Optimus and Soundwave decode the final file that locates the last of the four Omega Keys. To everyone's surprise, it reveals to be an image of Smokescreen, meaning he either holds the secret to finding it, or is it.
- Why Am I Ticking?: Dreadwing attempts to do this to Bulkhead during their fight, but he learns after pressing his remote's trigger that the tables were turned. Dreadwing manages to remove the bomb before he explodes, but he's still caught in the blast radius.
