Spotlight: Nightbeat

Nightbeat is an Autobot officer attracted by mistery and enigms; when a mercenary offered him the flight recorder of the Ark (first Autobot space ship disappeared many eons before) he accepts, but he finds his bot dead for good; so he put himself on the scent, that leads on remote planet Gorlan; the detective reformats himself to disguise as local car and heads for the nearest city; oddly Gorlan's people has a technical development more advanced than Cybertronians believed; all indicates an external work. When curiosity and lack of prudence take him under the surface to a kind of portal, Nightbeat is surrounded by small Transformers (probably Micromasters), then some creatures (not visible to our poor readers) exit from the portal; Nightbeat runs for his freedom, but it's all useless; taken on an operating table, one of creatures (who has a face like a Quintesson) exchanges some parts of his brain mutating him into a sleeping agent (a Manchurian Bot, if you prefer); later Nighbeat is on his ship and he doesn't remember anything; at that moment, Optimus Prime calls ordering he set a route for Earth, 'cause the Autobot leader needs his services (see Escalation for understanding)