Elita One

Elita One is an Autobot from the Generation One universe.

Elita One is the commander of a resistance force on Cybertron, unusually composed solely of Female Autobots, and seems to be the equal, in most ways, of her romantic interest, Optimus Prime. Her relative lack of firepower is somewhat made up for by her ability to time stop. Sadly, this ability leaves her nearly powerlees, and could be lethal if overused. Her vehicle mode is a cybertronian version of a semi truck.

Though in command of Chromia, Firestar, and Moonracer, she seemed only to trust her mentor and creator, Alpha Trion, on a personal level and was outright deferential to him for command decisions - such as the decision to relocate her base.

Toy
Elita One's only toy is a Japanese model kit from MCAxis. This is a posable robot-mode-only model, but remains the only official plastic likeness of the female Autobot leader. The model kit does, however, finally confirm the actually spelling of Elita One, who had suffered with some identity crisis as 'Alita', 'Aleeta', and endless other mispellings for years.

Generation 1 Cartoon
Voice actress: Marlene Aragon (US), ? (Japan)

Elita One was created as Aerial, a naieve 'cheerleader' archetype character in "War Dawn" where she was explicitly stated as Orion Pax's girlfriend. After an attack by Megatron, where she was left for dead, the time-lost Aerialbots rescued her and led her to Alpha Trion. After recreating Orion Pax into Optimus Prime, he mentions that Aerial would become Elita One.

Elita One's first appearance (as herself) was in the Transformers' episode "The Search for Alpha Trion", where she was leading her team of Female Autobots, long thought extinct, in supply raids against the Decepticons led by Shockwave. Her existance was revealed thanks to Moonracer's carelessness, leading to her capture by Starscream.

Eventually, she was used as bait to lure Optimus Prime into a trap, where he too was captured. Elita One then triggered her time-stop power, allowing her to free Optimus Prime, but expending nearly all her energy to do so. Fortunately, Prime's power systems could link to hers, and she was revived by the end of the episode, where she gets a new base and then parts with Optimus Prime for good.

She didn't attend Optimus Prime's funeral 15 years later, however, so perhaps she and Optimus weren't as close as originally thought.

Apocrypha
Elita-One's design may have been based on 'civilian dancer' Transformers, as in "Five Faces of Darkness", a number of yellow female Autobots, with Elita-One's character design,

Japanese Comics
In the MCAxis model kit, Elita One stars in a mini comic. It's fairly uneventful, with Elita One basically lamenting the loss of Optimus Prime and wishing he would return to Cybertron to deliver the final blow to the Decepticons.

Dreamwave Generation 1 Comics
Elita One and the other female Autobots were to appear in Dreamwave's comic series, but this issue did not come to fruition before the company's demise. However, Eltia One appears in iconic form as an image on Optimus Prime's mud-flaps as an in-joke.

Trivia
Elita One and Optimus Prime's iconic names have the same meaning, "Best and First".