The Killing Jar

Ultra Magnus, Cyclonus, Wreck-Gar and human officer Marissa Faireborn are trapped together inside a Quintesson experiment.

As Ultra Magnus stargazes, he's being spied on by a Quintesson scientist and his Allicon guard. Disguising their ship as Sky Lynx, the pair lure Magnus on board where he's attacked by a fake Rodimus Prime. The scientist correctly predicts Magnus's actions as the Autobot attempts to restrain his leader without harming him. With Magnus safely imprisoned, the scientist sets course for Chaar. Once there, the ship is again disguised, this time as Broadside, and Cyclonus lured on board. Again, the scientist predicts that Cyclonus will behave in a similar manner to Magnus when confronted with a hostile illusion of his leader. On Junkion, Wreck-Gar is enjoying Lippo the Clown's TV show when the clown himself turns up in a spacecraft and lures Wreck-Gar on board. Naturally it is soon revealed to be the Quintesson ship. The scientist predicts that placing a Junkion in a clean, uncluttered room will cause him to go catatonic. Instead Wreck-Gar proceeds to tear up the walls to make the chamber more like "home sweet home".

Disguised as a shuttle, the Quintesson ship docks with an EDC space station, and Marissa Faireborn is lured on board by an illusion of her father. Once the ship leaves the space station, Marissa is shocked when her father's face changes into the Quintesson "death" face. She strikes the illusion to the ground and it disappears — the Quintesson scientist observes that violence is always the human way. Finally the bars on Marissa's cell appear and all four captives are able to communicate.

The scientist visits the cell area, instructing his guard to activate a submission field, pinning Marissa to the floor. As the pair move in, Wreck-Gar fires his fist, deactivating the field and allowing Marissa to attack the Quintesson and attempt to free Ultra Magnus. Before she can free him, the room begins crackling with electrical energy — the ship has flown into an electron storm.

As the captives are assaulted by the energy, the Quintesson and his guard head for the control room and attempt to steer the ship through the storm. After a wrong move, the guard manages to guide the ship out of the storm. In the cell area, Magnus grabs hold of the electron bars, short-circuiting the bars on all four cells and freeing everyone. When the scientist and guard return to the cell area, they're jumped by Marissa and Wreck-Gar while Magnus and Cyclonus fight over what they're going to do with the ship. Marissa gets the better of the Quintesson and begins to plot a course back to Earth, but discovers that the ship has fallen into the gravity field of a black hole.

She interrupts the fighting to let everyone know they've got bigger problems, but while the Allicon guard activates a distress signal, the Quintesson slips away to the rear of the ship where the escape pods are located. The others follow him, only to find that most of the pods have been rendered useless by the electron storm and only one remains operational. Magnus yanks the scientist from the escape pod, but the launch sequence has already started. Though Cyclonus intends to use it himself, Wreck-Gar tackles him so that Magnus can help Marissa into the pod. While they're fighting, the pod launches with no one aboard and Magnus is pulled out as the whole room begins to depressurise.

To Magnus's surprise, Cyclonus saves him with a tractor beam. The scientist explodes angrily at them for allowing the escape pod to launch unmanned but during the ensuing discussion, they begin to receive a transmission and spy a ship coming up behind them. Although they believe rescue is imminent, it turns out merely to be a derelict ship, which is dragged into the black hole ahead of them. Finally the Quintesson ship's engines overload, and the ship follows the derelict into the black hole...

...only to emerge into a negative universe where the color spectrum is drastically altered. While the Quintesson works on a plan to return them to their own universe, the others set about repairing the overloaded engines. Once repairs are complete, the Quintesson slingshots the ship through the white hole, re-emerging from the black hole into the middle of a battle. Magnus radios for help from Sky Lynx, who docks with the ship. The group goes their separate ways, Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar and Marissa returning to Cybertron in Sky Lynx, and Cyclonus leaves in Astrotrain.

—Various observations made by the Quintesson scientist after capturing his test subjects.

—Cyclonus asks an almost rhetorical question.

— the Quintesson scientist

—Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus

—Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus