Planet G

Anthony and his friend Mike crash land on a mysterious planet while Botimus and the crew deal with an invasion of another kind..

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Synopsis

Anthony, with his friend Mike Quartz and several Zapbots (Botimus Prime, Boaty, Flier and Speedy) are enjoying some down time at a local park. While mountain climbing Boaty flies up to check on Mike as Anthony and Speedy watch Mike climb from below. After Mike gets annoyed with Boaty he loses concentration and falls. Boaty flies after him as well as Anthony and Speedy, but it's Flier who catches the human which causes the other three to crash into each other.

Back on Fortress Misslemax, Pliers is noting how bad the upgrade to the spaceship fortress is going. Suddenly a distress call from Planet G comes in and forces a recall of the main crew to assist the planet. Anthony and the crew head back to Misslemax for departure.

Anthony notes to Mike of having issues with his friend Alan not following directions. It's discovered his incompetence is what is causing all the upgrades to be handled so badly. Alan storms out of Anthony's office after an argument.

When they arrive at Planet G Anthony attempts to take his Shortstop body down with Mike to the Planet's surface to investigate. However, they quickly lose power and crash land on the planet's surface. The rest of the crew try to ascertain what happened and Scan discovers there is a floating cloud of cosmic dust surrounding the planet that will rob anything of its energy that approaches.. Scan requests a sample of the cloud be brought aboard for study.

Meanwhile back on the planet Anthony and Mike proceed to try and reach civilization through the harsh planet terrain. Left with only their regular bodies they must make it to the nearest city. The planet proves to be a challenge as this includes evading a bear, a Wompus and living vines that try to strangle them.

Back on Misslemax, when Scan fires some energy into the sample to make it grow, it ends up evolving in a full blown Transaurses Rex. As the best proceeds to destroy the already incomplete Misslemax, Botimus calls upon the Protectors to help with the situation. It is discovered that the cosmic cloud is the transportation system of the ancient Earth dinosaurs that have used it as a conduit from planet to planet.

Featured characters

Zapbots	Humans	Enemies	Planets
Boaty Botimus Prime Click Dodge Flier Fortress Misslemax Hot Shot Pliers Protectors Burn Rubber Copter Double Shot Phiston Repairs Roberta Rup Scan Shortstop Slipstream Soar Speedy Superrobot Terrain Ultra Attack Vision	Mike Quartz	Bear Wompos	Earth Planet G Tockmak 3 Tockmak 5

Quotes

"I think this new upgrade to Misslemax was done by a bunch of humans! Half the doors won’t open, the warp drive is off line, and guess who’s job it is to fix it?"

Pliers submitting his personal log.

Notes

Production notes

• In the original writing of this story, Matt E. still existed and the story was based around him. In 1996 when I rewrote it, I changed it to my 'straight friend' Mike B.. Rereading it in 2020 it didn't quite have the same impact unless there was a romantic involvement with the character so it was adapted to include Mike Quartz.
• (I believe) this is the first appearance of Vision, Slipstream, Copter, Burn Rubber, Phiston and Double Shot.
• Third pass to provide extra details and upgrades happened in 2021.

Other trivia

• This story borrows heavily from Star Trek V as this was one of my favorite movies at the time.