ALLEGIANCE: DECEPTICON

SUB-GROUP: TRIGGERCON
FUNCTION: DATA COLLECTOR
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS # 48

“Things are never as good as they seem.”

Profile: Crankcase is a wheezing, whining ingrate who is about as welcome
as a rash of rust-rot, even among his fellow Triggercons. His favorite pastime
is complaining about everything and everyone. Nothing is good enough for him.
He delights in the misfortunes of others. Apparently, their misery makes him
feel superior in some misguided, muddle-headed way. This juvenile “I’m-better-than-you-are”
need in him stems from his youth, before he became a Decepticon. At that time
he was little more than a gangly collection of circuits and servo-motors, performing
a menial janitorial function in the Fuel-Spill Section of the Ministry of Energy
and Nutrition on Cybertron. More robust fellow workers mocked his feeble physique
and bullied him. Feeling alienated from and hatred of established society, Crankcase
eagerly joined the Decepticons when they began their war against the Autobots.
Megatron himself rebuilt Crankcase to give him increased bulk and strength.
Crankcase’s first action in his new body was to attack the Ministry of Energy
and Nutrition. Millions of years later, the fuel spill he caused has yet to
be fully cleaned up.

Abilities: Crankcase has a vast data storage capacity. His memory can
contain 400 trillion trillion bits of information, which are encoded in patterns
of light within microscopic crystal matrices. His titanium-steel alloy armor
is resistant to all explosive shells having yields of ten megatons or less.
Twin infrared probes can penetrate and analyze most unshielded electrical circuitry.
He is armed with two high-impact laser blasters and a distortion modulator that
scrambles internal electrical signals within most targets that it hits. It can
effectively cause temporary paralysis or uncontrollable, spasmodic seizures
within a victim. He transforms into a ground vehicle with the same armor and
sensor properties. In this mode his maximum speed is 90 miles per hour and his
range is 480 miles.

Weaknesses: In vehicle mode, Crankcase is prone to frequent tire blowouts.
On rare occasions, a sharp blow to his head module causes small data dumps in
different areas of his memory – a form of amnesia similar to the type found
in some humans who have undergone similar trauma.