Nightbeat

Nightbeat is a detective who prefers to investigate in solitude, rather than fight in the crowds of combat. He's got a face only Dracula's mom would love.

Fiction
''Shortly after being made a Headmaster and joining Optimus Prime's crew on Earth, Nightbeat learned of a mysterious robot corpse which had seemingly washed up on the California shoreline. He decided to investigate, bringing along Siren to serve as his personal "Watson". At the scene of the crime, they found a pair of Transformers hovering over the body, and who quickly burned rubber once they spotted the Autobots. Sending Siren off to chase them down, Nightbeat pulled out the giant retractable magnifying glass in his sleeve and went to work collecting evidence from the body.''

''Finding a serial brand from a Decepticon prison on the body, and identifying a signature Decepticon blaster as the murder weapon, Nightbeat concluded that a lone, well-armed Decepticon was hunting down escaped Autobot prisoners. Siren returned at that moment, correcting Nightbeat's analysis by informing him the prisoners weren't escapees, but deliberately let loose as prey to be hunted down. His source? The surviving prisoner, Hosehead, and the lone, well-armed Decepticon named Thunderwing who was right on their tails. Thinking quickly, Nightbeat had his Nebulan partner Muzzle binary-bond with the dead Autobot in order to partially reactivate his motor functions. Caught off-guard by his prey supposedly coming back to life right in front of him, Thunderwing left himself wide open when Muzzle disengaged and Nightbeat blew up the Autobot's fuel core at close enough range to send Thunderwing packing into the waves to dose the flames. Hosehead then returned to the Ark with Nightbeat and Siren. Optimus Prime was confiding in Nightbeat his desire to find a way to restore the warriors who were destroyed during the Underbase Saga when they received a distress signal from the Earth's surface. Nightbeat assembled a combat team that included Landmine, Siren, Hosehead, Getaway, and himself, and under Optimus Prime's command, they rushed to Earth to help their fallen comrades. There they found the Deathbringer, who had come to cleanse the planet of life. Ironically, Deathbringer was powered by the energies of the Creation Matrix, the very thing Prime had desired earlier to restore his fallen warriors! And it must be destroyed to save Earth! While the rest of the combat team were getting slaughtered by Deathbringer, Nightbeat pulled away and consulted via comlink Waverider on the Ark. Through Waverider's information digging, Nightbeat learned that Deathbringers are mechanoids who are designed to give death painlessly to the terminally ill. Though this particular Deathbringer's purpose had been twisted, Nightbeat used its own programming against it. Nightbeat told the Deathbringer that its own body was diseased, and it should destroy itself. It did, leaving Nightbeat and Prime a hollow victory with questions about the true essence of the Matrix. Later, Thunderwing emerged from the ocean, intent on destroying Nightbeat, Hosehead, and Siren, the Autobots who had defeated him earlier. Rage! To this end, he led his troops on a suicidal attack on the Ark. Though Thunderwing and his troops were forced to retreat, when he returned to Cybertron he was named Decepticon leader for his single-minded ruthlessness.''

During the Matrix Quest, Nightbeat led Hosehead and Siren on a search of the planet Pz-Zazz for any sign of the Matrix. Pz-Zazz was on file as a vibrant, lush world; in reality it was a cesspool, festering with mob violence and untamed decadence. While questioning the wrong sort of people, the Autobots were caught in the middle of a crossfire between B'hgdad's men and Gutt's boys. One alien on the street fared worse than they did, passing on a mysterious bird statue to Siren before dying in his arms. Despite Nightbeat's keen interest in the clear film noir plot developing around them, Siren and Hosehead convinced him to put the bird aside and continue searching for the Matrix.

At the next bar they were canvassing, the Autobots were confronted by the delightful Miss Fatale. Fatale informed them of a legendary Font of Life which had once lit a nearby mountaintop. The sick and weak would pilgrimage to the mountain in order to touch a "sacred idol" and heal their wounds. She offered to lead them to the temple on the mountain in exchange for the bird, which she claimed was her property. Suspicious, Nightbeat sent Hosehead and Siren ahead to the mountain with Fatale while he retrieved the bird from where they had stashed it. Confronted by B'hgdad and his men, Nightbeat only managed to escape after chipping off a piece of the bird's outer enamel, revealing the radiant life-source within. Briefly considering keeping the bird as a replacement for the Matrix, to help heal all his comrades aboard the Ark, Nightbeat quickly rejected the idea and returned the bird to its rightful place on the mountain's altar, releasing waves of pure light and hope to revitalize Pz-Zazz and its people.

Then he got shot in the back. No good deed goes unpunished.

Thunderwing and his Mayhem Attack Squad had gotten wind of Autobot parties searching this one area of the galaxy, and his curiosity was piqued. Hooking Nightbeat and the others up to his torturous Mind Leech device, Thunderwing extracted all he needed to know about the Matrix Quest and the possible planets on the search list. The Autobot trio remained captives on board the Decepticon ship until Thunderwing backhanded his minion Ruckus into some equipment. This caused a short circuit which, unknown to the Decepticons, freed Nightbeat and his team. Learning that Thunderwing had successfully found the Matrix in their absence and was planning to sneak aboard the Ark in a stolen Autobot shuttle, Nightbeat and pals stowed away on the shuttle in the hopes of disrupting the Decepticons' schemes somehow.

The situation was worse than they thought. The Matrix was corrupted from a series of unstable hosts, and now had an evil sentience that had overwhelmed Thunderwing and made him a puppet to its will. With the combined forces of the Ark unable to best the Thunderwing / Matrix combo, Nightbeat devised a desperate plan. As Siren triggered the shuttle's self-destruct sequence, Nightbeat fired the ship's grappling harpoon straight through Thunderwing's chest and shut off the docking clamps, just as Hosehead turned off the artificial gravity in the hangar bay. The result was the shuttle being sucked out into the black void, taking Thunderwing and the Matrix along with it before exploding. Thunderwing was last seen hurtling through space, still harpooned to a piece of flaming debris.

Optimus Prime next gave Nightbeat an investigational assignment to look into the disappearance and supposed death of Ratchet and Megatron in a massive explosion on Cybertron some months back. After review witness statements and making a few leaps of deductive logic, Nightbeat reached the hypothesis that Ratchet may have been cast into a dimensional portal they knew had been active at the time of the explosion, and then been caught between space as the explosion destroyed the delicate portal mechanism. To test his theory, Nightbeat arranged for an inter-dimensional probe to search for and retrieve Ratchet's spark signature in unspace, assuming it was anywhere to be found.

It was. Ratchet reappeared on the Ark fused at a molecular level to Megatron. This wasn't a "pure, strong, and fast" fusion; it was a horrific blending of two mechanoids, both in constant and indescribable agony. Prime managed to subdue the creature, and Autobot medic Fixit took steps to separate the pair, who were then placed in stasis chambers. During the aftermath, Optimus Prime surrendered his forces, including Nightbeat, to Scorponok's Decepticons on Earth, hoping to use his desperate action to unite both factions against Unicron. This alliance was about to form when the entire Decepticon base imploded in on itself due to an attack from Shockwave's small team of rival Decepticon forces. Nightbeat survived this initial strike, and along with Optimus Prime and the other Autobots, emerged and tried to keep the new Decepticon Civil War from spreading beyond the area. Optimus charged himself and Nightbeat with keeping Scorponok specifically out of Manhattan. However, when G.B. Blackrock's team of robot-fighting mutants, the Neo-Knights arrived, Nightbeat was the first to fall at the hands of the psychotic Circuit Breaker. As the fighting neared its end, and the alliance began to form again, Primus teleported the Earth-bound Transformers to Cybertron; Nightbeat's antenna was in contact with the Neo-Knight's helicopter, accidentally bringing them to Cybertron as well!

Once on Cybertron, Nightbeat, able to stand up again, watched as Primus spoke through Emirate Xaaron, telling "his children" of their origin and their charge to defeat Unicron. Once Unicron arrived, the alliance was put to the test, and Nightbeat was among several Autobots who utilized sky-sleds in their attacks on the Dark God. Nightbeat survived this cataclysmic battle.

Nightbeat was seen nailing both an Autobot and Decepticon logo on the wall of their fragile alliance's headquarters and joined the Autobots in their delayed evacuation of Cybertron. As they headed for Klo, he urged Prowl to cool down and save his bring-a-prick for the Decepticons. Unfortunately, the Decepticons were aware of the Autobots' surprise attack, and all but five Autobots were destroyed. Snapdragon kicked a head away from Nightbeat's remains.