Transformers Reaction Force
From Transformers Wiki
- The Transformers Reaction Force is a human organization from The Last Knight portion of the movie continuity family.
Formed by Earth's governments, the Transformers Reaction Force (TRF) is a paramilitary force out to combat any and all Cybertronians on Earth, along with any human who sympathizes with them. To support its efforts, the TRF uses both human soldiers and a variety of mobile robotic weapons. Its current commander is Santos.
Fiction
The Last Knight film
Following the conflict in Hong Kong, continuous waves of Cybertronians began arriving. In spite of the atrocities caused by the CIA's Cemetery Wind, the vast majority of Earth's governments agreed that all Transformers should be considered illegal out of fear for more of the devastation that had already occurred in the past. To this end, they funded the Transformers Reaction Force to contain the threat of the Transformers. The TRF was assigned Santos as its field commander, while former NEST personnel such as Morshower and William Lennox were recruited for their previous experience with the Transformers, despite their reservations regarding the execution and/or incarceration of some of their former allies.
Over the next few years, the TRF launched several operations to either capture or kill their alien targets, with those being captured being incarcerated in a detention facility located in Fort Collins, Colorado known as the N.B.E. Supermax. They also worked with the CIA to keep rather elusive 'bots such as Barricade under surveillance, and set an arrest warrant for Cade Yeager, who was hiding a unit of Autobots and Dinobots. However, the TRF was forbidden from operating in Cuba, the only nation not to agree with the world's other governments and instead provided asylum to a few Autobots including Topspin and at least two renegade Junkheap units. Despite the purely anti-Cybertronian agenda, some members (especially those formerly from NEST) were reluctant to rush in blindly, preferring to check for confirmation of Decepticon-allegiance before taking action.
When an unknown ship was shot down in the now largely abandoned Chicago, the TRF declared the site a no-go-zone and deployed their sentinels to patrol the area. Shortly after a group of children antagonized the drones, satellite surveillance discovered an unidentifiable Transformer in the area. Though unable to determine what faction it belonged to, and initially weary to fire upon it with the children so close, Santos soon gave the order to fire a missile at it. As Santos and his team moved in, additional sentinels were attacked and destroyed by Yeager and Bumblebee as they defended the kids. When Yeager was cornered by the TRF and questioned by Santos, Bumblebee moved in. Though he was seemingly blasted to pieces, Bumblebee reassembled himself, injuring Santos and several TRF soldiers in the process. Lennox arrived and ordered the TRF to stand down, and Cade, Bumblebee, and Hound departed. However, one soldier managed to fire a tracking device onto Bumblebee.
Subsequently, Barricade, who had been watching the incident, was overheard by his surveillance detail reporting to Megatron. Megatron was heard mentioning that a weapon that he desired could be found through an artifact Yeager had picked up from the fallen ship. After Morshower and Lennox discussed their next move, Megatron kidnapped a pair of CIA operatives, and contacted the TRF to offer a deal; in exchange for the hostages, he wanted some of his fellow Decepticons released so that they could track Yeager and the Autobots down. Morshower decided to agree with the offer so that they could use Megatron to track down the weapon he wanted and take it first. Lennox and the TRF met with Megatron in the desert, and agreed to the release of Mohawk, Dreadbot, Nitro Zeus, and Onslaught (though the latter was only agreed to after the TRF refused his request for Berserker). As the Decepticon moved out to the Autobots' hideout in South Dakota, the TRF followed close behind, and Santos questioned Lennox on the release of some of their prisoners.
Once the Decepticons moved in to attack the junkyard, the TRF prepared to move in, however Grimlock and Slug suddenly appeared and attacked several of their vehicles. Moved by the loss of his own men, Santos prepared the release of several drones to continue after Yeager, the Autobots and Decepticons to a nearby abandoned town. While some of the Decepticons retreated, the TRF's drones went after Yeager, Izabella, and Jimmy, though Yeager soon managed to bring down the command drone to disable the rest.
As the TRF tracked the Decepticons, who themselves were tracking Yeager to England, they soon pinpointed them at Sir Edmund Burton's estate. Working with British intelligence operatives, several TRF soldiers moved in, but ended up caught in one of Hot Rod's time-slowing bubbles. TRF continued to pursue them through London, but ultimately Yeager, Bumblebee, Cogman, and Viviane Wembly managed to escape aboard the HMS Alliance. Lennox and Santos organized a pair of submarines for them to continue the pursuit, and ended up discovering a damaged spaceship beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
Following a rocky boarding, the TRF team soon located Yeager and Viviane as they were being attacked by Skullitron. After bringing him down, the TRF surrounded Yeager and Viviane, with Santos threatening to shoot the latter if she did not hand over the staff. However, Viviane revealed she was the only one who could use it. As they came under attack from additional knights who were trying to protect the staff, Nemesis Prime struck them down and took the staff from Viviane. As the ship began to rise out of the ocean, most of the TRF team returned to their submarines to escape, though Lennox opted to help Yeager and Bumblebee try to stop Nemesis. However, after Optimus was snapped out of his enthrallment, Megatron and Nitro Zeus stole the staff, betraying the TRF.
As this was happening, Cybertron finalized its approach to Earth, with Megatron's benefactor Quintessa planning to drain energy from Earth's core to restore the Transformers' homeworld, as the planet was actually an entity named Unicron. To prevent this, Lennox arranged to have the TRF assist the Autobots and Knights fight back. While preparing a fleet of V-22s to be carried on an Autobot ship up to Cybertron, British military forces confronted the Decepticons at Stonehenge, failing to prevent them from starting Quintessa's machine. While being transported, Yeager spoke to the TRF soldiers, revealing that the real reason humanity branded the Autobots as fugitives was because they simply gave up on them after the Battle of Chicago. The TRF's Ospreys came under attack from Decepticon aircraft, which caused the team to crash land near the ignition chamber where their enemies were based.
The TRF and Hound opened fire on the Decepticons, but found themselves unable to take down the gun emplacement or the monstrous combiner Infernocus. With the machine continuing to drain Earth's energy, a JPL Engineer suggested destroying one of Cybertron's strands to crash into the ignition chamber to halt it, and so the TRF was ordered to pull out to allow a missile strike. The TRF set up a targeting laser before parachuting back down to Earth's surface, even while the Autobots, Yeager, and Wembly opted to remain behind. Though the damage to the ignition chamber failed to halt the draining process, soon Viviane was able to shut the machine down with help from the Autobots. Back on the ground, the TRF soldiers watched as Optimus rallied the Autobots and Knights to return to Cybertron to begin rebuilding. The Last Knight
Notes
- On June 3, 2017, the official Transformers social media accounts were "taken over" by the TRF as part of a viral marketing campaign for The Last Knight.
- The N.B.E. Supermax is named in reference to Sector Seven's acronym for the Transformers.
