Smokescreen

Smokescreen serves as the Autobot diversionary tactician who believes that the cleanest victory is the one where the enemy never even realizes they have been outmaneuvered. While his comrades might prioritize valor and direct engagement, Smokescreen operates in the realm of misdirection and tactical deception. He is a charming gambler at heart, always analyzing the odds and looking for a way to tilt the table in favor of the Autobots. His role is to create enough smoke and electronic noise to shroud the battlefield, allowing his team to strike from the shadows or escape a losing encounter before the Decepticons can land a solid blow.

Appearance: Smokescreen has silver metallic skin. His eyes are glowing light blue. A blue mechanical helmet covers his head, and it features two small yellow fins positioned on the top. His upper torso is composed of a large red car hood that features a white number 38 outlined in black. A blue bumper structure with a small circular headlight is positioned above this hood section. Two large silver cannons with pointed tips extend from his back and rest over his shoulders. His shoulders are large, blue, and blocky, and each features a black rubber tire embedded into the top. His arms have blue upper segments and massive, dark grey segmented forearms that end in large blue hands. Two blue car doors with the number 38 rise from his back behind his shoulders. The midsection is a dark grey mechanical column with a small green and red rectangular light on the front. His upper thighs are white with vertical panel lines. His lower legs are encased in large red car sections that feature light blue translucent windows on the front. The base of each leg is blue and features a black tire on the outer side. His feet are thick, dark grey, and rectangular.

Personality: Smokescreen is the quintessential high-stakes player of the Autobot ranks. He possesses a charismatic and affable nature that makes him a natural in any social setting, yet his mind is always several steps ahead of everyone else in the room. He is a gambler who lives for the thrill of the long shot, constantly weighing probabilities and searching for the tactical edge that others might miss. While he is genuinely friendly and well-liked, there is always a layer of calculation behind his optics. He sees every battlefield as a game of chance where the deck can be stacked in his favor with enough smoke and mirrors.

His relationships with his fellow Autobots are generally positive, though his reliance on deception occasionally clashes with more straightforward warriors. Prowl values his tactical insights but often finds Smokescreen’s reliance on gut feelings and odds to be an illogical distraction. Optimus Prime trusts him implicitly with the most sensitive diversionary missions, knowing that Smokescreen will risk his own spark to lead an enemy away from the pack. To the Decepticons, he is a persistent and infuriating ghost. They view him as a cowardly trickster who refuses to stand and fight, which is exactly the impression Smokescreen wants to maintain to keep them off balance.

On a technical level, his primary tools are his shoulder mounted launchers which can deploy thick clouds of smoke, heat seeking decoys, or sophisticated electronic jamming signals. These abilities allow him to disrupt thermal sensors, radar, and visual tracking, effectively blinding his enemies in the middle of a skirmish. He also uses a Electro-Disruptor Rifle.

He transforms into a blue, red, and white 2003 Subaru Impreza WRC rally car.

The Autobots usually find themselves defending both their own race and other species against the Decepticons and upholding justice and freedom throughout the galaxy. A generally heroic, honorable group, they tend to be dedicated to peace, and feel a need to protect other races from the Decepticons. As a result, they are usually Transformers who change into non-combat oriented alternate modes such as domestic vehicles, cars, trucks, or rescue vehicles. This is not always the case, however, as their ranks certainly contain ne'er-do-wells, malcontents, and unsavory types, and the necessities of war have led many to adopt more combat-oriented alternate forms. While the Autobots have usually found themselves outnumbered by the Decepticons, the Autobots have always had home-field advantage, having not only the humans' military support, but also having more places on Earth to fall back on, while the Decepticons are entirely unwelcome on Earth. Key concepts that repeat throughout most continuities are the use of the name Prime (or a variation thereof) to denote Autobot leadership, and the existence of an artifact of great life-giving power, usually referred to as a "Matrix", traditionally held by their leader.

The Decepticons are a faction typically concerned with such things as conquering Cybertron, defeating the Autobots, amassing large quantities of energon, developing powerful weaponry, and beating people up. Not necessarily in that order. Unlike the Autobots, whose leader is a Prime bearing a Matrix, the Decepticons are led by the most powerful of their ranks. This tends to cause some conflict, given how generally every Decepticon thinks that they're the most powerful. Also, the Decepticons are not exactly the most compassionate beings in the universe, but not all fight for greed. More than a few have a sense of honor, while others believe that Cybertron would be better protected by aggressive expansion. Ultimately, the Decepticons desire to protect their homeworld, even if it is at the expense of others.

The spark is the core of Transformer life, an electrically charged mass of positrons formed from the supernatural substance known as Rarified Energon. Sparks come in a wide range of colors—while most are some shade of blue, green, yellow, orange, white, and red sparks have all been observed. While their appearances may vary, every spark functions as a combined heart and soul for an individual Cybertronian: like a heart, a Spark "pulses" at a certain frequency to animate a mechanical bodyframe; like a soul, a spark is generally accepted to contain some part of a Transformer's immaterial being, which persists after death by transcending into the afterlife. Indeed, most Cybertronian religions hold that each spark contains an infinitesimally small portion of Primus's divine essence. To protect their sparks, which usually can't survive outside of a compatible body for very long, most Cybertronians possess a specialized "spark chamber" somewhere in their body.

Most forms of Cybertronian reproduction involves the creation of a new spark—in many realities, supernatural artifacts such as the Vector Sigma supercomputer or the AllSpark can generate sparks at will, which can be implanted into a suitable receptacle to create a new Transformer. These newborn sparks contain the hard-coded design schematics that act as a Transformer's "genetic code", which dictates a Transformer's appearance and sometimes even their alternate modes. Sparks can be safely stored in stasis pods, "frozen" within photonic crystals, or even transplanted from one body to another with no ill effects, but they are susceptible to weapons fire and exotic forms of radiation. When a Transformer's body can no longer support its spark, it is "extinguished" and the Transformer is considered dead. As long as the spark is intact, however, it is possible to repair a Transformer, re-implant its spark, and effectively bring them back from the dead.