There is no one who is more of a stickler for rules than Minimus Ambus. He may be young, but he's memorized enough law and law-adjacent material to put a lawyer to shame, including the entire student handbook of the JAAT. This makes it all the more ironic that he moonlights as Ultra Magnus, a magical Autobot vigilante and wanted criminal. Sometimes, he is willing to admit, one must defy the law to create change for the better. But not like the Decepticons.

Biography

Minimus was forged circa v.42.165.100 by the Cybertronic Timekeeping Standard. He was raised in the city Iacon, adopted out of the Pious Pools crèche by Ambus Compact patron Big Convoy. His spark sibling Dominus had emerged from the hotspot earlier and been taken to the Ambus Compact, and Big Convoy decided to raise both siblings together. These two became closer to each other than any other Ambus children despite their different personalities.

Due to Dominus's beast alt mode, he often experienced framism and a harsher expression of functionism. One particularly memorable moment occurred when Minimus was still a young nymph on a day out with his sibling. A pair of bored Enforcers cornered Dominus to harass him over nothing. They didn't believe him when he said he was from the Ambus Compact, as that group home doesn't typically raise beastformers. Minimus could do nothing but watch in increasing fear and anger as Dominus tried to placate them. This instance in particular spawned a deep-seated fury at injustice in Minimus, one which he has pursued with an obsessive pursuit of security via knowledge of rules and regulations.

In v.42.168.429, the Jhiaxian Academy of Advanced Technology hosted entrance exams for its first set of students. Minimus sat these exams through his compact and passed, the only one of his group home to do so. On the first day the JAAT opened, he met and was immediately drawn into a friend group with his roommates Orion Pax and Windblade. The three of them encountered Alpha Trion in need of assistance, and Minimus quickly followed Orion's prompting to help him. The next day, when bad weather turned even worse, he and his new friends sought out Alpha Trion to check on him, leading the old mech to lend each of them Primal relics of power. Minimus received the Magnus Hammer and powered up into Ultra Magnus. [s1e01]

Relationships

Autobots

Ultra Magnus is certainly the most law-oriented member of the dangerous vigilante street gang known as the Autobots. As the original trio, he, Optimus Prime, and the Mistress of Flame work with each other very well, although not without disagreement. He prefers straightforward, well-planned work, but Optimus has slowly gotten him to respect a little spontaneity on occasion. The Mistress is too hot-headed for his tastes sometimes, and they are prone to argue about ideals and morality, but they will always have each other's backs. They trust each other enough that, on the rare occasions it's necessary, the other two may lend their relic to him to use for a day. He may be a stickler for rules, but that he turns on Enforcers, politicians, and anyone else trying to play the legal system to unjust ends, rather than reprimanding his teammates... most of the time.

Not a day goes by when Magnus is not exasperated by Rodimus Prime, but also, more often than he'd like to admit, begrudgingly impressed. The fiery mech joined the Autobots unplanned, untested but eager to prove himself, [s2e11] and has since made an energetic and distractible addition to the team. Magnus has taken it on himself to be something of a minder for the irritating newbie, and to his horror ends up filling that role as Minimus and Hot Rod as well. But for all his frustration, at the end of the day he's happy to have someone so driven with them. Now, if only he could stay focused for more than ten seconds!

When Cheetor joined the Autobots, [s3e07] Ultra Magnus was mostly concerned they may have another Rodimus on their hands. However, he's come to be impressed by the speedster's intelligence and quick thinking. He may prefer that the mech not admit to openly illegal methods of gathering information, but everyone has their flaws. The Mistress has her qualms about how Cheetor continues to conceal his secret identity, but Magnus, more familiar with the prejudice beastformers face, does not begrudge him his privacy.

Dramatic and distracting, Drift was irritating enough as a Decepticon. When he defects to the Autobots, [s4e04] he somehow gets even more annoying by proximity. Magnus doesn't really have anything against him personally, he's just suffered enough shenanigans caused by Drift and Rodimus together that he despairs of ever having peace now that the two are on the same team.

Other Factions

Ultra Magnus will say that he does not hold grudges, that would be petty and unproductive. His dislike of the Decepticons is perfectly reasonable. They are violent, unruly, mean anarchists who constantly pick on himself and his teammates, and do other idiotic things like vandalism, littering, and disruption of traffic. Nevermind that he is considered just as much a criminal as they are, the Decepticons are clearly worse. Most often he tangles with Scourge or Cyclonus, sometimes even both at once. Scourge is more than willing to trade grand and grammatically correct barbs with him, while Cyclonus admirably goes about the fight with silent focus. Magnus can muster just a sliver of respect for them, even when managing to fend off the two of them together.

The Autobots and Elite Guard cooperate fairly often, but it always makes Ultra Magnus uneasy. Elita 1 is purportedly in charge, but all of them are so loose and casual about their planning, their execution, even their goals. Do they ever stop to lay some ground rules? It's like they work in perfect sync without relying on a structured system to do so, and Magnus simply cannot understand it.

There is something more deliberate about the Predacons that Ultra Magnus respects, something the Decepticons are missing. Perhaps it's how they purposefully protect the more marginalized, perhaps it's how they never let themselves be cowed by framism. Sometimes, Magnus wonders if Dominus would join the Predacons if he had a relic. He may not agree with their methods, but he can admit that their ideology seems solid, and Abominus clearly has a good helm on his shoulders.

JAAT

Minimus is a resident of Room 10 in the Primaneon dorm of the JAAT. Orion and Windblade are his roommates, and the three of them often make excuses for one another when out late doing vigilante work. He does his best to be polite to their other roommates Cosmos and Dead End, although most of the time he comes away certain that he's fumbled yet another social interaction somehow.

There are a lot of aspects of Alpha Trion that confuse Minimus endlessly. He may have received his relic from the drunken old librarian, but everything else he's gotten has been a mixed bag of useless and vital. Most interesting was the half-slurred explanation of what a loadbearer is, which is apparently relevant to him somehow. Minimus doesn't really understand, but it seems to be important information. He's resigned himself to figuring it out through experimentation.

The dorm monitor of Primaneon is Dion, a kind and sociable teacher who discovered the Autobots' secret identities. [s1e08] At first, Minimus was worried he'd turn them all in, but now he finds him valuable for his insight. Dion has to dissuade him from being the dorm's resident tattletale most of the time. Way back when he was a child, Dion was raised by the Ambus Compact, making them extremely distant legal siblings.

Family

Out of all the Ambus Compact siblings, Minimus is naturally closest to Dominus. His elder sibling is more outgoing, sociable, and flexible than he is, and he's spent much of his life unconsciously relying on Dominus's social skills to help him out. When Dominus became an adult, he decided to stick around the Ambus Compact as an interim caretaker, at least until Minimus grows up, and they both are sort of dreading their inevitable separation down different function paths. Minimus is glad to see him around the JAAT sometimes, but is beginning to grow suspicious that he's not just visiting his little sibling...

Among the rest of his compact, Minimus once again is the most rule-oriented mech there. His patron Big Convoy is boisterous and fun, which grates on him sometimes, but the mech is proud of him and decent enough to stand up for Dominus when necessary. No doubt impressed with his logical defenses, the young nymph Strongarm has decided to follow in his footsteps to learn all the rules she can. This has resulted in a bossy little know-it-all who doesn't actually know it all, which is somehow more irritating to Minimus than a complete disregard for law and order.

Attributes

As Minimus:

He's a minibot hovercar with some distinct visual similarities to Dominus despite their incredibly different alt modes, marking them as spark siblings. He's rather strong, durable, and energy efficient, especially for his age. After Alpha Trion's poor explanation, he starts to realize this is due to being a loadbearer, an extremely powerful type of spark. He could have gone his whole life without realizing it, but now that these subtle powers have been brought to his attention, he's learning how to use them. To begin with, it's made drawing on his relic abilities even when not powered up fairly easy. Minimus has to be careful not to call down lightning with a snap of his fingers.

The Magnus Hammer has a storied history of previous bearers, most of whom took up the title Magnus themselves. They are brusque, polite, and no-nonsense, which means Minimus does not hear from them too often in the JAAT unless studying something relevant. Most of them filled some kind of political or judicial role, so they have quite the breadth of legal background to contribute. Most of it is hundreds of megavorns out of date, true, but it never hurts to know about precedents.

As Magnus:

With the Magnus Hammer, Ultra Magnus has a bigger frame, greater strength, and a multitude of new powers. Some of the typical relic upgrades he received include bleeding blue with innermost energon, swift healing, an internal comms system that allows him to speak with other relic bearers, and a well of subspace in which he can store items. He chose his name in line with the precedent of former Magnuses, noted figures among the historical Knights of Cybertron.

His alt mode is a half-tracked truck, much larger and stronger than his usual alt. His individual abilities include:

• the Hammer, a dense blunt instrument that requires enormous strength to swing
• the ability to influence or outright control the weather. He prefers to stick to lightning and wind, as he doesn't want to upset the planetary weather system by summoning an entire storm
• the stern bearing of a judge passing down a sentence. While most of his encyclopedic knowledge of law comes from his own research, theres a certain gravitas the relic lends him that cannot be replicated
• fleetness of pede and preternatural senses, such that he can dodge and weave between multiple enemies at once
• the use of multiple relics thanks to his loadbearing spark, something that only rarely occurs

Trivia

Motivation:

Literally being told to do this hero work by the guy who gave him his relic, combined with a deep seated (and repressed) rage at the injustice inherent to the status quo and a love for order and equity

Hobbies:

Research and reading legal documentation, history, and procedure

Favorite Food:

Sweet and sour high-charge crystal, like energade