Mach and Tackle

An old farmer is sitting on a box in the middle of one of his fields, about to blow up part of the land to kill as many crop stealing prairie dogs as he can, but before he can explode the TNT the land suddenly begins to shake and he is forced to run away as spiky pieces of rock burst out of the ground.
 

As the farmer turns around he sees that his entire field has fallen away leaving just a large hole in the ground. Later on, he goes to the local bar and starts to tell his story, but everyone knows that Old Tom likes to exaggerate things quite a bit. Old Tom goes on to say that for a few bucks he'll take anyone to go and see what happened but no-one is interested, until a knock at the door reveals Machtackle, who has been sent to Canada to find out more about the disturbance.
 

Old Tom takes Machtackle to his field and shows him the result of what happened earlier on that day. The field now has a large crater in it and it's so big that Machtackle decides that it would be best if they both went down to examine it. Old Tom thinks that he meant that he got to go to, but actually, Machtackle splits to become two separate robots - Mach and Tackle.
 

The two Autobots take a look around and think that it might have been water underneath the Earth the eroded away part of the land and caused it to collapse, although they can't be sure that it wasn't the Decepticons who took part in this. They report in back to Star Saber and tell him that there were no casualties at the site, and that they will continue to investigate.
 

A short distance away, the Decepticons are up to no good and were the cause of the problems. They've created a hydro energy plant which pretty much looks like a human made on on the outside to try and stop the Autobots from finding them. As they turn water into energy Drillhorn finds out that a couple of Autobots are nearby but says that they shouldn't find anything wrong with the plant. However Mach and Tackle aren't fooled at all as they see that there is no main road into the plant and that there doesn't seem to be any humans working there.
 

The Decepticons intercept Mach and Tackle's transmissions, who have already sent a message back to their base saying that they've found a suspicious energy plant nearby. Leozack has Hellbat, Jaruga and Killbison sent out to destroy them, but Hellbat ends up crashing into some trees whilst Jaruga and Killbison get separated.
 

And then Jaruga gets beaten up pretty badly by just Tackle on his own, who then adds insult to injury by forcing the Decepticon's head into the ground, leaving him humiliated. Killbison is alerted to all the noise and rolls over, beginning to shoot missiles at the Autobots, so they decide to try something new and transform into Tacklemach.
 

Killbison hasn't seen this Autobot before but doesn't really care who he is, and decides to just kill him now. After failing to his him with his nunchaku weapon he sends out his brest animal instead. And with Tacklemach not really use to this kind of intense fighting he gets chased through part of the forest demanding for the animal to leave him alone.
 

Thankfully Star Saber has arrive to lend a hand having scrambled from the Shuttle base along with Wingwaver and Dashtacker when they heard Mach and Tackle's previous transmission. Star Saber picks up and throws Killbison's brest animal right back at him and then he and Tacklemach go back to the Decepticon energy plant.
 

The Autobots regroup and are pinned down by the plant's automated defences. So Star Saber, Wing and Mach transform and enter through the roof whilst the others stay outside to distract the laser turrets. Inside the plant Leozack and Drillhorn are arguing over whether or not to shut the outer doors even though the other Decepticons aren't back yet, when Leozack says they can't risk the Autobots getting in here and attempts to lock down the place...
 

...but it is to late, the Autobots are already inside. And the Decepticons can't even use their guns as any stray shots could destroy the hydro energy they've created, making the whole exercise pointless. Leozack leaps up and attempts to stab Star Saber...
 

...but his weapon is destroyed. Meanwhile Wing and Mach decide they want a piece of the shove a Decepticon's face into the ground action this episode has, and do so to poor Drillhorn. Unfortunately his head is slammed quite forcefully into a computer which sets off the plant's self destruct sequence, leaving them all with just 100 seconds to get out before everything blows up.
 

The two Decepticons run past the Autobots and use an elevator to escape. Star Saber orders everyone out as the count down reaches zero and the base starts to blow up. The Autobots fly out of a warehouse just before the entire base explodes.
 

Soon there's nothing left but a huge crater but Old Tom is already showing people around the place as it was on his land. But before he can tell his story of how it came to be there lots of water rushes up and fills the crater within seconds.
 

Old Tom thinks that his tourist business here is ruined as Tackle tells Mach that he thinks that they should stick to transforming into Machtackle from now on as they work better that way. Old Tom suddenly shouts out that he's already got a new idea, and that this area will now be used for him to get into fishing farming. As all the Autobots start laughing for no reason, Old Tom looks at us creepily and does a hand signal which means "money" in Japanese culture.

Old Tom and Killbison both give the finger to someone else in the episode. Old Tom does it when Mach and Tackle contact Star Saber, but on the Metrodome DVD release the subtitles explain that this gesture is not used for offence as it is elsewhere. Later on Killbison gives it to Tacklemach and the subtitles explain that whilst it is more offensive than before, it's still perfectly acceptable to be on a Japanese kids cartoon.

This episode marks Tacklemach's only appearance.

The English dub for this episode gets it all wrong for when Tacklemach first arrives, since the dubbers quite clearly do not understand the Multiforce and how they work at all. In fact, Tacklemach still calls himself Machtackle in the dub.