Weapon

“My turn,” Cyclonus said, softly, and shot him directly in the head.

Starscream gave a strangled gasp and went over backwards thrashing as the oxidizing blast crackled over his entire frame. He had already collapsed into a twitching heap by the time Cyclonus, moving at an unhurried pace, reached him. His panicked optics darted frantically towards him, his arms and legs trying uselessly to move: a pinned squirming bit of vermin—truly not worthy even of contempt. Cyclonus dismissed his gun and bent down and slung Starscream over his shoulder and carried him down to the infirmary.

[...]

Cyclonus showed him the oxidizing laser. Hook abandoned Starscream to spend several minutes crooning over it and scanning it in loving passionate detail, muttering about multivariant pathways and coil focusers. “Yes, all right,” he said sadly when Cyclonus held his hand out for it back; he let his fingers stroke along the barrel even as he let it go. “Ugh, it’s unbearable. We have to find this Unicron. Surely now Megatron can be persuaded to start a search. It wouldn’t cost more than a thousand astroliters to launch a few drones off to Chaar—Scrapper, you’ve got to try and reason with him. Just look at the exquisite pattern of this circuitry destruction!”

Scrapper weaved over somewhat unsteadily and peered in with a hiccup. “Oh, look at that one, that’s got to be exceedingly painful,” he said in admiration, poking a knot. Starscream managed to emit a faint squall of distress. “Was this at full power?”

“Five percent,” Cyclonus said. “A direct hit to the exposed section of the cranial unit at close range. If I had used full power, he would be dead.”

“Oh, that wasn’t the idea?” Hook said, sounding faintly dubious. “Er, did you want us to fix him?”

“Megatron has not ordered his death,” Cyclonus said. “Therefore yes. I must go and inform him of our quarrel. How long will Starscream require for repairs?”

Hook looked down consideringly. “I think we’re going to just have to rip out his entire internal cabling and replace it from scratch.”

“Mm,” Scrapper agreed, nodding. “There’s no sense trying to fix these wires.”