Sparkeater Gun

For when you need to create both a time paradox and an abomination of nature in one go.

The Sparkeater Gun is a weapon created by Brainstorm that horrifically mutates whatever unfortunate Transformer it shoots into a bestial, slavering Sparkeater. The gun was presumably itself inspired by the original Sparkeater legend, and may have actually created the legend in the first place!

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

When preparing for their trip to the past to stop Brainstorm from altering history, Rodimus foolishly gave Whirl permission to take any weapon he wanted from Brainstorm's armory of experimental superweapons, and Whirl picked the Sparkeater Gun. He posed dramatically with it when Rodimus's team arrived in Orion Pax's time. All Our Parlous Yesterdays On their next stop in Cybertron's history, Whirl was monitoring the Rodion police station when three Senate goons arrived, two of them being the same ones who had destroyed Whirl's watchmaking business. After Chromedome pointed out that killing those two would alter history, Whirl used the Sparkeater Gun on the third member of the squad simply because he was feeling homicidal. Stet

Meanwhile it was determined that Brainstorm's mission was to kill Megatron while the latter was still being constructed. Whirl discarded the weapon when he saved Megatron, and it was picked up by Rodimus and given to Cyclonus as the pair left to find a quantum generator. When they were confronted by a guard, Cyclonus defended himself using the gun, and locked the mutating guard in a storeroom. Rodimus made sure he still had the gun with him when they were ready to return to the present as they couldn't leave experimental future weaponry in the past. Cyclonus was surprised to hear it was from Brainstorm's collection, but Rodimus pointed out that the gun's name was written on the handle like the rest of his weapons. Predestination: An Expert's Guide