Sparkeater (creature)
| This article is about the vicious predator. For Roadbuster's weapon, see Sparkeater (weapon). |
The near-mythical Sparkeaters are powerful and monstrous predators, viewed with a sense of supernatural terror even among battle-hardened Cybertronians. Tracking the intensity of their prey's spark energy, they are able to immobilize and kill Transformers without making physical contact, through powers that seem to defy conventional explanation. Once consumed, the sparks linger in their abdomens and are slowly digested.
Little is firmly known of their habits or origin. They are sometimes also known as Cybervores, Soulsnatchers, and The Nightmare with a Thousand Names.
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 comics
Roadbuster was busy with some "Sparkeater business" when Springer was picking Wreckers to participate in Operation: Retrieval. Bullets
Blip professed to be a Sparkeater. The Chaos of Warm Things
The Lost Light had initially been operated by NAILs, who for some reason used it to transport a Sparkeater to Cybertron. Confined to an armored cell, the Sparkeater was kept docile by being fed turbofoxes. At the onset of the quest for the Knights of Cybertron, the Lost Light suffered an engine malfunction and premature quantum jump, which heavily damaged the ship and allowed the Sparkeater to breach its cell. While the Duobot Shock attempted to retrieve a tracking device that Prowl had ordered Ore to attach to the ship's engine, he ventured too close to the Sparkeater's cell: the beast was then able to somehow immobilize Shock and force him to regurgitate his own brain capsule, killing him and causing his spark to emerge for the Sparkeater to devour. The Chaos of Warm Things Red Alert discovered Shock's body and telltale claw marks on the nearby walls, and deduced that a Sparkeater was present. Hangers On
Despite his own skepticism and instinctual disregard for the myths and rumors spread by many of his crewmates, Ratchet eventually had no choice but to acknowledge that the damage to Shock was consistent with a "robocarnivorous entity". When Drift asserted that the Sparkeater would seek out the "brightest" spark on the ship, Rodimus oh-so-humbly assumed that meant he himself would be the next target. But, in fact, the Sparkeater was drawn to Rung. On its way towards Rung's quarters, it encountered and killed Animus. Whirl then attempted to kill the monster with a missile barrage—only for Trailbreaker to save it with his forcefield, as a weapon strike on the unstable, partially digested sparks inside the monster's belly would have caused a catastrophic explosion. The Sparkeater relentlessly and single-mindedly pursued Rung throughout the ship, as Skids tried to help the frail psychiatrist escape and Brainstorm cowered in terror but was ignored in favor of the tastier prey. Finally, Rodimus seized Rung and used him as live bait to lure the Sparkeater next to the engine block of the Lost Light. Ordering Perceptor to engage the quantum drive, he then allowed the Sparkeater to attack him—and quickly grabbed the monster and pushed it up against the ship's engine. The quantum drive's localized disruption of the laws of physics resulted in the Sparkeater being merged with the engine block, killing it. Rodimus survived this unbelievably irresponsible, risky, and foolhardy bold act of heroic leadership, though his arms were also sucked into the ship's engine and had to be amputated and replaced. The Chaos of Warm Things
Notes
- Though no one really knows much about Sparkeaters, Rodimus believes that technologies capable of neutralizing them include "industrial strength energy dampeners", "nullification booths", and "level-9 containment fields".
