It's a big mass 'oh crap' moment.
Scorponok is probably one of the few Decepticon leaders that isn't insane in some way. I mean, aside from the whole 'let's booooond ourselves with fleshlings lol it will give us an advantage over the Autobots!' he's pretty lucid most of the time, especially after the Pretender issue.Warcry wrote:But none of that would have happened if the characters he'd interacted with hadn't picked up on the changes within him and slowly started to treat him differently. Blackjack and opskids especially have helped me play this up with the way Scorponok and Gigatron have treated the guy.
It's totally natural for him to recognize someone else as competent as he is.
On topic for Cyclonus, I also like how he handles Darkjet. You know, Darkjet was actually the biggest redshirt of the Jet Corps, with absolutely no personality whatsoever to speak of, and I wanted Cyclonus (or Gigatron) to blow him up in a couple of posts as reaffirming their badassness or something. Instead Warcry does the unthinkable and spares Darkjet... great moment, because, like Darkjet himself, I had no idea what would happen next.