3

Karma

Prologue

"You look like slag, Cytoplasm," Buzzsaw chirped. She glared at him so fiercely, the metal bird flinched.

"Thanks, Buzzsaw. I hadn't noticed. Humans don't age as slowly as you hulking metal creeps!" she grumped. It was true. Cybertronians aged a LOT slower than humans. It was the whole 'metal vs. organic' thing again.

"Why, Cytoplasm, you've turned old on me!" he teased. She tried to scowl, but ended up grinning instead for a moment. Then she grew serious once more as she recalled the circumstances of their meeting..

"Buzzsaw," she murmured softly, almost too softly for even his finely tuned ears to hear. She didn't want to wake Carma up. "I'm not sure this was a good idea. I mean, it's not like I took out ALL of them in that rockslide. Some of them might be tracking you – or me."

"You got enough of them to get the message across. There's a sort of uneasy truce, all across the universe. Their leaders are dead or buried – some of them dead AND buried. Some of the outposts still don't realize anything's changed here on Earth. A few decades is nothing when you're on Nebulan, trying to get the natives to trust you enough to let you live. I bet no one's even realized Prime and Megs haven't been in contact." He was trying to reassure her; she knew that.

"Still…I won't be around much longer. We both know that. Carma…you will protect her for me, won't you?" she asked. Buzzsaw nodded, his electronic eyes suddenly too bright.

"Soundwave bound me to you. He knew he might not be around to fulfill his debt. If this is what you really want…" he trailed off, and she nodded firmly.

"Leave the canyon. If they get out, they get out. If not, you can show her and explain everything. I think she'll be strong enough to force them beck if they do get out." The two old friends sat in silence for a moment, reveling in each other's company; they hadn't seen each other face to face in years. The Buzzsaw said out loud what they were both thinking.

"Caryn," he whispered. "What if she doesn't want to?"

Chapter One

I Meet a Talking Bird

Most people don't like funerals. Most people don't wake up and say to themselves, "Gosh, I'd sure like to go to a funeral today!" That's because, for most people, going to a funeral means that someone they care about has died, and that slagging sucks. Of course, there ARE people who wake up and say, "all right! I've got another funeral today!" Those people are the ones who work at the funeral home. They show up all smiles, ready to cheer up the mourners.

"Slagging creep," I spat, glaring at one of the funeral home employees. Someone shushed me. I wanted to roll my eyes at them, but said eyes were too busy getting all wet and foggy to roll properly. That made me even madder.

I mean, I had known all along that Caryn wasn't my biological grandmother, but she'd raised me. She was the only family – the only friend, really – I'd ever had. Now she was gone. She'd left me our house, which was a mile or so away from an unnamed canyon. Well, sort of, it was unnamed. We – Caryn and I – called it Rockslide Canyon, in honor of the enormous rockslide that had almost completely filled it a few months before Caryn built our little house and moved in.

I was on my own. I was homeschooled until college; then I took online courses at various colleges. Caryn had always encouraged my interest in computers and mechanical engineering. Of course, we were just about as self-sufficient as modern people could be. We had our garden, and chickens for eggs and meat. We had to go to the store for beard, milk, news, that kind of thing, but we didn't really need anyone else. Or we hadn't. Now it was just me out there, and I figured it was going to be pretty lonely.

Because my eyes were still overly bright and watery, like I was about to cry (which I did NOT do, I might add), I drove home slowly. However not speedily I drove, though, I found it increasingly hard to notice the scenery, which was all blurred together like I was either tearing up the pavement with my velocity or…well, it was either my speed, or I was closer to tears than I had previously thought.

Whichever reason, it was difficult for me to notice the landscape when there was so much pain so much closer to me. Namely, it was the pain of losing Caryn. Still, I did catch a few details, like the odd shape of the car's shadow as it raced across the ground alongside me, and the way it jumped and swayed, and how the shape would separate into two shadows from time to time, and the non-car shadow was vaguely bird-shaped. Eventually it dawned on me why; I glanced out the window to check, and there it was again! The silhouette of a hawk was on the shadow roof of the shadow car on the ground beside my car. A moment later, it was gone completely. Unsettled, I sped up and nearly missed my turn.

As soon as I made it home, I changed into more comfortable clothes (a simple black dress with itchy tights is NOT comfy). This means I pulled on yesterday's jeans (I was tired, okay?) and a clean T-shirt. On my way back out the door, I grabbed a jacket, because it was only the middle of spring and still a little chilly sometimes. I hiked over the familiar rocky path, down to the edge of my favorite place: Rockslide Canyon.

On any given normal day before Caryn died, Rockslide Canyon would have been filled with huge boulders. It wasn't really a canyon anymore, because of the rock filling it. It looked more like a river of rock that had been frozen in time. Of course, Rockslide Canyon isn't full of rocks now.

When I reached the lip of the canyon, I stared in disbelief. I'd known the earthquake a few days ago might have altered the place a little bit, but I had definitely not expected the crevice floor to swallow up all those rocks! Well, anyway, it turns out that Rockslide Canyon is about three stories deep.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to come here after the earthquake and Caryn's death," a chirping, metallic, yet somehow birdlike voice commented. "I did not expect you to return to this place quite so soon, I must admit." Sometime during this little speech from an unknown source, I whirled around to see who had followed me to the canyon. I don't know who I thought it would be, but a huge metal bird was definitely not on my list of possibilities! Upon finding that it was indeed a bird that was talking to me, I took a step back in surprise.

I took a step back into the open air over the newly reopened three-story-deep chasm of Rockslide Canyon. My scream caught in my throat, choking me. Oh great! I'm going to choke to death before I even hit the bottom! I thought absurdly. Then my previously clogged throat cleared. Before I could panic again, something cold and hard wrapped around my shoulders. I felt a tug and a little discomfort as whatever it was that had caught me eased up into a glide.

Another scream rose when I looked up to see what exactly it was that had caught me. The golden and black metal bird that had talked was clutching me with its talons as it flew back toward the lip of the canyon. My feet touched firm ground, and the bird thing released me. I stumbled forward, and barely managed to stay on my feet. The bird landed a few feet away, perched on a rock I used to climb on. I stumbled again.

"Careful, Carma," he (I guess the thing was a he) murmured. I blinked rapidly to try to conceal my shock.

"You…you can talk!" I exclaimed. He sighed and made a curious little gesture with his head. He sort of tossed it, but not quite. I suspected that if he had had regular bird eyes instead of the glowing red slits on either side of his head, those predator's eyes would have been rolling in irritation.

"Yes, I can talk, obviously. Primus, I'd forgotten how annoying you cytoplasmic forms can be! Are you going to tell me I can fly now, too?" he asked sarcastically. "What did I let Soundwave and Caryn get me into?" One word from all that got my attention.

"Caryn? You knew my grandma?" I gasped. My mind was racing, but it was racing to nowhere. Wouldn't Caryn have mentioned a giant, metal, talking bird if she knew one? Obviously not and obviously she did.

"Yeah, I knew her. She told me to keep any eye on you and a talon at the ready in case you needed me. Though I do not think she envisioned me flying to your rescue the same day I met you."

"So, uh, do you…you know…do you have a name?" I inquired, trying very hard to keep my voice polite and neutral. The bird tossed his head in that eye-rolling movement again.

"It's about time you asked! Yes, I have a name. I am Buzzsaw. I used to be a Decepticon warrior, and served under Soundwave as one of his cassettes. Then he bound me to serve and protect Caryn, in case he wasn't able to," he informed me. My head was buzzing.

"Decepticon?" I repeated. Buzzsaw heaved a long-suffering sigh and shook his hawk like head.

"Surely Caryn told you the story behind Rockslide Canyon's name!" he exclaimed in disbelief. And now that he mentioned it, I did remember something about the canyon.

"The Autobots and Decepticons were fighting a war…a long war that had raged for eons and had devastated many planets and races. About twenty years ago, there was a massive battle in an unnamed canyon. That same day, one of the combatants had grown weary of the war…a human, whose name Caryn didn't know…this human decided to end the war, because it would tear the world apart if it continued. So she – the humans in her stories were always female – triggered a rockslide. It was so big and buried them so deep, the canyon was filled up." I fell silent, lost in memories of all the other stories Caryn had told me when I was younger.

"Were there other stories?" Buzzsaw asked, shattering my thoughts like a rock hitting a thin sheet of glass. I was startled into speaking before I really thought about it.

"Oh, yeah, lots," I answered. Then I thought for a moment. "She gave all her characters weird names, though. And most of the stories had the same main character: a human girl called the Cytoplasm. I think she was probably the one who trapped the Autobots and Decepticons in Rockslide Canyon."

"And which side of the war was the Cytoplasm on?" Buzzsaw prompted gently. I shrugged.

"It varied, really. Sometimes she was with the Autobots, and sometimes she was the pride of the Decepticons. I think there were probably two Cytoplasms, at least. It was almost like 'Cytoplasm' was a catch-all term for Caryn's main character, no matter which story it was," I speculated. I wasn't sure why I was telling Buzzsaw all of this; maybe because he said he'd known Caryn. Anyway, he shook his head forcefully.

"No, there was only ever one Cytoplasm," he corrected softly. "She was my charge…before Caryn," he added carefully, as though dancing around a truth he did not want to admit to knowing.

He's hiding something! The thought burst into my mind unexpectedly. But what would he hide – and why? I closed my eyes for a moment, then cast the thought aside. I opened my eyes to find Buzzsaw watching me warily, to see if I bought it or not. I decided to play along.

"All right. Are you saying ALL of those stories about the Cytoplasm are true?" I demanded. He nodded. "And you told me you were a Decepticon, so I'm guessing those are true, too?" I got another nod from the golden bird. I had one more question left: "Are all of the Decepticons big metal birds?" Evidently, this was not the inquiry he had been expecting.

"What?" he choked. "No! Most Transformers are twenty to thirty feet tall – at least – and humanoid in their root mode!" I caught the change. It was time for some more questions.

"Transformers? Root mode?" I echoed, making Buzzsaw do his eye-roll thing again.

"Primus send I live through this," I heard him mutter under his breath (do robots have breath?) before responding, "Transformers refers to all Cybertronians, whether they be Autobots, Decepticons, or of no faction. We Transform, usually between two forms, or modes. And before you can ask, a Cybertronian is a being from the planet Cybertron." I was quiet for a moment after he finished.

"Now what?" I asked finally.

"Now we find them, if that's what you want," Buzzsaw told me quietly. I watched him and he watched me anxiously for a moment or two. Then I took a deep breath.

"Sure; why not?" I agreed at last.

Buzzsaw bowed awkwardly, and I climbed onto his back, and we flew. I have to say, flying was exhilarating. Oh, it was SO much better than falling. Buzzsaw soared high enough that we could see and follow the immense series of what appeared to be squared-off footprints. When we neared the road, the footprints vanished abruptly, to be replaced by tire tracks. Naturally, there were no more tracks once they reached the tar of the road; only melted tar took and held tracks.

"Slagging molten scrap!" I cursed. I have to admit, some of the curses and cusses Caryn and I used didn't make much sense to most people. Obviously Buzzsaw knew what it meant, though, because he twisted his head around to give me a flat, level look. He didn't say anything, though, to his credit.

"We'll check the bases we used last time," he decided.

"All right," I agreed. Buzzsaw circled, instead of moving on. I gave him a curious look. "Is something wrong?" I asked tentatively. He started.

"Oh! Not really, it's just…Autobot or Decepticon?" he asked. I thought about it. I knew what he was asking: which side of the war would I support? I knew Buzzsaw had once been a Decepticon, so maybe…

Cunning and powerful, the Decepticons were. They were cruel, too, for the most part. The Autobots, now, they weren't the wisest bunch by a long shot. They were not as coldly efficient in battle, like the Decepticons. But they have hearts. Autobots care about peace and friendship, and no Autobot would ever rank a missions or goal over another's life, be it Autobot or Decepticon, friend or stranger, combatant or innocent. Good-hearted, compassionate, and generally good to the point of foolishness, those Autobots, Caryn had told me once. I thought about this.

"Good-hearted to the point of foolishness," I whispered out loud, "But they had hearts."

Circling high above my home and the nearby road, over the places where I had spent most of my life, with my quarry getting farther and farther away with each passing second, I made my choice.

Lynn Jones