Wood carvings littered half the attic.
Buzzsaw had always considered himself an artist, even if other bots hadn’t appreciated his craft. Thus, when Megatron had ordered the Decepticons to seek some method of earning income, he’d immediately gravitated towards the arts, and sculpture in particular. Sadly, since the only lasers in this bizarre organic world appeared to be on top of unicorn heads, he’d found himself limited to using metal blades, which, in Buzzsaw’s mind, unfairly limited his options of medium.
But a true artist rises to the challenge of his materials, and so Buzzsaw had bought knives, saws, hammer and chisels, procured a generous supply of wood, and set to work.
The first few assays into woodcarving hadn’t even been worth keeping. After all, he was working with totally different tools and manipulators, and it took practice to re-learn precision. Then, too, there was learning the nature of wood itself, when Buzzsaw’s best work had always been in metal. The practice chunks were cut or sanded down to smooth wood and set aside for recycling, and Buzzsaw had moved on.
Once he’d finished calibrating his new organic body, Buzzsaw had moved into serious production. He’d begun with simple shapes- anonymous wooden pony dolls, simple model train cars, rough models of the cottages and tents of Ponyville. Before long he could knock out one of these simple, inartistic shapes in under half an hour- fast enough to build up a starting inventory for a market stall in the town centre.
But Buzzsaw aimed higher. He’d invested three whole days on a careful, extremely detailed model of Ponyville Town Hall, and four days on a painted model of Sugarcube Corner. Those, he’d decided, would go to a proper art gallery, in time. His next project, once he could find a suitable model, would be a detailed miniature sculpture of one of Ponyville’s residents. The first one would be terrible, he knew, but by the fourth he’d have something worth showing… and then the commissions would start coming in.
But that was for another day. He’d just finished assembling half a dozen toy haycarts, which now sat on a joist while the glue dried in the joinery. The rest of the day was for his own pleasure, and for Buzzsaw that meant working on the stump.
Buzzsaw patiently chipped away at the gnarled tree stump with hammer and chisel. When he’d bought his supply of carving wood at the local sawmill, he’d spotted the ugly stump, with its knots and whorls and lumps, on the pile destined to be ground into pulp for a paper mill. Something in it had sung to the Decepticon-turned-griffon, and he’d bought the thing for a pittance compared to the smoother, more tractable wood he’d already bought.
The good wood had been easy to carve, with few knots and a predictable grain. The wood of the stump fought back, with its hard, dense knots, its unpredictable shifting grain, and its pockets of soft, punky wood. That suited Buzzsaw; after all, the things he was carving from the stump had resisted too, but in the fullness of time they had given up everything, even the spark itself come the end.
The Autobot face emerging from one knot wailed out in despair and anguish. He remembered it well- the carefully calibrated lasers slicing through body steel and stripping the insulation off tactile sensor wires, the delicate pressure put on servomotors to generate feedback loops without actually destroying the joint, and a dozen other little tricks he’d used to extract vital intelligence for Megatron, so many million years ago when the war had been young. It still thrilled Buzzsaw to remember how a small, weak bot like himself could gradually break and destroy a mighty warrior, rendering his cerebral cortex into a scrap pile without once touching his head.
Of course, this was personal indulgence. If one of the ponies saw his personal project, the Decepticons would be lucky if Buzzsaw was the only one run out of town. For the moment he had to limit his public exhibitions to what the hoi polloi would accept. But one day, he hoped one day soon, Megatron would find the secret that would put the Decepticons where they belonged, and he could once more remind the world that all true art had its source in pain.
Buzzsaw heard the flapping of wings just outside the old pegasus-port at the end of the building. Sighing, he carefully withdrew hammer and chisel from his sculpture, avoiding damage to his masterpiece. Interruptions never ceased to annoy him. “What is it, brother?” he asked.
Laserbeak flapped his way into the guardhouse attic, beak drawn up in a moronic grin. “Buzzsaw! Buzzsaw!” he crowed. “I’ve seen another of our kind!”
Buzzsaw’s eyes widened. “Another Decepticon? Here?” he asked. “Who is it? Reflector? One of the Constructicons?” His eyes narrowed again in pain. “Please tell me it isn’t one of those annoying Insecticons.”
“No, no!” Laserbeak said, shaking his head. “I mean another of our kind. Griffons! I’ve seen another griffon!” He turned a slow barrel roll in midair, maintaining his position in a way that ought, in a normal world, to have been impossible. “And she’s such a beauty! Buzzsaw, I’m in love!”
Buzzsaw’s eyes widened again. “She.”
“Yessss!” Laserbeak spread his claws in enthusiasm. “I spent the whole morning watching her! You should have seen her! The strength! The grace! The casual cruelty! It’s like we were kindred souls! Built for one another!”
“You do remember,” Buzzsaw said quietly, “how Lord Megatron ordered the extinction of all female Transformers? How likely do you think he will be to approve-“
“It’s meant to be, I’m sure of it!” Laserbeak replied. His eyes rolled up slightly in imagination as he added, “Just think what the protoforms will be like!”
“Protoforms??” Buzzsaw reared onto his hind legs, grabbed the hovering Laserbeak by the shoulders, and shook hard. “She’s an ORGANIC, you idiot! Have you forgotten who you really are?”
Laserbeak gently disengaged Buzzsaw’s claws. “Love will find a way,” he said primly.
Buzzsaw rubbed his head. “One of these millennia,” he muttered, “I’ll learn what a waste of time it is to talk sense into you.” Returning his attention to the russet griffon still spinning in midair, he continued, “So, who exactly is this griffon, Laserbeak?”
“Her name is Gilda!” Laserbeak clutched his talons together close to his chest, beak grinning even more goofily than before. “She’s an old friend of the weathermare, Rainbow Dash! And she’s totally heartless to everyone else! You should hear her roar! I watched her casually pilfer from a pony’s market booth, right in the pony’s face, and she DARED her to stop her!”
“Ah, yes,” Buzzsaw drawled. “A petty criminal and bully. Truly your intellectual match, brother.”
“Yes!!” Laserbeak cried, totally missing the sarcasm. “Today she’s going to this party the pink baker is throwing for her! I’m going to wait until after the party, when she’s in a good mood, and then I’ll propose to her!”
“Propose? Laserbeak, has she even met you yet?”
Laserbeak blinked. “Too fast, do you think?” He shrugged. “Very well. I’ll introduce myself, give her some flowers, and then propose.”
“And it’s this kind of thinking,” Buzzsaw said quietly, “that explains why Megatron never asks you to do anything more complicated than surveillance.”
“I have a very responsible job!” Laserbeak insisted. “And I’m sure Gilda will be most impressed! Come with me and see just how impressed!”
“Oh, no no,” Buzzsaw said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be within a megamile of… I mean, I wouldn’t want to get in the way.”
“Oh.” Laserbeak blinked. “Third wheel, you think?”
“Very much so.”
“You’re probably right,” Laserbeak nodded. “Well, I’ve got to go buy the flowers! See you after I’ve secured my binary-bond, brother!”
Buzzsaw didn’t bother watching Laserbeak fly back out the loft door, but he only picked up his tools again for a moment before something else occurred to him. Setting them down again, he flew over to the hatchway linking the attic to the second story, dropped down, and flew over to Skywarp’s door. “Skywarp?” he asked, knocking on the door. “Are you in there?”
“Who wants ta know?” a truculent voice called back.
“Do you know anything about someone named Gilda?”
A moment later, the door opened, and a dark purple pegasus stood in the doorway. “Yeah,” he said. “The boss’s old school friend or somethin’. ‘Cracker and I got invited to a party for her in about an hour.”
Buzzsaw allowed himself a small smile. “Perfect,” he said. “As I recall, you were always fond of a good cybertram wreck, back in the day.”
“Fond? I LOVE a cybertram wreck!” Skywarp grinned. “I keep waitin’ for one’a these stupid cutesy pony trains to leave the tracks, but they never do.”
“Well… if you really want to see a train wreck…” Buzzsaw smiled a little wider, then said in a much quieter voice, “Follow Gilda when she leaves the party. And you owe me one, Skywarp.”
“You know somethin’ I don’t, birdbrain?” Skywarp asked.
“Usually,” Buzzsaw said. “But let’s just say my brother is about to reap the rewards of wishful thinking.”
Buzzsaw sat on a bench across the street from Sugarcube Corner. A bit of commotion inside had tempted him, just for a moment, to go inside. Then a female griffon had emerged, looking ready to tear someone limb from limb. She’d burst off into the sky like a bullet. A moment later Skywarp had emerged, taking off at a more sedate pace, and the bakery settled down into a more mundane tone of bucolic cheer.
Buzzsaw nodded to himself and got comfortable. The real show, he figured, was about to begin.
A sound echoed from the skies overhead. Goodness, Buzzsaw thought, Laserbeak was actually right about that roar.
There was a brief bit of shouting, and then the terrified screams of a falling male griffon. Those screams ended with a loud crash as something brown and black hit the dirt street hard enough to leave a small crater.
Skywarp glid down to the ground, forehooves holding his belly as he rocked on his wings with laughter. “Oh, Allspark, that was worth it!” he chortled as he landed next to Laserbeak. “I’ve seen train wrecks weren’t even half that funny!”
Laserbeak raised his head from the crater. A smashed bouquet of assorted flowers remained jammed halfway down his gullet, crushed blooms emerging from his beak. One stem finished snapping itself off, letting the flower fall gently to the ground.
Skywarp watched, then collapsed with fresh laughter, rolling in the dirt like… what were those fat pink animals from Earth? Ah yes, thought Buzzsaw, humans, that’s right.
He walked over to the other two, looking down at them. “Learn your lesson, brother?” he asked.
“She said- ha ha ha!” Skywarp gasped for breath, then continued in a rush, “She said if she ever saw him again- hee hee hee hee!- she’d find someplace else to stuff the flowers!”
Laserbeak tried to say something around the flowers, but produced only croaking sounds.
“Oh, let me, you idiot,” Buzzsaw mumbled, reaching up and yanking out the mangled bouquet.
Taking a deep breath, then flinching at the bruises left from his impact, Laserbeak said, “Isn’t she everything I said? Oh, fairest Gilda! One day we will meet again!”
Skywarp’s laughing took on an even more hysterical tone.
Hoofbeats drew closer, and Buzzsaw looked up to see Megatron, in full guard armor, obviously making his patrols. The big unicorn’s eyes took in the fallen griffon, the pegasus helpless with laughter, and the one member of his Decepticons still able to give a meaningful response. “Is this something I should know about?” he growled.
“No, Lord Megatron,” Buzzsaw said instantly.
Megatron took in one more long glance at the scene, then said, “Good,” and continued his patrol.
As for himself, Buzzsaw looked down at his fallen brother, taking in each unnatural twist of the limbs, the dent in the beak, the continuing moronic smile. It appeared he wouldn’t have to wait for a pony to model for his first portrait after all…