Hey guys! LLS here.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I just graduated, so finishing high school and college in order have taken up a lot of my time. But, I did tell you that I was slow with the updates. I'm going to try to do shorter chapters but more often. No promises.

So without further Adieu...

Autobot Base

8:10 AM

Tori didn't quite know what to do. Arcee had gone on an impromptu patrol and taken Bumblebee and Cliffjumper with her. She'd left Bulkhead in charge of the humans. She seemed tense, but from what Tori knew of the femme, she was always tense. Miko had decided it was a good idea to start a band. The girl hadn't yet realized that she was surrounded by possibly the least musical… beings… on the planet. And yet somehow, she was still determined to get Jack and Raf to embrace her specific tastes.

"-in fake blood and jump around screaming," Miko was saying. Then she turned to Tori. "You mentioned the violin-"

"I'm gonna stop you right there. The answer is no," Tori interrupted. Miko looked confused, "aw, but why not!"

"I sold that thing after I got my fine arts credit freshman year. I don't even remember which string is which."

"Ugh, fine," she moped. "Bulkhead! Percussion! We're going for a big, industrial sound. DIY, We're a band. Now we just have to learn the songs."

Tori rolled her eyes, "here we go…"

"This one's a ballad: 'My Fist, Your Face.'" And with that, Miko's favorite style of guitar screeching came through the speakers. A few moments later, the proximity sensors lit the room up in red lights. Bulkhead suddenly perked up, extremely nervous, and started to try to get Miko to calm down. Tori finally got fed up with her oblivious ways and grabbed Miko and the guitar and pulled them behind Bulkhead's leg. The door in the rafters opened and a very familiar voice shouted out Optimus.

Victoria's eyes widened. Was that really Fowler? She thought she had dreamt that up while in the grips of unconsciousness. Apparently not, and she was seconds away from a serious breach of confidentiality. If Fowler found out that she knew about the bots, or worse, that the bots knew about her, she would have to leave the only real home she'd ever known.

In her panic, Tori had lost track of the conversation. That is, until Miko's guitar started to sound out all around the base. Jack jumped to silence the instrument, in hopes that the Man above them had chosen to ignore it, but his efforts were in vain.

"-means in english. So, you tell Prime…" Fowler trailed off as the guitar sounded out again,v this time taking note of the amps and Laptop that had been left in the open.

"Since when are you bots electric?" He asked. No one knew how to respond. Bulkhead froze, as did the four humans until Jack finally stepped out from behind the giant foot with a simple, "Hey, how you doing?" Miko and Raf followed, but Tori stayed behind, trying to figure out just how to play this game.

"Contact with civilians!" Fowler exclaimed. "Team Prime has really gone off-book this time." In his anger and confusion, Fowler resorted to his favorite tactic: belittling through extreme sarcasm. "Wait, don't tell me: you're running a daycare center?" Bulkhead had no idea how to respond, hoping that one of the humans would step in a save him. And Jack tried to do just that. Emphasis on 'tried'.

"We're… Interns!" He said, proudly.

"Student interns," Raf added.

"Earning extra credit in…"

"Auto shop-"

"-Robotics." And there, when Jack and Miko couldn't agree on the fake class in which they were earning the fake extra credit, is where they're already watertight lie began to fail them. Fowler started to walk down the stairs and toward the trio. As he did so, Tori slowly slinked around the side of Bulkhead's leg so that she was still hidden.

"Okay," He started. "Let's move. I'm taking all three of you into federal custody. It's for your own protection." At that point, Bulkhead stepped in, literally, and told Fowler that "We're protecting them." Tori dove to stay hidden from Fowler.

"Yeah, well maybe you could explain that to my superiors at the Pentagon," he exclaimed as he walked toward what looked like a payphone. At which point the green bot crushed the phone, saying that it was out of order.

"This ain't over, Big Butt," Fowler said as he climbed the stairs toward the helipad exit. "Not by a long shot." And with that, he was gone.

Miko turned to Tori, "Why didn't you pop out with the rest of us? You chicken?"

The blonde sighed, "I know him. Fowler's my liason, too." Miko looked shocked.

"You mean the government knows about the techno thing?"

"Yeah. They kept me out of the foster system when they decided that ten-year old me was a problem," Tori explained. " The Pentagon chose to move me out here where I could do less damage. I practically lived with Fowler or one of his coworkers up until seventh grade. Now I just give him a daily debrief over a closed-circuit video chat."

Raf perked up, "You have a closed-circuit connection with the Pentagon? But, it's in Virginia! Closed circuits are only meant to work in small units!"

Tori sighed, "yeah I'm not sure how that happened either. But, it makes it really easy to hack into their network."

An awkward silence followed, and it stayed quiet for a few minutes until a different loud, blaring alarm sounded throughout the cave. Everyone's hands flew to their ears in an attempt to drown it out. Bulkhead, however, walked over to the giant monitors to see what the problem was.

"It's an SOS," he stated. "From Fowler." He looked at the keys desperately trying to figure out how to trace the call, but to no avail, as the alarm stopped as quickly as it had started.

"Did you trace it?" Raf asked.

"Location scan was incomplete," the bot replied. "Oh well."

"Oh well?" Jack and Tori both exclaimed. "Seriously?" Jack followed.

"Fowler's a jerk."

Tori walked forward in anger.

"I just told you that Fowler is the closest thing to family I've got-" she growled. "-and your response is 'he's a jerk'?"

Jack cut in before she could go any further in her rant. "Whether we like the guy or not, the Decepticons may have him!" he said.

"And Agent Fowler knows your location," Raf added, then realized "our location."

"And did we not just witness how quickly Fowler backs down from a bot?" Miko asked. "The cons will totally make him squeal!"

Tori walked forward, her mind made up. "I've watched helplessly while too many of my family members were killed to stand by and do it again knowing that it doesn't have to be like that," she declared. "Even if you don't bother to help, I'm going after him."

If Cybertronians could sweat, Bulkhead would have been a puddle on the floor. "But we lost the transmission, Fowler could be anywhere!"

Raf spoke up, "didn't I see somewhere that the government chips their agents?"

At this, Tori perked up. "Yes you did!" She ran and grabbed his laptop, "And I think now is a perfect time to show you how to trace them!" She put the laptop on a ledge and Raf started typing.

"I can get most of the way though, there's just one firewall that keeps stopping me."

"Oh I know which one you're talking about. They put that one there to try to keep me out. Took me a year and a half and I still didn't have it so I just stole the password from Fowler's files."

"What is it?" Raf said.

"Password."

"Really?"

"They made it blatantly obvious so that I would never think to guess it."

Here's where Miko stepped in, very confused. "You know how to hack," this was aimed at Raf. "But you're like, two years old."

"12," he declared. "And a quarter. We're done."

Tori read off the coordinates," Latitude: 39.5, Longitude: 116.9."

Bulkhead pulled the lever after typing in the coordinates. "Okay, wait here."

"Oh no. No way," Tori said as she ran to catch up with him. "This is family. I already told you I'm coming with. You know I can hold my own." she didn't really give him a choice as he put Jack in charge and raced through the groundbridge.