Disclaimer:
I only claim ownership to my original characters ( OC's ) and any other non-canon material unless otherwise stated.

The Transformers® franchise, including all canon characters, etcetera, is owned by Hasbro (and secretly engaged by the government to hide the Cybertronians' existence on Earth). Along with all those other fantastic animators and writers that commission and head the many other TransVerses. Lucky them.

Legend:
"Normal"
Thoughts
"Phone / Abstract"
"Cybertronian"
{ Communications Link }
Text Message / Citation / Lyrics
( Flash-Back / Scenery Change )
;: Guardian-Charge Bond :;

Classified Terminal

Prologue

You probably don't know me, but I might know about you - just maybe. And if you do know of me - or have ever heard my voice - it's probably because I've either hacked into your computer and snagged some files, or turned you in to the local police. Yeah, that girl.

My name is Alexis Naass, but I prefer Alex. I'm going on seventeen, currently reside in a tiny apartment down by Pike Place - and don't really have too much to tell you about myself in the regards of "a daily life." I'm a traceuse and a hacker, so naturally, I'm hooked on anything that involves action or trouble.

I've grown up in the big cities all my life, and it hasn't been overly exciting so far (for me, at least), but I can assure you, if you go looking for trouble in Seattle, it isn't too hard to find.

Chapter 1: Distilled Grandeur

( Madison Park, Seattle )

( May 17, 2009; Sunday, 16:48 )

"So, what's he like?"

That voice was going to be the end of me: high-pitched with a mocking sing-song tone, and coming from the very mouth of the devil's daughter: Tiffany Dilebern.

Okay, not really. I love Tiffany - she's like a sister-from-another-mister. When her father was sent to prison, courtesy of yours truly, I was surprised that she thanked me and took a liking to me. Actually, if I hadn't been tracking her father, I would've never met Tiffany; I mean, it may seem obvious, but the goods were up in terms of ransom. The Dilebern's were a rich family, before all Hell broke loose.

Turns out, her father had done a lot more than given government secrets to foreign organizations. He, being the newfound drunkard he was, had beaten and abused his only daughter, much to the horror of relatives and strangers alike upon his secret being spilled. His wife had been killed for "motivational purposes" earlier on, thus his gradual lack of sanity. So now, long story short, Tiff was with me, and I loved the company.

Correction: most of the time.

I quickly dropped my yellow pencil onto the oak desktop and turned towards her on my little black computer chair, thick brows raised curiously. "Who?"

"That cute guy that wanted you to hack that site - called - oh, what was it, GiantEffingRobots?" she mused, feet waving back and forth behind her to match her enthusiasm, her body sadistically crinkling my bedspread in the process. "His profile picture was fuckin' sexy." The last piece of her sentence was spread out in an exaggerated whisper, and she had her light brown eyebrows leveled to match her smirk.

I couldn't hold back my amusement at her remark, swinging my torso in her direction and leaning forward with a sputtering laugh. "Yeah, yeah, more like a hot mess. You think that's what he really looks like?" When she nodded, I threw my head back in a mock chortle, pivoting to my keyboard and bringing up the email once again. "That was not him." I rolled my tongue against the roof of my mouth, fingers stumbling over the keyboard in a flurry of taps and clicks.

"How do you know?" she sneered, a tinge of tease cupping her tone. Almost immediately after, she frowned, as though contemplating what she had just said. "Okay, that was a stupid question, but - it means you're interested in him!" I heard my bed squeak as she rose to her feet, padding across the floor to my location and looking over my shoulder.

"Was," I corrected, "I was curious about him." Eliciting several photos from the CMD, I leaned back in my chair, allowing her to view the young man. "That is my client," I muttered, tapping the plasma screen with a long nail, "not the profile picture."

With a rather exaggerated sigh, Tiffany rolled on her heels, falling back onto the bed with a sickening squeak of the springs, causing me to cringe slightly. "Point taken."

"Jesus, woman, don't murder my ancient bed," I snickered, coughing to shrug off the amusement in my voice. "What is it to you anyways? I'm never getting a guy."

"Don't say that," she drawled out, hands clasped together. "You saw how those other guys -"

"Looked at me for my body. I'm a hacker!" I interjected loudly, slamming my fists on the keyboard for emphasis; "not a sex-toy." I had not meant that unkindly, and to prove my point, I quickly added an incredulous laugh and an eye roll.

Tiffany sat up, holding her hands above her chest in mock surrender. "What about that FedEx kid? You do realize he was obviously interested in you. He smiled whenever he passed, and he started visiting Kitty's office, even when he didn't have packages." She paused, thrumming her pink nails on her chin in contemplation. It was a second later a devious grin spread across her face, and her eyes widened when she gave a single clap. "Oh! Oh, what about Jake?"

I turned as cinematically as I could provide, eyes narrowed coldly. "I'm never getting a guy," I laughed, brushing a dark brown curl back with a digit. "Even if they were sincere, I'm not that kind of person. And in regards to Jake, he's way too hot for a little city kid like me - or you." Snatching the water bottle from the table, I began to down it, shrugging her off for the time being.

Jake was a neighbor kid, son of Pamela and George Terryson. A silent prankster, but he could pack a bunch when he felt like it; which was exactly why everyone left him alone unless he wanted company otherwise. I'd only spoken to him a few times before, and he was quite intelligent. It was his junior year this year, and apparently he had managed to wiggle out of the yearbook the last two years, which explained why I hadn't heard of him up until my sophomore year. Or, rather, seen him.

Of course, I didn't talk to many of the people at school; Tiffany was probably the closest friend I'd ever had since I moved into this apartment. Then again, I now considered her family.

"Whatever," she continued, giving me a wry grin and clicking her tongue with an informative 'tsk tsk tsk'. "I'm just saying, life is better with a guy. Don't you want kids?"

Miraculously, I spewed my water away from the keyboard, and onto my victim with a terrifying laugh. She lifted her arms, staring at her lap as though I had thrown a rabid bunny on it. "Screw me sideways, I'm never having kids. They're friggin' monsters! They scream, eat, poop, sleep - and did I mention scream?" I checked them off on my fingers. "All your life's savings -" I exaggerated, throwing my hands together in a little ball, "- gone!" Throwing my hands out dramatically with a 'poof' noise for melodramatic purposes, I twisted my right hand into a gun and pointed it at Tiff, who promptly toppled back with a sigh of defeat.

"I get it, I get it," she snorted, kicking my chair and lying onto the bed.

We were such strange, yet typical teenagers. Shaking my head with a chuff of disbelief, I whirled back to the computer, looking over the email from my most recent client and opening up RoboWarrior's page. Narrowing my eyes, I opened up the page script, running over possible methods of entering through the administration prompts, hands folded beneath my chin. Now that I thought of it, traditional hacking was way more fun than the way Hollywood always displayed it in the movies.

Nothing more than a little city girl with a cheap desktop computer.

Brushing the thought off, I shifted more comfortably into the padding of my black chair, browsing through my files until I found a command-prompt virus, keeping that tab open for future reference while tearing apart the file stored in the source code. (Metaphorically speaking, of course - I really needed that text file.) Once I had finally woven my way in, I gave a tiny squeak with joy, placing my hands under my jaw and smirking as the video logs and recent posts began to download themselves into my document folders.

"Man, this guy's got some pretty kick-ass stuff on his site," I muttered smugly, a cheeky smile etched on my features. "Not for long…" Robots, explosions, conspiracies about aliens trying to take over Earth. These things were beast - whoever animated did a heck of a realistic job. These were just like some of the ones I had seen a while back, too. The animator and his pals had gotten a lot of attention since 2007, when Los Angeles turned into a living hell. "Whoa! Look at this shit!" I exclaimed, cackling madly. Oh boy, this would be fun to keep for myself and erase off the site to show this RoboWarrior guy who my client was tacking up for hire.

Whilst I had my nose buried in trying to override the firewalls, the phone rang, Tiffany pinioning it quickly and holding it to her ear. "Hello? This is Alex Naass' Erotic Circus. Could I interest you in a free pornography sequence on your front lawn?"

My eyes widened, and I immediately forgot about the site, practically flying from my chair to remove the phone from her demonic grip with a growl. She released almost involuntarily, falling back with howls of laughter as I answered curtly; "I'm so sorry," I muttered nervously, expecting profanity or some kind of yelling to incur from the other end. "Screw you," I mouthed with a whisper, shrugging off the other teenager and averting my attention to whoever was deemed important. "This is Alex Naass, can I help you?"

"You'z dat hacker dey keep talkin' 'bout, right?" an unfamiliar voice chipped. Wow, way to shrug off a porn advertisement so suddenly. And who were 'they'? I wasn't supposed to be well known. Key word: supposed. Maybe it was the school bastard, Terren, that sent them.

To put it short: Terrence is football jock and a real son of a gun, and had deemed himself my rival through his actions. Long story for another day.

Ignoring the male's botched grammar, I muttered suspiciously, "Why do you inquire?"

"I'z gots a task for ya, chickie." He paused when I snorted. "You take cretz?"

"Yes." By this time, Tiffany had stopped laughing, and was now facing my direction rather intently, hand on her mouth. I walked to the window, leaning against the sill and staring out onto the busy street below. "What 'task'?" My eyes drifted over the lanes of traffic crowding Mercer, thus why the daily jam was called the 'Mercer Mess.' Dang, they had some nice cars this time of day. Little Camaro - Holy! Is that a Citroën GT? I leaned even further out the window, keeping a good grip on the phone as I watched the white muscle car pass, before a voice averted my attention back to my caller.

"So, you'z up for da task?" That almost sounded like a challenge.

"Hell yeah, sir," I replied curtly, leaning back and placing my hand on the window frame nonchalantly.

"Good. Can you'z meet 'n person?"

"No, I don't do face-to-face. My apologies." I rolled my green-gold eyes briefly, brushing a strand of chocolate brown hair from my face once again. If someone bothered to call me without reading any information -

I paused, holding the phone away from my face for a moment. This was an interesting one. He sounded like he knew of me, but he didn't even know a smidgen about how I ran things. The number wasn't connected to any of the contacts I had, so how he had gotten this far was beyond me. Somewhat concerning, to be honest.

Furrowing my brows, I drew the phone close again, sighing lightly. "I might consider it, however, if you tell me how much you're offering."

"One hundred, brah. Cretz."

Pranks? Jokes? Maybe something too big for me to hack on my own? I'd never been offered that much before.

My hand slipped on the sill in my utter clumsiness, and I slid forward, nearly dropping the phone in the process. It was too good - too good to be true. "Name," I grunted, "sir?"

"She azked uz our name!" Did he have a twin? I blinked, listening to the voice in the background curiously.

"Shut up, you moron!"

"I ain't no moron, you'z da moron!"

"Shaddup!" the original snapped quickly, and a loud clang resounded through the room, before silence once again. "I, uh, Skoota Ro'z," he drawled, slurring the words in such a manner that I couldn't pick up what exactly he was saying. Scooter Rose - or Scooter Rows - Scooter Ross? Someone named Sigur Ros would be highly admirable, despite the unlikelihood of such happening.

I slowly brought my hand to my mouth in contemplation, and what came out was a distorted snort before I could hide it. Tiffany waggled her eyebrows, and I shot her a dirty glare, before shuddering. "I'm so sorry - sir? Hello, sir?"

"Let me handle this, you dumbasses," a gruff voice interrupted, and I cringed slightly, holding my breath as an older-sounding male took the phone. "Apologies, Miss Naass. I am Richard Tenate."

Nonetheless, only a few close acquaintances and clients knew what I did, and not particularly who I was. That voice saying my name simply sent chills up my spine. "How may I help you?" I repeated, coughing to avoid choking on my breath at the retaliation in his stern tone.

"We require your services." Silence. Wow, this guy obviously didn't like talking much.

I shifted the phone to another ear, raising a brow at the caution in his tone. "Can you please specify?" Holding the phone between my ear and my shoulder, I sat back down, chair squealing in protest. Digits flew across the keyboard as I brought up a new page, waiting for his answer and contemplating tracing his call.

"Excuse me for a moment." My heart skipped a beat, eyes trailing over the screen nervously. My name? I didn't simply throw my name around like candy with a résumé strung overhead saying, 'Pick me, pick me!'

I chewed on my lower lip, silently cursing my past stupidity. Maybe I hadn't completely cleared my name off the internet?

"Acknowledged," I murmured, rather late in reply, mind far from the subject as I began feeding the CMD commands. "Washington DC," I whispered involuntarily, and accidentally catching the attention of the caller.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing," I stuttered, shaking my head slightly and transferring the phone back to my hand. "What do you want?"

"Were you or your residential partner attempting to bring down local military defense firewalls in the last seven months?" I cringed, freezing up cold. Oh man, if the government got ahold of my actions, I was toast. Found guilty: I had indeed tried to work my way through the firewall.

A friend of mine, Astade Leksova, had suggested I check out some of the military files if I wanted to know more about the 'terrorist attack' in Los Angeles. So I did, and I didn't get far before my computer crashed, leaving my IP for anyone to track. Since then I've built up my own firewalls, sliding the assorted viruses and text files in between the lure the nosy away.

Being the creature of logic I was, I never did believe her crazed rants on extraterrestrial beings "claiming the populace of Earth for science experiments" or "using them as slaves." I couldn't help but be curious from time to time, due to the way the military had so soundly guarded that singular documentation. Nonetheless, I preferred a terrorist attack over aliens or voodoo.

However, I never did get the information I really wanted. I was an idiot, really, thinking I could take on a task that big. But despite how much I had dreaded them tracking me, they never did try and contact - until just now. Though I had to ask myself: Why?

"I beg your pardon?" My heart was probably beating heavily - I didn't have the patience or clarity of thought to tell, mine on preoccupied overdrive. I leaned forward and shoved the chair back a tad to stand up again. "What does it matter to the likes of you?" My eyes narrowed. None of this was relevant, and none of it made much sense. "Who the hell are you?"

The line went quiet, before a crackling signaled the man had hung up.

"What did they want?" Tiffany inquired curiously, cocking her head to one side with a tempest excitement filling her gaze. It soon faded to worry when I threw the phone on the floor with a loud clang.

"Probably some agent getting on my fat rump again about the stupid firewall incident." Striding over to Tiffany, I fell flat on my face, grumbling into the sheets. "The first guy offered me too many credits to be true. I should've hung up then."

I was subtly frightened, to be completely honest.

"Which firewall incident?" There were indeed more, but not as serious as the military. I assumed the younger girl looked rather baffled at the time. "Hon, get your face out of the bedspread and tell me what's wrong," Tiffany murmured softly, rolling me over and pushing me into a sitting posture. "How many credits did they offer?"

"Doesn't matter," I chuckled grimly, glancing out the window and then back to the phone. "They were calling from Washington DC. I usually don't get calls from anywhere else but here."

"And yet, your newest client is from LA."

"Something feels - off." I shrugged, averting my gaze back to the window. Snorting, I concluded, "When life gives you lemons, you'd best be sure to use them before they rot, or shove them up a jerk's gaping anus."

Tiffany sputtered indifferently, gaze softened by now. We both had our moments, and she was particularly soft when it came to situations such as these. She was really the only one I could spill my confusing emotions to, violent and windy or otherwise. "Cheer up. I'll be right back, gonna go grab some chow." By chow, she obviously meant cookies and Coca Cola. As she left the room, I was concealed in a shrouding silence yet again, slowly moving over to the computer to check my emails one last time.

Sure enough, a new email. Eagerly scooting my chair forward and leaning in, I clicked the message - and forced myself to preform a double-take. "Soundwave." There was no source, no address, just the word "Soundwave" written on the topic. Was it a virus? I scrolled down a tad, and looked at the screen.

… Nothing. The message box was blank, and I blinked in surprise, pulling open the source code and growling. What I saw made my fowl demeanor even worse: the entire page was flooded with foreign symbols, and my mind was spinning as I tried to locate the URLs or any other encrypted piece of information in the hypertext markup. Nothing!

"Damn it, you stupid son of a mainframe!" I shouted to no-one, pulling on my hair and grimacing at the thought of my rival-since-birth - or so to speak - getting into my files and stealing my stuff that I had worked my ass off for. "No - nonono!"

Security windows began to pop up all over my screen, the incessant beeping that accompanied them forcing me to cover my ears and frown. Nononono!

Acting quickly, I tried my best to ignore the digital banshees shrieking at me from my desktop, trying several key commands, and ending by pressing "escape." Alt-F4. Escape. Escape. Escape. However, my actions did nothing to stop the onslaught, and the documents began to rewind in their state of reconstruction, the computer giving one last, alien shriek before the monitor fizzled out.

Slapping my palms on the desk, I jumped back, narrowly avoiding the sparks that sprayed out onto the carpet with a little flicker. Biting my lower lip, I began to stomp on the small, wannabe-flames, clumsily dancing as I leapt around. When I was sure they weren't going to burn the tiny apartment down, I reached back and swatted the PC tower over, promptly unplugging the monitor, tower, and printer swiftly.

"Holy - Alex, what happened?" The tall, tank-top-and-short-shorts-donning young teenager stood gawking in my doorway, a milk-jug in one hand and a piece of celery in the other. If I hadn't been so dismayed, I may have burst out laughing, but at that moment, I simply resorted to grumbling incoherently.

"Something stole the documents I was downloading. Stupid emails - I really need to learn how to upgrade my firewalls for that stuff, ugh." Shaking my head, I hefted the tower over one shoulder, dangling the monitor by its cords in my free hand and stalking past Tiffany in a beeline for the living room. The white, bumpy tiles felt rather soothing against bare feet, the grit collected from a recent sanding gathering between my toes as I sauntered along.

Dang, the computer was heavier than I last remembered. Huffing, I turned a corner, wincing as the black monitor thumped heavily into the brown wallpaper and promptly tore a hole in it. Not wanting to dent the doorway next, I pulled it closer to my side, almost crashing over as the tower teetered precariously overhead.

At last, viola: the living room. Massive windows decked the space that we used as an entertainment room, leading out to the balcony that overlooked Madison Park and the nearby piers. The walls were rather bland, with a few framed pieces of artwork Tiffany had done making up for the emptiness, along with a couple of side-lamps hanging adjacent to the kitchen area.

You see, however small the room we're burdened with, we manage to fit all our crap in there. It's quite fascinating. Bookshelves here and there; a small slab of one of the ceiling tiles propped up in the corner - long story for a rainy day; DVD's on the floor stacked up against the window; homework piled up by the ragged old piece of crap we call a couch; and then the basics. On the fuzzy, white, wrapper-littered carpet sat a television - and a coffee table, with a bag of Doritos perched innocently on the soda-stained oak, facing me with an almost irresistible look.

"Not today," I muttered, turning ruefully away from the chips and heading for the sliding-glass door that lead out to the balcony with a swish of grey cargo pants sweeping across the dirtied floor. We ate healthy, most of the time, but the junk food magically made its way into our digestive systems whenever it felt like it. Screw sentient chips, I never did try and guess where they came from.

That always brought back the jealousy of Tiffany having a faster metabolism than myself. She could eat and eat and eat and not gain a pound, and I was struggling to lose an ugly piece of pudge on my lower stomach that simply wouldn't go away. I had lost a lot of weight since I had begun parkour training, but that hadn't affected the "signature spot" in the least.

How irritating.

Passing by the cement island that separated the kitchen space from the dining area, I pattered over to the door, using my foot to kick the latch up and then shifting to my free elbow to shove it open. We had broken our screen door some time ago, so I didn't need to worry about that as I exited onto the "porch," setting the junk down and stretching my back out.

It was then I took in the view I had, relishing how lucky I was to have had such a nice little apartment for the price I had to pay. I mean, I got all my money from hacking, and Tiffany had yet to fill out a resume, but we had close friends to thank for our rent. Our friends actually owned the property, and when they heard about my little "accident" - again, a long story for another day, they had given us the property for a small fee. This included a seven year contract of cleaning up their office and house. Not bad.

Shaking my head with a bumbled murmur of appreciation, I moved over to the railing, looking out over the waterfront and smiling with my eyes closed. The salty air whipped my short hair around like a ragdoll's locks, toying with my loose clothing and sweeping a piece of paper out onto the balcony with it.

The moment it hit my foot and wrapped itself around my ankle, I looked down with a frown, grabbing it and scrutinizing the print before a horrifying realization dawned upon me.

"Oh… dear." The computer dumping could wait for another day, I had decided, dragging both components back into the house with the paper in my mouth before slamming the sliding door closed and pattering quickly back to my room. Tiffany was sitting on my bed again, eyeing the celery she had chosen grotesquely.

"You okay, now?"

"Uhm, yes and no," I blabbered quickly, shoving the paper in front of her.

Looking around it, she narrowed her blue eyes, blinking. "Yeah, so? Did you not read the last two chapters last night?"

"No I did not," I almost chirped, whimpering and dropping the paper on the floor. We had to read seven of the "To Kill A Mockingbird" chapters that week, and I hadn't even touched the book since I bought it. Ick, school. "Could you please be the most awesome sister in the world by telling me what happened?" I hated reading school assignments with a passion. I could easily overcome fanfictions and other stories in my free time - but school books were the epitome of evil.

"What are you looking at me for?" Her expression dropped into an almost comical frown. "I just used SparkNotes. I haven't touched the book."

Well, crap. That makes two of us. I internally blushed, realizing how bad of an influence I must've been at the moment.

You see, we got a couple A's, mostly B's and a few C's in all of our classes but English. We hated English essays, thus why we failed in a not-so-epic way. We weren't really into the concept of school past what we had done in the past - because we liked our current occupations. But, aforementioned friends-of-the-family that paid our rent told us we must attend in order to fit the bill.

"Okay, you know what - screw the essay. I'll just tell the teacher my computer broke down." No, no that wouldn't work.

"She's gonna tell you that you could've used the library, you know," Tiffany warned, scratching the side of her head absentmindedly. "Okay, why don't you tell her you broke your right hand trying to do a cat-pass in parkour or something?"

No. "Uh, she'd tell the headmaster to take away my PE credits?"

"Just a suggestion." Shrugging, she placed the celery beside her on the bed, flicking it away nonchalantly and unscrewing the lid to the milk jug. Without another thought or flicker of hesitance, she began to down it, completely ignoring the rest of the world in doing so.

"Okay, no! No, we have a problem here!" My yelling obviously startled her, and she instinctively dropped the jug, narrowly catching the plastic container before it hit the floor, resulting in a small slosh of milk landing upon the already-singed carpet. "My gosh!" I snarked, failing to hold back my laughter. "You are such an animal."

We weren't the cleanest of teenagers, either. I mean, I cleaned my room - most of the time. Okay, maybe once every two weeks. But we usually only got around to cleaning the whole apartment itself once a month. And quite frankly, an apartment can get very messy in thirteen days when you have a traceuse and a painter residing there.

I always told myself I'd get around to growing up a bit more, but going from a cleanly, A-grade solitude to a sudden, sister-incapacitated life was really different. I know, I suck at excuses.

"Okay, before you get pissed, I'm gonna go get some towels to clean that up," Tiffany reassured, raising her hands in mock surrender. "Also, we really need to get you out of those rags and into something sexy. Like, tomorrow." Her mouth genuinely pronounced each word with an exaggerated passion.

"I don't have the money right now. And I don't think these are rags," I murmured, frowning with a look of self-pity.

"Who said you needed to have money? CassCass is holding a giant, first-come-first-served thing tomorrow." CassCass was a nickname for an old friend of ours, who's real name is Cassidy Williamson (of which you probably guessed the first part). She's younger than both of us, but very, very street-smart. For an orphan, she makes good cash, and does a good job of avoiding illegal persecution. "She told me there's usually a lot of nice crap there." Those two words in one sentence did not compute in my mind. "All you have to do for admission is bring in seven items in decently-good shape."

"Fine," I concluded. "What do you have in mind?"

"Dunno. I have some old clothes I could bring, and then you bring whatever you don't need anymore that's worth at least ten bucks a piece." Standing up, she waved me off with a dismissive shake of her hand, heading toward the kitchen to do finish I assumed would be grabbing a napkin. The thought of my computer lingered at the back of my mind, but I ignored it for the time being. I wanted to enjoy life for a bit. Life outside the cyberworld.

So there you have it. Two city-girls struggling to keep their grades up, clean their apartment, and simply survive in the big city - each with a knack of their own.

Welcome to the beginning of my story.

Author's Note:

Here we go, Seattle-ward and ready to embark on a mystical adventure of romance and -

Nah. Welcome back, to the people who followed me previously; a new revival is upon us. For those of you who are new to CT (Classified Terminal), thank you very much for taking an interest in my writing.

Much appreciation for all the favorites, reviews, and follows thus far; I look forward to taking this story as far as I can go, and your support provides much incentive!

Edits:

Final edit registered on: 6-22-14 at 15:01. Reason: major error fixes, minor script edit, etcetera.