"give me one good reason not to kill you right here and now"

well with Kerenai having her weapon, and power and also the local police showing up things were settled quickly and the next day Kerenai finally landed at an American airport for the first time in a little over four and a half years

"welcome home Lauren"

"it's great to be home, so your car?"

"nope, your family's car"

"which one?"

"you'll see when we go out"

and so Lauren sees Jazz but doesn't say anything until she's secured her gear

"so Jazz what's up?"

"not much, of course you got the basic debrief over the phone but essentially we've been dealing with one problem after another on Cybertron and couldn't get back to earth until just recently so until Marissa told us about what happened to France after your phone call we had no idea of what had happened to you after you left for France for Musketeer training"

"speaking of which, if you guys ever do something like that to me again I'll use my powers on you guys"

"sorry, it was actually sprung on us as well, we only just had enough time to agree to it before you went over to check out the EDC base before it was destroyed"

"how much time?"

"three hours and during the meeting our guy was in direct contact with the President of France"

"okay guess it was a bit of a surprise for you guys but as my legal guardians, aka my adoptive parents you had the right to say no"

"but we felt it would be good for you, by the way you're going to be tested soon to see which grade you should be in"

"understood, but hopefully I'll just be able to stay with my own grade"

"one can always hope"

"so anything else I should know before we get home?"

"Rodimus, Prowl, and Mirage are missing, Perceptor has some knew research that he's been working on with Wheeljack, which has precluded a lot of explosions, and everything else is same old same old"

"run that by me again, because I thought I heard you say Rodimus, Prowl and Mirage were missing"

"I did Lauren, they went missing about a month ago"

"any leads?"

"none and that has us worried"

"say Jazz, let's stop by the EDC base first, I also need to do some training against a training robot, to see how far I've fallen since captivity"

as it turned out she hadn't fallen as far behind as she had thought, as it turned out due to her torture sessions where she resisted her kicks were about the same level as before and her punches were at level 15. It would take three weeks for Lauren to get back up to speed but she had the time because by the time she got tested it was time for winter break so she would be joining eighth grade after the break. After winter break

"class we have a new student joining us today, this is Lauren Kerenai, now then apparently she's been away from America for a few years due to her family so please join me in welcoming her to our school"

the teachers quickly learned that she was smarter than she let on, but they also discovered that she had hidden scars, loud noises, certain videos and some of the activities done in phys ed revealed some mental scars. Since she was already showing some problems in eighth grade phys ed they decided to warn her about the hand to hand basic training she would get freshman year

"if you want we can talk to your teachers and get you exempt from that portion of the class"

(shakes her head) "no I should be fine by the time freshman year comes around, if you haven't noticed I've been doing better all the time. I just need to continue talking with a Psychiatrist about some issues I'm dealing with"

"very well, but if at any point you feel you're overwhelmed you know you have the option of telling your teacher and he'll work something out"

"I know, thanks"

and so she does indeed improve and things go smoothly for the rest of the school year. That summer she mainly spent it at home getting reacquainted with people and also getting some SEAL training that she had missed, all the other branches and Spec Ops would be done over the summers that she was with them. That fall she became a freshman and the first thing in phys ed was self defense

"now than, if at any point you feel either uncomfortable or if you feel like you hurt yourself doing something, stop and let me know so I can pull you out"

during the summer Lauren also got the much needed counseling she needed to really get past what had happened to her for four years. It helped that she knew it was for a good cause but there were the occasional nightmares that the entire family worked through. Well once she was called up in phys ed she made a request that one would think strange if you didn't know her history which this self defense teacher actually did