Author's Note: FINALLY starting a new story arc with this chapter! (Annabelle took longer to apologize to the Autobots than I expected.) :) Hope you enjoy!

School was more boring than ever – I just couldn't focus on my studies, not with thoughts of awesome alien robots running around in my head. I found myself drawing sketches of the Autobots when I should have been writing essays or solving equations. I started to miss assignments, forgetting to write them down because I was too busy daydreaming. I mean, honestly, how could anyone expect me to focus on memorizing Spanish vocabulary when I'd visited the proving grounds the night before to watch Ironhide and Chromia training? How could plain old terran Biology be interesting when Skids and Mudflap spent hours showing me holos of life-forms from distant planets? How could I possibly care about what human leaders were doing when I had Optimus Prime on my speed dial?

When parent-teacher conferences rolled around two months after my birthday, I knew I was toast. I hadn't told my folks about my plummeting grades, so they got the news from my teachers' mouths while I shrunk down deeper into the chair after each interview. By the time we left the building, my parents were giving me the silent treatment. 'I may as well have Ironhide shoot me now,' I thought as I climbed into the back of Mom's minivan. (That was the one saving grace of the night – Ironhide and the rest of the Autobots didn't know. Yet. I didn't want to think about what their reactions would be.)

When we turned down the long driveway to home, I mumbled, "Say something?"

"Like what?" Dad demanded. "That we're disappointed in you?"

"That we're going to ground you from the Autobots?" Mom threatened. "Your grades started taking a nosedive exactly when Ironhide got hurt."

I miserably sunk down into the seat, unable to offer any real defense for my actions. When we pulled into the garage, I was half-tempted to just stay in the minivan and mope.

"Go to your room, Annabelle," Dad ordered. "Your mother and I have a few things we need to discuss."

"Yeah," I grumbled, sulking past them toward the stairs, "like my life sentence." I locked the bedroom door behind me and – after hemming and hawing for a moment – pulled out my phone. I probably wouldn't have the privilege of using it again for a while.

To Ironhide, I sent, //promise u luv me?//

//Of course.//

//im failing geo n bio//

//WHAT?!//

//yeah folks r mad//

//What happened? You're sharper than half us 'bots.//

I hesitated. Maybe I should just call him, but then Mom and Dad would hear me and think to take my phone away all the sooner. //cant focus not since my bday//

It was a couple of minutes before he answered. //We're distracting you.//

//not ur fault//

//It's not yours either. I'll talk to your folks.//

//thx hide ur the best//

//lol No, that'd be Optimus. You'll probably not like the solution we come to, though. Prowl will be an exacting tutor.//

I swore under my breath. //pit no//

//LOL Slag yes. You've got to pull those grades up, and I know your dad. He'll brig you in your room until you turn things around. You want to be able to see us still or not?//

Gritting my teeth, I grudgingly sent, //yes//

//Well, then, you'll have to see us on our terms. You think your teachers are demanding? None of THEM has ever been a drill sergeant like me.//

What had I gotten myself into?

"Annabelle!"

I sent off one last text. //tattler// Tossing my phone on my bed, I went to the top of the stairs. "Yeah?"

"Get down here." It was Dad's not-happy voice. The same tone of voice I imagined him using right before he blew the spark out of a Decepticon.

Trying to look appropriately penitent, I walked into the living room where Dad was waiting. Mom was in the kitchen talking on her phone – to an Autobot, I assumed.

"I don't like you going behind my back," Dad growled.

"I didn't, I promise," I answered, ducking my head a little. "I just told 'Hide I was in trouble and why."

He glowered at me so angrily I felt like my heart was breaking. In clipped, Colonel Lennox tones, he said, "I'm beginning to regret ever letting you get clearance."

Tears welled up in my eyes. "Please, Dad. Don't."

"I don't know you anymore, Annabelle. I can understand that learning the truth about them threw you for a loop. I understand you not liking your designation of Spitlet. But that's all Autobot stuff. I'm your dad and three months ago you would have come to me for help. Why in the name of all that's holy did I have to find out from your teachers that you're struggling in school? It's like you don't trust me anymore."

Crossing to him in two steps, I threw my arms around his ribs. "Of course I trust you! I was just embarrassed and I didn't want to get in trouble."

He sighed, holding me tightly. "But if I don't know you're in trouble, how can I help you?"

He had a point. "Sorry," I mumbled.

"And now 'Hide has organized the universe's best fighting force into a tutor rotation for you. Ratchet for bio, Prowl for geometry, Arcee for Spanish…He's even roped Prime into helping you with world history. Optimus Prime playing tutor for my daughter. I could have helped you with most of that, Annabelle. All you had to do was ask."

And he was right – one hundred percent right.

Softly, he said, "I just feel like I'm losing you."

"Never." I lifted my head and met his wounded gaze. "I'll call 'Hide right now. What subject do you want to tutor me in? Or I could tell him that I don't need any of them to…"

He chuckled ruefully. "I don't know any Spanish."

"Okay. I'll keep Arcee for that."

"And Ratchet will be able to tell you more about terran biology than any human scientist alive."

Now he was the one moping and it mildly irritated me. I was the teenager – I was the one who was supposed to have the monopoly on angsty. "Well, pick one, Dad. Or several."

"The 'bots can teach you better than I could," he admitted.

"But that's not the point. I slighted you and I'm trying to make it better. Let me? Please?"

He hugged me tightly again. "You have your mother's insight, you know that? She's brilliant that way. Fine. I'll teach you about world history and let Optimus Prime worry about other things."

"Thank you." And I just rested my head on his chest for a long minute, remembering again why I loved him so much. He loved me first – and last.

…

Would you believe that Skids and Mudflap ended up as my English tutors? My jaw hit the floor when they showed up with Mudflap holding the Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare in his hands.

"Wha?" Skids demanded reading my expression. "Ya don' think we's stupid, do ya?

"Um…" I hedged, trying to find a diplomatic way to handle this. "Shakespeare?"

And then in a perfect mimic of Johnston's accent, Skids quoted, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Reverting back to his normal speech, he added, "We's got Cybertronian processors for brains, squishy! We's can compute circles 'round ya!"

"Ya think it easy ta talk like dis?" Mudflap laughed. "Any 'bot can learn English. Dis an artform."

"Yeah," Skids agreed. "An' it drive Ratchet nuts."

…

The second week in November, I was called out of Spanish and brought to the principal's office, and so naturally I thought it was related to my grades. 'Hide was right that Prowl was a tough tutor, but he had nothing on Ratchet and bio. I got a hundred percent on my bio test the day before and I wondered if that's why I was being summoned to the principal now – because they thought I cheated.

But that wasn't it at all. There were two military police officers waiting for me. "What's going on?" I wondered.

"We'll need you to come with us, Miss Lennox," one of the MP's said.

I looked at the school secretary, but she just nodded. "They have the proper paperwork. I've excused you from your classes for the rest of the day."

Taking a deep breath, I looked from one burly, intimidating soldier to the other. "Okay, then. I guess I'm going with you."

As we rode in the unmarked car toward the base, a memory from a backyard football game not even a year ago came to mind. Skids and Mudflap were going on about how witty one of their story characters was under interrogation, and Hyde had overheard us.

"Don't listen to a word of that slag, Spitlet," he'd said, interrupting them. "If you're ever captured by the enemy, use your head not your mouth. Don't say anything you don't have to, and pay close attention. They'll never directly ask the question they want answered – they'll lead you to it by a noose of almost-innocent questions. If you're gonna say anything, address it to the real question, not the noose."

Whatever was going on, they weren't hauling me to base under armed escort because of bad grades. This had something to do with the Autobots or Dad. Maybe both. And whatever was going down wasn't friendly toward the people I loved. I was just a pawn then, stuck in the middle like before, too old to stay out of the thick of things anymore but too young to do any good. Suddenly remembering how I'd helped with Shockwave's pellets, I fought my sly smirk as I glanced at the soldier beside me. That's what you think.

We entered an office building and the MP's escorted down a corridor to our left. Dad burst into the other end of the hallway, bearing down on my escort. "What the hell is going on here?"

"I just had a few questions for Miss Lennox," a plain-clothes man said, emerging from the door the guard had just opened.

"Mr. Marshall. What is this about?"

That would make him Senatorial Liaison Joe Marshall, and I instantly hated him. 'Liaison' was a dirty word in the world I grew up in.

Marshall quipped back, "Your reports the first three weeks after she received security clearance, that's what this is about. They are…inconsistent, and we want answers."

Dad's eyes hardened as he stared down the shorter man. (Of course, most men were shorter than him.) "She is my daughter and a minor. You have no right…"

Marshall extended a piece of paper to my dad. "I have every right under the compromise we negotiated fourteen years ago. She's old enough for clearance, which makes her old enough for questioning."

Dad frowned, and I thought hard. Of course he would have had to file reports about me. And I was a brat for those two and a half weeks…was the man digging for dirt on the Autobots? Or maybe he was trying to get Dad discredited – his own daughter reacting badly to the aliens?

"You're not questioning her alone," Dad said flatly.

"I'll have them as witnesses," Marshall answered, tipping his chin at the men on either side of me. Yeah, because armed guards were obviously neutral witnesses.

"You're treating her like a criminal."

"We're doing this for her own protection," Marshall snapped back.

"Could another woman be in there?" I asked quietly.

Marshall looked at me sharply and then his expression melted to kind indulgence. "If that will make you feel safer, Miss Lennox, of course."

"And it'll be videotaped, right?" I asked, a sudden idea occurring to me. After all, no one could hack like an Autobot, and Jolt was wicked-good even for them. If anything in that room was linked to the servers, they'd know.

"Of course, Miss. You have nothing to fear. We just want you to ask you a few questions."

Translation: we're twisting a noose.

I took a deep, steadying breath. "Okay, then." It wasn't really like I had much of a choice, anyway. I unslung my backpack and pulled out my cell phone. "I probably should leave this here, though, huh."

Dad nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, that would be a good idea."

With the speed only attainable by teenagers, I shot off a quick text to Ironhide. //c ths// Handing the phone to my dad and putting my backpack on again, I smiled bravely and then walked into the lion's den. I heard the phone chime, announcing a reply, as the door closed behind me.