Prologue
"There it is!" Matt cried, holding up his skwak so his friends could see what he was approaching on the path ahead. "The Transformatron."
Jackie looked up from her device to see the rear of the machine in the distance. "I see it!" She quickened her pace, only to see Matt and Inez approaching from the other direction and being stopped by Buzz and Delete. The lanky bot shot out his arms, restraining her two friends in their coils.
"Oh little Earth brat!" the robot sang, looking around for the one who would complete his set. "Come out, come out wherever you are!"
Thinking fast, Jackie dove behind the giant machine, away from the gaze of the henchmen. She could feel the arid ground and its jagged pebbles underneath her palms as she landed hard on the ground of her hiding place. The grunts of her friends trying to get free and shouting directions at her turned into muffled screams as she guessed one of the bots must have tied something around their mouths.
The girl shut her eyes and did her best to stay quiet and relax her breathing. She needed to find the right moment to grab the NIC and shut down the machine, and quick. Hacker was long gone having turned himself into a Quetzalcoatlus, a giant flying robotic dinosaur or reptile or whatever it was. The point was that it was absolutely huge and heading straight towards Control Central. Jackie had seen him herself as she and her friends were triangulating on the location of the machine.
For months the Cybervillain had been intent on rebuilding this machine, going so far as to completely tear down Slider and Coop's garage to retrieve the NIC. As a result Motherboard had taken the chip into custody and attempted to dispose of it, only for Digit to be intercepted while on his way to the blackhole. Ever since he'd briefly taken over Cyberspace by duping the cybersquad with a fake Encryptor Chip, Hacker had been executing one close call after another in an attempt to regain control. There were days Jackie feared he'd succeed, or worse, find his way to Earth and wreak untold havoc on everything she cared about.
Opening her eyes again, she gathered up her courage and peered out from behind the machine. Buzz and Delete had given up searching the clearing, but were still standing in wait for her to show herself. If only she could get a view of the front of the machine so she could see where the NIC was and grab it without ever coming out of hiding. But there was also the matter of distracting the bots so she could rescue her friends.
She pulled her head back quickly as Delete seemed to turn in her direction. Confident he hadn't seen her, she waited a moment before slowly peering out again. There had been something she'd noticed in the moments before that she needed to check.
Yes, it was as she'd suspected, she could actually see the reflection of the front of the machine in Delete's polished cylindrical body. There was no NIC, but if she could just scoot over to the other side for a look, she might be able to catch a glimpse.
As quietly as she could, Jackie crept towards the other side of the Transformatron and looked again. Any image she could see was distorted, but she thought she could just make out the shape of the green card sticking out of a disc port. All she needed to do was remove it and any active transformations would be reversed.
Waiting for the two henchmen to turn away, she reached around the width of the machine and felt around for the card. It didn't take long for her to take hold of it and give it a hard yank only to find it wouldn't budge! Desperate, she forewent her hiding place and started pulling harder, not caring whether Buzz and Delete saw her. She could probably outrun the two of them anyhow if it came down to it.
"Found ya!" Delete cried with glee as Buzz made a beeline to tackle her. With a third pull, this time throwing nearly her entire body weight into it, she managed to get the chip out, losing her balance and landing on her back in the dirt. As the two bots descended on her, she did the only thing she could think to do and flung the NIC towards the forest of bare brambles like a frisbee. The bots' eyes widened as both scrambled to retrieve their boss's macguffin.
"I got it!"
"No, no, me!"
In his haste, Delete let go of Matt and Inez to reach for the NIC. He stretched out his arms and started to run, colliding with Buzz and accidentally pushing over the machine as they crashed into it. Seeing that they were incapacitated for the moment, Matt ran towards the brambles to retrieve the NIC while the girls watched to make sure the two henchmen didn't try and go after him. As they waited for him to return, Jackie spotted a portal appear behind them. This wasn't over. She was positive Hacker had already made it to Control Central and transformed or not there was still him left to deal with.
Chapter One
3 months later...
Jackie curled up on the bed, trying to wipe her puffy and reddened face dry of the tears that had been running down all day. She bunched her comforter up into a ball and brought it close to her chest to hug. It had been a, in short, chaotic few months and she had just about come to her breaking point. Her first year of high school had started with her and her mother getting the news that her father had passed. He'd been in the air force, deployed when Jackie was just eleven. She had been so proud of him, excited for him to come back and tell her all about how he took down the bad guys. That was before she herself started fighting bad guys. Even when it was just her and her mother, she had been happy. Keeping in contact with her dad through letters and waiting for news of when he'd finally be able to come home.
And three months ago he had. At the time there had been a funeral with her father's friends from the military and superiors. She had just returned from another, a smaller, private family affair attended by her father's extended family from the south. For the first few weeks after they'd gotten the news, her mother had been almost inconsolable, and when she'd finally begun to pick herself up again, it was just to work. It was just the two of them now, after all. Though sometimes it felt to Jackie like she was on her own. Between being the perfect student, perfect gymnast, perfect pianist, perfect daughter, she just felt tired.
Tomorrow was Sunday and between her and her mother visiting the funeral home and all her other after school obligations, she hadn't even had a chance to look at her weekend assignments. She doubted she'd feel better in the morning either. What she really needed was some time to herself otherwise she'd just spend the whole day sulking around her room.
After washing her face at the bathroom sink, she returned to her room and sat down at the computer. Perched atop the screen was what appeared to be a webcam. It was actually something Dr. Marbles had made and gifted to her, a direct link to Motherboard's portal system in Cyberspace so she could come and go as she pleased. It was late at night and she didn't want to disturb her friends who were probably already asleep. It wasn't as if Motherboard was calling them for something important anyways.
Double clicking the icon of a portal on her desktop opened up a black pop up which quickly filled with dozens of lines of green text as the program activated. She got up from her chair and gave the lens of the webcam a twist until a laser shot out of it. Taking a step back, she watched as a portal took shape in her bedroom, the purple energy growing in size until it was big enough to pull her in.
After a familiar tumble through the vacuum she'd come to know as Motherboard's domain, the place where the cyber ruler herself resided, she landed in the audience chamber of Control Central. The usual lights that filled the room had been dimmed. It looked like everyone in Cyberspace had put on sleep mode for the night. Probably for the best since she didn't really feel like talking to anyone at the moment. Instead she headed for the kitchen, hoping she could just sit there for a few hours and make herself a little snack while she decompressed.
The kitchen at Control Central had always reminded Jackie of one of those office break rooms she'd seen on TV. It had all the essentials, but was much more bare bones than what one would expect from the ruler of the Cyberuniverse. Then again, it wasn't as if Motherboard herself used it much. Or at all. One glance at the plethora and variety of kitchen utensils strung about said that this was Digit's domain. Inside the refrigerator were fruits and vegetables of every variety, some that Jackie didn't even recognize though she'd been coming to Cyberspace for years now. The cybird prided himself on making almost every meal completely from scratch meaning the only ready to eat thing Jackie could find was a carton of yogurt.
The packaging caused her to make a face. Goat milk yogurt? She'd never heard of such a thing. And what kind of flavor was butter pecan? Still, it was the only thing she could dig up and the only thing that might take her mind off her mental exhaustion. She peeled back the foil top and absent-mindedly started to eat while letting her thoughts wander, enjoying the ambience of Control Central after hours. She must have fallen asleep or been close to as she felt herself jump all of a sudden as footsteps could be heard echoing from somewhere down the long hallway.
Although the sound of the metallic clanging caused her to feel slightly uneasy, she didn't attempt to move from her seat. She had always felt safe in Control Central, under the watchful eye of Motherboard, if nowhere else in the world. Even as the footsteps appeared to draw closer she didn't move from her seat and it wasn't until the sliding doors parted that she even looked up from her midnight snack. When she did, what she saw nearly caused her spoon to fall from her gaping jaws.
Jackie didn't know whether to speak up or stay silent and hope he didn't notice her. She didn't exactly feel like starting a conversation, least of all with him. Deciding to shrink into her shoulders and keep her eyes fixed on her yogurt, she watched as the borg shuffled his way up to the refrigerator and opened it. He seemed to be looking for something in particular as he started digging around in the back and opening the drawers at the bottom. The ticking of the wall clock over Jackie's head sounded like the footsteps of the executioner as he approached to fetch her for the block. Like an owl in the night, the borg's head slowly craned towards the presence she sensed in the room, meeting her gaze with the intent of seizing an elusive piece of prey.
"That was mine!" he spat as he snatched up the already empty yogurt container. "Don't you Earth brats have your own universe to infest? Who gave you permission to come here to steal from me in the middle of the night?"
"It's not like it was labeled," Jackie muttered, the spoon still dangling apathetically from her teeth. With everything that had been on her mind lately, she hadn't even thought of running into the so-called ex-cybervillain as a possibility.
When the Transformatron's effects had worn off, he'd crash landed through the glass dome that shielded the control room and onto the walkway leading up to Motherboard's monitor. With his internal hardware badly damaged and no way of escaping, the borg reluctantly issued his surrender, after which the Ruler of Cyberspace had decided to keep him imprisoned to prevent him from causing further trouble. He had long since been patched up but remained confined to Control Central. This was the first Jackie had even seen of him in so many months.
"I wasn't aware I had to label things in my own fridge!" he sneered. Despite Motherboard having officially declared him as no longer a threat to the Cyberuniverse, he looked and acted much the same as ever. Mean and green. Although he'd switched his cape out for a dark red bathrobe.
"Motherboard's refrigerator," Jackie corrected, folding her arms and refusing to budge an inch.
"Right. Like she uses it all the time."
Before Jackie could think of a clever retort she heard a loud metallic pop, signaling that the lights of the audience chamber had been switched on. Not long after, a familiar voice was heard blasting through the corridors. "Hacker!"
The ex-villain's shoulders tensed as he grumbled something under his breath. Jackie couldn't help flash a smug smile and offer a little wave as she watched him storm towards the door. To her surprise, he stopped as soon as they slid open. "Why don't you come in here yourself?!" he shouted, before turning back to the kitchen abruptly. This prompted Jackie to follow his gaze which seemed to fall on a small monitor which hung from the ceiling at one corner of the room. The screen powered on, displaying the image of the cyber ruler herself.
She looked better now. Healthy. Her screen, no longer flickering and distorting and her speech coming through strong and coherent. As she stared down at her son, her gaze radiated displeasure. Hacker who barely seemed to flinch just strolled over to the monitor and pulled it down to eye level.
"Do not raise your voice to her. Jackie is a welcome guest at Control Central and Cyberspace."
"Says who?" he spat. "I didn't welcome her. And she clearly hasn't been house trained." He raised the empty yogurt cup up to the screen and started waving it around, making sure Motherboard got a good look at it before flinging it into the trash.
"Hey! I'm not a dog!" the girl protested although neither of the adults in the room seemed to pay mind to her as they continued to talk between themselves.
"If you wished to have any say in that, you shouldn't have spent the last three years systematically attempting to destroy everything you were supposed to protect!" Jackie had rarely seen Motherboard angry and even though she wasn't the target of her ire, the girl couldn't help shrink a little, averting her gaze as she waited for them to finish. The woman's demeanor could get downright frigid when she got serious.
For a moment she wondered if it would have been best for her to leave as it seemed their conversation was getting somewhat personal. Whether it was the worry it would look rude for her to just up and leave, or just downright curiosity to catch the extent of their conversation, she decided to stay put. Her mother had always accused her, albeit affectionately, of being a little gossip. Despite all the time she'd spent in the binary realm, she'd heard very little about the time before Hacker had been banished. With Motherboard having been sick for most of the duration, and afterwards everything that had gone on in her own life, it never really felt like an appropriate time. Although she felt no sympathy for the former cybervillain, she couldn't help but wonder what had gone on between the two.
"Jackie, Matt and Inez have been doing your job since you decided it wasn't worth doing. You abandoned your duty and lost any right to have a say in these matters. As of now, their right here supersedes yours."
"Is that so? When was the last time they checked for disk error? Done a security patch? Upgraded the firewall?" he said, fixing a condescending gaze at the girl.
"Doctor Marbles did that last week," she interjected defensively, unwilling to allow the borg any kind of leg up.
"Not correctly."
"Enough!" The force in the woman's tone silenced the both of them. "I'd hoped the years would have changed you, Hacker."
"How convenient that would be for your cause," the borg retorted, his voice oozing melodrama. "Your virus cured and your wayward son groveling at your feet."
"Do you only have the capability to think of yourself?!"
"Yes." There was not a trace of hesitation in the man's tone as he gave his reply, only the bitterness of his decades long grudge.
Jackie felt a chill run through her at his callousness. Hacker might not have caused trouble since his defeat, but it was plain that chaos and wicked deeds were still on his mind. As upset as she could sometimes get at her own mother for, frankly silly things, she could never imagine having the level of disregard and... hate that Hacker seemed to have. She glanced up at Motherboard to see the cyber ruler had shut her eyes, her forehead pinched just above the brow as she struggled to keep from completely losing her temper.
"If you are utterly incapable of seeing reason, we have nothing left to discuss."
"The first meaningful thing you've said today." He took a step away from the screen before turning his back to the two of them and leaving the way he'd come.
Somehow, Jackie felt she'd overstayed her welcome, although she knew Motherboard would disagree. She'd come to Cyberspace to try and get away from all the stress. Instead she'd found herself in the middle of a situation probably even more unpleasant. This was the opposite of decompressing. With a sigh she started to head towards the door as well.
"Jackie? You don't have to leave." With Hacker's exit, Motherboard's tone and manner had softened considerably.
"It's getting late, so I should be getting to bed. Sorry about—" She gestured towards the empty yogurt container in the trash before glancing out at the hallway, almost feeling that just thinking about him would summon his presence back into the room with further retorts.
"That wasn't your fault. He had it coming."
"Is it really okay for him to hang around like this? As long as he's here, all of Cyberspace is still in danger."
"You let me worry about that," the AI reassured her. "Jackie , if there's anything you want to discuss you shouldn't hold it in. You have friends. Let them be there for you."
Jackie slowly nodded, feeling a bit ridiculous for all the worry she'd caused. Maybe she should call Matt and Inez in the morning. Not to talk about her problems. That was the last thing she wanted to do. But just to hang out. It had been a while since all three of them had been together.
"Thanks Mother B."
"Goodnight, Jackie." The Ruler of Cyberspace vanished from the screen, her image replaced with a swirling pink portal. Jackie could feel the force from within pulling at her. She stepped into it and a moment later was back in her chair in front of the computer. Only about a minute had passed since she'd been gone.
Taking in a breath, Jackie did her best to clear her mind and get ready for bed. Life would always be full of little problems and some not so little. She had to learn to move past them right? She was one of the top students in her school, had a wonderful mother, and great friends. The pain she felt was temporary and it would soon pass.
After arranging her comforters in a neat stack atop the bed, she crawled in and closed her eyes. Sleep was slow to come and she tossed and turned for what must have been at least an hour before she finally dozed off.
The next morning she rose to the sound of her alarm. Still groggy after the restless night she'd had, she'd dragged herself out of bed and to the bathroom to wash up and put on a light layer of makeup. Once she had herself looking presentable, she headed downstairs for breakfast, wondering what she should text Matt and Inez later that day. With their busy lives, they would usually run off to Cyberspace for a few hours as a break, but after the events of the night before, she didn't feel like leaving her own world. It wasn't that she thought the chances of running into Hacker were high, she just didn't want to be reminded of being stuck in the middle of whatever that was.
She'd scarcely set a foot in the kitchen before she noticed she wasn't alone. Letting out a shriek of alarm, she leapt backwards, colliding with the refrigerator as she turned to face the stranger who had appeared at her breakfast table. His face was one she was certain she'd never seen before but there was still something much too familiar about him. What it was became apparent as soon as he spoke.
"Hello, Earth-brat!"
