Introduction: This happens during Chapter 17 of Many Voices. Just some back to school stuff. Some of these kids did not make the faculty/administration very happy last term.

Wheeljack was not expecting to get called to the headmaster's office during his very first class. He was pretty sure he hadn't blown anything up yet—at least nothing they'd notice. Maybe this was about something from the end of last term. Maybe he'd left something running in his room and it had gone wrong over the break.

That sort of thing happened sometimes. It wasn't his fault.

He left the classroom and walked down the familiar hallway. He could calculate the fastest route to the headmaster's office in a tenth of an astrosecond, he'd walked this way so many times.

He reached up to adjust his shoulder bag and found it wasn't there, of course. You were supposed to carry everything around in your subspace once you had subspace. Subspace was fun. Wheeljack had done lots of cool experiments using it over the break. But he still wasn't quite used to it.

He noticed a ceiling light flickering, and contemplated what might be wrong with it, and how he could fix it… and also some interesting ways he could modify it. He had always liked taking things apart and putting them back together so they were different. Normally his version was more exciting than the original. Sometimes it was much more exciting.

Occasionally, it was too exciting.

He had a pretty powerful bomb in his subspace that had been about to explode before he'd shoved it in there. Items didn't experience time while in subspace, so he'd probably be ok, so long as he didn't accidentally access it when he was trying to pull something else out.

He reached the headmaster's office and paused for a moment before hitting the entry request button. The door slid open after an astrosecond and he walked in.

"Good orn, Wheeljack."

"I honestly, honestly don't know what I've done this time," Wheeljack said as he sat on the chair across the desk from the headmaster. "I was only in my room for half a breem before class, and there was nothing on fire in there, really. And if this is about the stuff missing from the chemistry supply closet, I promise it wasn't me, I put everything back where I found it."

The Headmaster looked at him.

"Uh… it's not about the chemistry supply closet, is it?"

"No," the headmaster said, "But maybe it's time to have one of the teachers inventory it to make sure everything's there."

Oops. "Um, in any case…"

"You'd like to know why you're here."

"Yes. That," Wheeljack said.

"If you must know, I called you here because I wanted to try and work out an agreement so you aren't in detention all term."

"Really?" Wheeljack couldn't believe his luck.

"Yes. We've noticed it doesn't do much to discourage you."

"I tried to tell you that," Wheeljack said. Detention just gave him a whole joor in which to be bored, and when he was bored, he started thinking about interesting things he could try to build.

"Yes, you've proven your point," the headmaster said. "We—your other teachers and I—still aren't entirely decided about what to do concerning this problem, but I thought I'd ask for your input."

"Ok," Wheeljack said.

"It's good that you like to build things, and we don't want to ask you to stop completely, but you need to be more careful with what you do, and we want to help you learn to be more careful."

He wasn't always sure what mecha meant by that. Careful was a relative term. But he supposed they kind of had a point. Only about half of the explosions that happened around him were intentional.

"If you're willing to work with us, we can start with a clean slate and we won't carry any punishment over from last term."

That was good.

"In return, we want to ask you not to do any experiments without supervision. Some of the science teachers have graciously volunteered to take turns letting you spend time in their offices after school, working on your own projects."

Wheel jack wasn't so sure about that. What if he woke up in the middle of the off-cycle with an idea? And what about… "But… how long do teachers spend in their offices after school?"

"You'll have to talk to them about that, and negotiate, but I'm sure some of them will be interested in what you're doing and willing to stay for several joors."

"Ok," Wheeljack said, still not quite comfortable with this idea.

"Is this sounding reasonable to you?"

"Well… I guess."

"I don't even want you to take the materials for your projects outside of the teachers' offices. We'll have the teachers move them back and forth, or something like that."

"Wouldn't that be kind of inconvenient?"

"And if this doesn't work, if you can't control yourself and avoid blowing things up—especially during classes or in the student wing where you could seriously hurt someone—we'll have to start considering whether we can afford to let you stay at the school or not."

They were thinking of expelling him.

"Are you willing to try this? Some of the teachers didn't want to give you this chance."

Wheeljack hesitated, then nodded. "I'll try," he said. "But I get ideas for stuff all the time." He already had a whole bunch saved up for after school this orn.

"I'd like you to start by giving me everything you have in your subspace besides the materials you need for your classes. I'll have it taken to Osmosis's office, and you can use it as soon as you get there. Next orn, Cablereach will have it."

"But…"

"This is part of the deal. You can't have the materials you use to make things explode with you during class or over the off-cycle."

"Some of it's just every-orn stuff."

"I don't care."

Ok. Wheeljack didn't want to get expelled. He started pulling things out of his subspace. Various chemicals in mismatched containers, bits of metal, data chips, crystals, mechanical parts, a blow torch, other tools, pieces a datapad he'd taken apart, and some small odds and ends he'd collected...

It took him almost a full breem to empty his subspace pockets-another nice thing about subspace was that he could carry around so much more stuff now.

"Is…" the headmaster said, staring at the substantial pile of equipment and materials on his desk. "Is that all?"

Wheeljack thought about that live bomb he still had in subspace. That might not make a very good impression.

"Yep," he said. "That's all."

The headmaster looked at him like he didn't quite believe it, but then sighed and shook his helm. "Well, if that's all, you can go now."

"Thanks," Wheeljack said and left his office.

He felt very uncertain about this. It was nice that he didn't have to go to detention anymore, but this was almost worse... Maybe it would be all right, though. He did get along pretty well with most of the science teachers. And if he had an idea that just couldn't wait, he'd find a way. He did still had plenty of stuff for experiments stashed in his room.

this was going to be an interesting term.

"Welcome back."

"Thanks. Glad ta be here."

Silence fell, thick and full of questions and guilt and expectations. Jazz didn't want to be the first one to talk.

"I am somewhat concerned about your actions of last term," Master Yoketron said. "But it is not my place to judge you or your friends. I will say, though, that I sincerely hope I don't hear of any further incidents like that this term."

Jazz looked up. "You're still gonna teach me?"

"Well, yes," Yoketron said. "I won't give up on you just because you've made some wrong choices. From the way you asked that question, I can tell you are remorseful."

Sort of. Probably not remorseful enough. Jazz certainly wasn't going to turn around and apologize to anyone, or stop hanging out with Verdict and Motormaster. He didn't necessarily like what they did, but ruling the school had been kind of a fun feeling.

Of course, that had ended when that new mech had showed up, and gotten in their way. And then there was the fact that Soundwave could read minds, which was kind of a scary secret to know. Jazz didn't like the idea of exposing him. He didn't know what would happen, but he didn't want to risk having anymech's death on his conscious.

Part of him hoped the whole thing would blow over, and Searchlight would keep his helm down and Verdict would just avoid Soundwave like had had for the last week of the previous term. And then there was another part of him that wanted to try and prove the mind-reading thing, just to see if he could do it. And he wanted to help his friends take back the school, because that might be an interesting challenge too. They'd lost a lot of respect last term, and they'd have to do something new to earn it back. And staying out of trouble was going to be even more of a challenge too, which would make it more fun.

"Jazz?"

"Yeah," Jazz said. "I do kind of wish that hadn't happened. But I never hurt anymech… personally, at least."

"Hmm," Yoketron said. "I suggest you keep it that way. I am not training you so that you can hurt anymech."

"I understand that."

"I believe you do, but I'm not so certain about your friends."

"I thought ya said ya weren't going ta judge them."

Yoketron was silent for a moment. "I did. My apologies. Permit me to make one judgment, though."

Jazz nodded slightly.

"You are better than you give yourself credit for, young mech. And you can be better than you have been in the past. In fact, I expect you to be better."

So did the rest of the world. For whatever reason Jazz couldn't fathom, mecha believed in him. Cablereach, Yoketron, Vibes… but Vibes had also believed in Jazz's mech creator, and that hadn't turned out so well. "Ok."

"Shall we begin?"

Notes:

1. Yes, Yoketron teaches circuit-su classes at their school (and also has a few private students). Don't ask him why he's decided to teach high school. He'd probably just say something cryptic and sneak away while you were trying to figure out what in the world he was talking about.

2. I feel like Jazz and Wheeljack have both been kind of difficult characters for me to portray, especially Wheeljack for some reason. But I keep trying :) They will each get their very own side story, by the way, later on.