Notes: Some dialogue borrowed from Darkness Rising Part 5.

Chapter 3

Gamer's Mind was an interesting skill. Most of the techniques Jack currently had came from skill books. Some, he'd developed on his own or acquired by repeating certain actions (like Dishwashing, which he still couldn't believe was an actual skill). Only two of his abilities came with his power—Gamer's Mind and Gamer's Body. Those two things were what let him live like a video game character. The latter was why he could regain health by eating food or sleeping in a bed, why any injuries he received resulted in a brief moment of pain, but no further effects. The former was a bit more disturbing. It seemed benign enough; the description of the skill said it did three things—allow calm and logical thought, allow a peaceful state of mind, and give immunity to mental status effects.

His powers were affecting his mind, or, to be more accurate, the way he thought and felt had been irreversibly altered months ago. He'd never really thought about until recently, though. When he'd been aboard the Decepticon ship, there had been a few moments where he nearly been overwhelmed by panic and fear, but then those feelings would abruptly disappear.

Jack took in the room while he thought. If he still thought like a normal person, he might try to leave at this point, might have been spooked off by coming so close to death, but he hadn't been normal since the day he woke up with powers. He flirted with death practically every time he opened an Illusion Barrier. And, if he was honest with himself, it might be too late to back out. He wasn't sure about all the capabilities of Cybertronians, but it didn't seem implausible that they could find him based on images captured by their optics. At least one of the Decepticons on the ship had to have gotten a good look at them. Finally, now that he was involved in all this, he wanted to see it through.

While the Autobots puzzled over the pictures Miko had taken of the Decepticon computer. Jack opened up the notes on his phone and started making a wishlist for him to look into when he got home. A better sort of movement skill for sure, teleportation would be ideal, but flight would do. There were techniques that specifically targeted technology, maybe they would be effective against Cybertronians? A more effective shield spell would also be—

"Whatcha doing?"

Jack shoved his phone back into his pocket with a mental note to get some sort of skill or item that would let him know where things were passively. "Mom wanted to know where I am. I need to get back soon."

Miko shot him a look of pure disbelief, "Seriously? Things are getting really interesting around here!"

"'Interesting,' that's one way to put it." He muttered. "It's getting late, though, and it doesn't look like they're going to finish anytime soon."

He looked around for a door. If he could slip out, he could create an empty dungeon and Flash Step away.

In the end, he didn't have to make his own way home. Optimus noticed him slipping out and had the three guardians take their charges home. Once Arcee pulled into the garage, Jack went straight to his room. He ordered some new books and sat down to wait for them.

His thoughts turned to the situation with his mother. It wasn't sustainable. The Autobots were already demanding too much of his time. Today, for instance, should have been spent hunting with her, but Arcee had dragged him off before he was awake enough to protest. If this kept happening, his mom would get suspicious, if she wasn't already. Then there was the Abyss. So far as he could tell, none of the Autobots were part of it. He didn't want that to change, but how could he keep his mother from talking about it without clueing her in? He couldn't.

It was impossible to keep the Abyss from the Autobots and the Autobots from his mom. He'd have to tell one or the other. Once his books arrived, he'd talk to her.

June glanced up from the news to see Jack hovering in the doorway. The last time he'd been this hesitant to talk to her, she'd ended up telling him about the Abyss. What could possibly have happened now? Potential scenarios entered her thoughts, each worse than the last. She was about to get up and confront him when Jack abruptly opened an Illusion Barrier.

"Jack? What's going on?"

"Mom, I need to tell you something. I—the thing is, I also need you to not act on what I tell you."

"Jack, if you've been—"

"Aliens are real."

Now June was even more alarmed. Nonhuman races existed on the earth, but they couldn't live safely outside of Illusion Barriers. Only the most powerful of those beings could exist without fear in the real world, if one of them found Jack…

"Both my powers and the government confirm it."

"The government?"

"Yeah, there's a guy with the Defense Intelligence Agency who's their liaison."

"And how did you get involved with them?"

"Some classmates and I stumbled onto them, and they panicked and brought us back to their base. The liaison was mad about their carelessness, but he said it was fine if we hang around as long as we signed NDAs."

"Alright, so what do you do over there?"

"Not much, honestly. Yesterday, Arcee got me out of bed at like six so we could go over to the base. I spent most of the day just sitting around. One of them is pretty into cartoons."

"You watched cartoons with an alien?"

"Yeah, it was pretty much a waste of the day. It was fun though."

"So, why are you telling me this?"

"I've observed them all, and as far as I can tell, none of them know about the Abyss. I'd like to keep it that way."

She didn't like having to watch what she said in her own house, but... It seemed like Jack was making friends. He hadn't had any close friends since his best friend had moved away when he was small.

"Alright, I'll watch what I say, but, Jack? Be careful, okay?"

"You know me Mom. I'm always careful."

Despite his words to his mother, the next day found Jack wandering through the Giant Sized Array's observatory. As he and his classmates picked their way over the bodies—some of them still had names over their heads, but some of them… didn't—Jack activated Giant's Strength, Troll's Restoration, and Bronze Skin. It probably wouldn't help much (at all) against a Decepticon, but it made Jack feel better.

He shifted nervously while Raf wrested control of the array away from the Decepticons. "What happens when the 'Cons realize they're being punked?" He wondered aloud.

"It's only virtual combat, you know, like online gaming."

"Yeah, Jack, what are the 'Cons going to do? They're probably like a thousand miles away."

When the tentacle Jack's powers identified as belonging to a Soundwave arrived to menace them, Jack couldn't help but feel that they'd jinxed it.

When Miko was knocked back, he dove for the axe just ahead of the appendage. He dodged and leaped forward. A Power Strike to the tentacle severed it. It wasn't a clean cut, and the axe head was mangled, but it caused Soundwave to withdraw from the room.

Jack crossed the room to where Miko was gaping at him. He pulled her up and turned to Raf. "We've got to leave, now."

"Sure, I just need to—"

A loud crash reverberated through the observatory.

"What was that?"

"He must have destroyed the hard-line, the dishes are locked on to Cybertron."

Back at the base, once Optimus and his strike team left, Miko started in on Jack.

"Since when are you so strong?"

"I think I just got lucky and hit a weak spot."

"What are you two talking about?" Ratchet frowned down at them.

"Nothing./Jack cut this guy's tentacle off!"

"Tenta—Soundwave? You all met Soundwave? You hurt Soundwave? How?"

"Luck? Adrenaline? I don't know." Jack shrugged. "Now that I think about it, to be as flexible as they were, wouldn't the plating on them have to be really thin? It's not that surprising that I managed to cut it with an axe."

"Maybe," Ratchet conceded, sounding not at all convinced.

Standing at the railing, watching Ratchet weld another plate to the base of what would presumably be a replacement volcano, Jack felt himself come to a crossroads. On the one hand, their grades were riding on this; on the other hand, if he let the medic do as he pleased, who knew what sort of monstrosities Ratchet would create. Jack's grades, at least, could survive the blow, and this had the potential to be very interesting. He glanced down to where Raf was hovering anxiously, shooting worried looks between his original project and Ratchet's work.

Alright, fine, maybe he could try reining Ratchet in a little.

"Hey, Ratchet? Shouldn't the base be a lot smaller?"

Ratchet narrowed his optics at Jack, "And why do you say that?"

"Well, Raf's going to need to carry it into the classroom, you know? I can help him if it's too heavy, but if it doesn't even fit through the door…"

Ratchet stared at him for a minute, then considered Raf's small frame and the framework for the mechanical volcano. "Maybe."

For a while, the only sounds in the base were those of Ratchet moving around the project. When he moved onto creating an engine, Jack dug out a notebook and took his life in his hands by bothering the medic again.

"So… could explain what you're doing? Please?" He added when Ratchet leveled another look at him. "We don't need to give a presentation, but the teacher is going to ask us some questions."

"Right, well, this is going to be very different from that two-cylinder engine you were working on…"

Ratchet was an interesting lecturer. Usually, he tried his best to ignore the humans when they were in the base or dealt with them brusquely. When faced with an attentive audience, however, he patiently explained the details of what he was doing. He didn't mind when Jack's questions went from practical—"So it functions like a timing gear?"—to simply curious—"Were these common on Cybertron? What were they used for?" Jack kept him talking through Miko's project as well, because when was he going to get another chance to learn about the Autobots' home planet? Sometimes Ratchet would falter or grow silent, and Jack knew that they had stumbled onto another subject tainted by the war. He asked about some unrelated topic at those points. It wasn't long before Miko and Raf became engaged as well.

Once all the projects were done, Jack approached the Cybertronian engine and looked up at the medic. "So, how do I turn it on?"

"That lever near the end."

"This o—ack!"

Jack leapt backwards when the engine roared to life started spasming across the floor. Ratchet shut it off remotely. Arcee stepped forward.

"Maybe you should switch projects."

Ratchet bristled, but Jack stepped in before the medic could speak. "I don't have time to start over, not if I want a good grade. Besides, I can still use this. I just need a base or frame or something. Stabilize or suspend it so it can't flail around like that."

Jack walked back to where Miko and Raf were standing, and Miko sidled up to him. "So that's you and Raf sorted. Looks like I'm the only one who'll be in trouble tomorrow."

"You could try telling the truth?"

"What, that a control freak robot took over my project, and this is his home planet?"

"That you were going to do a model of the solar system, but those are boring and uninspired—" Miko's arched brow morphed into a scowl— "so this is a model of a planet that exists in… Hey, Arcee, do you know what the coordinates for Cybertron are?"

"Do you seriously think that our teacher will buy that?"

"Not really, but it's the best I've got. You could always go home and search the internet for projects you could do overnight."

"Ugh, no thanks. I like sleep."

Jack stood by the couch, watching the ground bridge and waiting for the Autobots come through with Wheeljack. While Raf and Miko speculated about Wheeljack, Jack was silent, frowning thoughtfully at where Ratchet was working on the bridge, trying to repair the damage from the scraplets. The medic had almost died the other day. All of the Autobots had come far too close to death, and Jack had been practically useless. Well, "useless" might be an overstatement, but he'd held back when the Autobots' lives were on the line. Even when Ratchet was being eaten alive in front of him, he'd stuck to the fire extinguisher instead of one of his skills. It was true that exposure might lead to death, but given that the Autobots defended earth from the Decepticons, did he really have the right to prioritize his life over any of theirs?

He was shaken from his thoughts by the blue-green light of the bridge. Interested in the new arrival, his full attention was on the portal when the Autobots came through, followed by—

[Hunter of Hydrax] LV: ? Makeshift

Oh no.

Notes: Jack is trying, but he's not nearly as subtle as he needs to be. Was rewatching the science fair bit, and how did Raf fit that thing in the classroom? Thinking about (currently working on) a spinoff to this verse where all three kids are friends and part of the Abyss before the Autobots. Thoughts? Thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited and followed.