Author's note: I have to apologize for taking so long with this. My life completely fell apart over the past year or so and I'm now living in a homeless shelter, so I've had a lot of other stuff I've needed to focus on. The full, pathetic story is detailed on my blog, for anyone who's curious. I've finally managed to focus enough to start working on the story despite the constant loud, distracting noises in the shelter. Apologies in advance in case I take a while to post new chapters. Life is likely to be disrupted even more before things settle down …

"Wow. Get a load of that." General Sanchez stood in front of the huge monitor and pointed at the image of Terwilliger jogging toward a car. Terwilliger had added short pink fur to his armor and big bunny ears to his helmet. Then he noticed the gamer tag hovering above Terwilliger's avatar and snickered: Boris Jackov.

In the corner of Sanchez's eye, several of the people seated at control panels around the observation room glanced at the screen and did a double-take. The human-size Pretender bodies piloted by Optimus, Elia-1, and Strika stood beside Sanchez and watched without reacting to the bizarre sight. Optimus and Strika were too stoic to comment on it and Elita probably just hadn't been on Earth long enough to notice anything unusual.

"Terwilliger seems to have taken a level in goofiness," one of the men behind Sanchez muttered. "Dunno if I could take him seriously on the battlefield."

"Yeah, I suppose." Sanchez shrugged. "On the other hand, if I saw that coming over a hill and pointing an assault rifle at me, I think I'd shit my goddamn pants."

Laughter rippled around the room and Sanchez turned to Strika.

"Commendable job on the simulation, by the way. Interesting that you chose to base it on GTA Online, though."

"The combat simulation I saw Mr. Darby and the others participating in two months ago gave me a few ideas. I acquired a copy of the simulation, examined its code, and developed a fully-immersive virtual-reality version. Mr. Terwilliger and a few others requested some additional features, such as the option to more extensively customize their avatars, and I saw no reason not to grant their requests."

Sanchez grinned. "It's not a combat simulation, it's a video game. But this is a worthwhile experiment. We could use it as a springboard for developing an original training simulation without using someone else's intellectual property." He glanced at Strika again. "What's the mission objective?"

"This one is simple: Steal two of the 'Lazer' jet fighters from Fort Zancudo. I wanted to see how the team functions together, mainly. When I was in battle with them, I was able to see only part of the overall picture. This will give me a chance to observe them from a broader perspective before they go on leave."

"Makes sense. It'll give you a better look at their dynamics and how they improvise to deal with unexpected changes." Assuming they take it seriously. Sanchez glanced at Terwilliger's pink-bunny armor and held in another laugh. "One thing I learned while playing GTA with my granddaughter is that unexpected changes happen all the time, especially in a public session with a bunch of 'tryhards' harassing other players."

On the screen, the team lined up near their vehicles. Jack and Arcee got into his Coil Brawler, which had to be weird for Arcee because her alternate mode in real life was a vehicle.

Sierra climbed onto her Mark I Oppressor, a motorcycle with a small rocket thruster built into it, while Smokescreen cocked his head at a very 1980s-looking car.

"Not bringing your X80 on this?"

"The X80 is still my favorite car in the game, but I thought the Stromberg might be more useful for this. It's armored and can take five or six direct rocket hits before it explodes. I figured you could drive that while I take the flying bike."

"Oh, nice!" Smokescreen got into the Stromberg and waited for the go signal. "It might end up being my favorite car in the game, then."

Terwilliger climbed into a pink Khanjali tank with purple polka-dots and Sanchez couldn't hold in a snicker. Yeah, he's not taking it seriously.

Tomoko got into a fancy-assed sports car that Sanchez didn't recognize and glanced at the tank. Sanchez noticed the Catbug plushie hanging on her avatar's back and grinned again. Aww!

"I should've thought of getting a Khanjali."

"Well, there are Rhino tanks in the base," Miko said as she mounted her Mark II Oppressor - which looked to Sanchez like nothing more than handlebars and a seat attached to a huge jet engine. "You'd have to steal one, though."

"Cool, I'll be able to do a better job of keeping the heat off you guys in one of those."

"Sounds good." Ashanti turned and walked over to her Akula attack helicopter. "You can handle targets on the ground while I keep other aircraft off everyone's backs."

June and Clayton got into a car that would've looked futuristic way back in the 1950s. It reminded him of the car in Speed Racer.

Sanchez smiled. Only six or seven months ago, June had been horrified to find out what her son was involved in, and now she was diving in with him. She and Clay had clicked nicely and worked well together, too. And to think they had met when she needed to pretend to murder him as part of a ruse the team had put on for a captured MECH operative.

"Shall we?" Jack said.

Ashanti nodded. "Let's kick this off."

This is so cool! Jack tried to remain serious, but it was almost impossible now that they were in a fully immersive version of GTA Online. He steered his Brawler to the bottom of a hill outside Fort Zancudo and revved the engine. Of course, this isn't remotely the same as staring at a screen and using a handheld controller. It'll take some getting used to.

"Now or never, Jack." Arcee grinned as Miko extended her bike's wings and fired the thruster, launching her into the air and over the razorwire-topped fence surrounding the military base.

He gripped the steering wheel, took a slow breath, and punched it. The Brawler roared up the hill, using it as a ramp, and shot into the air. Jack's heart pounded as the car arched over the fence and began to drop. In the corner of his eye, Tomoko's car hopped the fence, landed on its wheels, skidded, and then darted across the nearest landing strip. The Stromberg followed, Smokescreen laughing like a maniac as he overtook Jack and came down on his two passenger-side tires. He yelped, turned the wheel the wrong direction and almost rolled the car, then corrected it and brought all four tires down to the pavement.

The Brawler's rear tires caught on the top of the fence and the car flipped forward, plowed nose-first into the pavement, and slowly tipped back onto its wheels, the impact throwing Jack and Arcee against their seatbelts and then slamming them back into their seats. He shook his head quickly and punched it again.

"Aw, where are the tanks?" Tomoko whipped around the corner of a building. "I don't see any tanks. Oh -"

A shell from a Rhino's main cannon streaked out from behind the building and blasted Tomoko's car into a thousand pieces. She let out a startled shriek, was silent for a few seconds, and burst into laughter as she respawned where the team had first entered the simulation. "Found one!"

Several of the others laughed along with her. Sierra giggled and flew her rocket-bike back and forth, launching rockets at "enemy" troops and vehicles that had just started shooting at them. Jeeps and Humvees exploded like popcorn and personnel cartwheeled through the air.

At the same time, Ashanti opened fire on a pair of tanks approaching Smokescreen's Stromberg. The Rhinos shifted their aim from him to her and she swung to the side to get out of their line of fire. Miko and Sierra buzzed the tanks to keep their attention divided.

Clayton's Scramjet appeared in the corner of Jack's eye as he swerved to avoid more gunfire from the base's troops. The car had sprung straight up into the air, leveling off at several hundred feet, and tilted its front end down toward the ground. Several rockets launched from it, slammed into the tanks, and one of the rockets finally punched through a Rhino's armor and blew it up.

The Scramjet tilted the opposite direction, pointing its nose at an upward angle, and a pair of thrusters in the rear shot it across the sky. Jack's mom burst out laughing.

"Woooooooooooo-hooooooooo!"

"Taking fire," Miko muttered as she glided her bike to the ground, her wheels touching just long enough to start recharging her thruster and took off again as bullets sparked off her bike and armor. She lit the thruster and shot straight into the air.

"Whoa." Arcee stared through the windshield at her and grinned. "Looks like she's at least a thousand feet up."

"I see a Lazer with nobody around it. I'm going for it." Miko leaped off her bike and plunged straight down.

"Uh …" Ashanti shredded another half-dozen guards. "Miko, you might want to pull your chute."

Miko rocketed toward the ground and finally deployed her parachute directly above one of the jets, decelerating her abruptly. She cut the chute an instant later and dropped onto the top of the plane.

"Jesus Christ," Sierra blurted. "That was like a low-level HALO jump. If that makes any sense."

Miko scrambled over to the cockpit, opened it, and jumped in.

"Okay, then." Ashanti had an audible grin in her voice. "Miko's going for it. Everyone, cover her."

"Oops, a missile just locked onto me," Sierra said. Jack glanced up and found her soaring high overhead. "I've got an idea."

She jumped off her rocket-bike and it tumbled out of control as she plummeted out of the sky. The surface-to-air missile lost its lock-on and roared between Sierra and her bike. She twisted in the air, angled toward the bike, caught up with it, grasped the handlebars and mounted it. Then she fired the thruster and shot off toward the jet Miko was trying to steal.

"Daaaaaaaaamn," Arcee drawled.

"Yeah. I had no idea she could do anything like that."

"That was awesome!" Smokescreen laughed as his Stromberg raced toward the guards approaching Miko's jet from all sides. Smokescreen lined up his car and accelerated toward the ones closest to the Lazer. He zoomed past its left wing and mowed down ten or twelve of them.

"Pardon me, gentlemen!"

Sierra burst out laughing. "Nicely done!"

"Thanks, babe!" Smokescreen fired a pair of rockets from the launcher in the Stromberg's front end, sending them into another group of troops farther away.

Miko had gotten the jet started by now. She moved it forward, gaining speed as the remaining enemies turned their assault rifles on her plane. She hit the afterburners and plowed straight into them, knocking most of them aside and catching one on her right wing, his arms hooked over it and holding him onto the Lazer. She lifted off and carried him into the air with her.

"Remember, kid," Ashanti said, "stay low to the ground, under their radar, and they won't be able to lock on."

"Got it." Miko kept the jet just high enough to clear the fence and skimmed the ground outside the base. The clinger slipped off and splattered onto the highway.

"They're scrambling jets to chase you down," Terwilliger said. "I've got 'em."

Jack watched a pair of Lazers take off in pursuit of Miko, then focused his attention on the jet directly ahead.

"I'm going for another one." He hit the brakes and stopped beside the parked Lazer, jumped out, and climbed in while Arcee produced a rotary cannon and kept watch for approaching enemies.

Terwilliger lined up a shot on one of the pursuing jets and the Khanjali's railgun obliterated it. The other jet banked abruptly to avoid the fireball and hail of debris, and Terwilliger rotated the barrel to get his next target in his sights. He fired and the jet's right wing ripped clean off, sending the Lazer into an endless series of uncontrolled barrel rolls until it shot out over the ocean and plunged in.

Terwilliger chuckled. "I wonder if his seat cushion can become a floatation device?"

Jack grinned and lifted off. Oh, boy. This really isn't the same as having the game's third-person view. Guess I should've switched to first-person more often. Hoping he'd judged the fence's height - and his Lazer's altitude - correctly, he aimed for the fence and gritted his teeth.

"Looking good, Jack," Arcee said as she ripped enemy troops and vehicles to shreds with her minigun.

He soared over the fence and released the breath he'd just now realized he was holding. "Thanks, honey."

"Looks like we aced it," Clayton said.

"Maybe the next test will actually be a challenge." Miko laughed as she headed north.

Jack shook his head and pulled up enough to fly over the nearby mountain. Don't jinx us.

"Hey, guys." Miko waved as the rest of the gang sat at their usual picnic tables outside the mess hall. She arched an eyebrow and added, "Terwilliger, what's the goofy grin all about? I bet that's the same look Jack had on his face when Arcee took his virginity."

Sierra burst into laughter and Jack's face turned red. June grimaced and shook her head.

"Did not need that image in my mind."

Clayton snickered and gave her hand a comforting pat. She shrugged, smiled, and intertwined her flesh fingers between his metal ones.

Oh, those two appear to be getting serious. Well, good for them. Miko turned to watch Terwilliger take his seat and raised her eyebrow again. His black hair had been long-ish to begin with, but he'd kept letting it grow until it was shoulder-length and had added a dark red punk streak to it, making him look even more like some sort of anime character than before. He'd taken to painting his fingernails the same color. She almost wondered how he got away with it, being in the Air Force, but General Sanchez had always kept his own hair very long and appeared to be pretty lax with certain regulations as long as the people under his command did their jobs and didn't cause any problems.

"Since we're all going on leave while they put the finishing touches on the new ship, I asked Strika to join me on a trip to my home town. Well, my most recent home town, not my original one in Florida. I'm never going back to that shithole. Anyway." Terwilliger beamed and did a fist-pump. "She actually said yes! I still can't believe it."

Arcee gaped at him. "You asked the former Decepticon general out on a date?"

"Yep."

Miko whistled. "Dude, you've got balls the size of a Dyson sphere."

"Why, thank you." He bowed theatrically.

"And she actually agreed to it?" Arcee stared at him and blinked.

"Yeah! That's why I can't believe it." He shrugged. "She's sending her Pretender body along while she stays here and does her usual strategy sessions with Optimus, Elita, General Sanchez, and Agent Fowler. She said it would be an opportunity to observe humans going about their normal business rather than the constant crises we've been dealing with." He smiled and let out a happy sigh. "Strongarm agreed to drive us there. Since her vehicle mode is a police SUV, there's room for both of us and her own mini-me."

Arcee smiled. "It's nice to see Strongarm finally interacting with people and actually doing something. She's been keeping to herself all these months, except when she's joined us on combat ops."

"I'm pretty sure she's got a case of clinical depression," June said. "I've noticed she's been showing all the signs."

"I've never met her before she arrived here," Arcee said, "but from what I've heard from others, she used to be enthusiastic about her job and was always quoting rules and regulations, but she's seemed really down lately and has barely spoken to anyone. Which is understandable. Losing your homeworld and most of your friends hits you pretty hard." She forced a smile back on and rushed ahead, probably to avoid bringing everyone's mood down. "Well, congratulations on your first date with Strika."

"Thanks." Terwilliger grinned and blushed slightly.

Sweet. He'd developed a massive crush on the Decepticon general the instant he'd laid eyes on her, so it was nice to see things take a step forward for him, despite the crush Miko had on him. The thoughts she'd entertained about him and Strika doin' it were hotter than hell and had given her plenty of reason to make good use of her prosthetic arm's vibrate function. If they do eventually get together, maybe they'll let me join in once in a while.

"So." Speaking of which, heh-heh-heh. "Do you think she'll let you fuck her?"

"Um." Terwilliger's blush went into overdrive. "Probably not for a while, if ever. She's a half-million years old and I'm nineteen, and sex has never been an option for her - or even crossed her mind - in all that time because she never had the 'parts' for it until she started using that Pretender body. I'd be amazed if it crossed her mind in the next week or so."

"Still, you keep hoping, right?"

"Well, sure, but I'm just planning to spend as much time with her as I can so we can get to know each other better. Maybe some gaming or movies, lunch or dinner now that she has a body capable of eating, introducing her to my friends and family back home, things like that. Just hanging out and showing her as many normal, everyday activities as possible. I'm not sure she even has a concept of 'downtime.' At least, I get the impression that she hasn't taken a day off in several hundred thousand years or even longer. As far as I know, the closest she ever got was when she was sitting in that cave, waiting to surrender herself to Strongarm."

June nodded. "I've only known her for a few month, but yeah, she does give the impression of being 'all work and no play.' You could introduce her to a whole new world."

"Yeah. I don't want to know the things she did during the war on Cybertron because I'm sure they were horrible, but now that she genuinely regrets it and won't forgive herself, I'm hoping I can show her that there's more to life than what she's experienced so far." He shrugged and poked at his chicken alfredo with his fork. "Which could be the reason she agreed to hang out with me. She seems to have found more than enough things to die for, but she might be looking for something to live for."

"I know how that feels," Arcee muttered, and Jack reached across the table to hold her hand.

"Well. I hope you at least get to first base with her." Miko aimed a shit-eating grin at him. "And if she does let you bang her, do me a favor and record a video of the whole thing. It'd be the crown jewel of my porn collection."

Everyone stared at her. Terwilliger's face turned even redder and he fidgeted for a moment.

"Uh … I'll, uh, keep that in mind." With a look on his face that clearly said, "Hell, no!" he dug into his lunch.

"So," Jack said abruptly, probably just to move the conversation on to another topic, "Mom, what're you planning for your time off?"

"Clay and I are driving to Jasper to do some sightseeing. Take a look around the hospital I used to work in, the park I took you to whenever I was able to, our favorite restaurants and other places to hang out." June had an expression that indicated she might've added a hotel room for her and Clay to get it on, but if that was among her plans, she kept it to herself. "Clay just got a new car and this would be a good way to break it in."

Grinning, Clay turned and pointed to the parking lot some distance away. "It's the sixth one from the nearest corner."

Miko turned to look in the indicated direction and found a dark metallic blue Toyota.

"It's a Toyota 86 TRD." Clay laughed. "I decided to buy it just so I could nickname it 'The Turd.'"

June snickered and shook her head. "Centuries old, but still an adolescent at heart."

"As a wise man once said …"

June joined in and said the line in sync with him. "There's no point in being a grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes." Both of them laughed.

Aww! They're so cute together. "Well, have fun, kids."

"How about you guys?" June took a sip of her Sunny D.

"A few of us are going to be visiting Jasper," Jack said. "Smokescreen wanted to see where Sierra grew up and she wanted her parents to meet him. Arcee and I might take one last look at the house we used to live in, then just wander around the old stomping grounds and see where the wind takes us. Miko and Raf will be there, too, and so will Tomoko."

"He wants her to meet his family." Miko smiled. "I think the teenage hormones started to kick in before he turned thirteen, but now they're at full throttle and they seem to be getting serious. What's really cool about that is his parents like Tomoko and are happy to see them getting together."

"That's wonderful." June grinned and stuck her fork into her crab salad.

"Yeah. It's great to see things working out without too many hiccups." Miko finished her cheeseburger and let out a slow breath. With life going so smoothly, it was easy to forget how many dangers were still out there and how many obstacles the team still needed to overcome. The DJD, the Unicron-possessed Megatron, Unicron himself …

I wonder how long it'll last before the next time shit hits the fan.