The scene begins in the dining room with Mr.Elbook and Mrs.Elbook sitting at a table with Marcus across from them. This table is small and brown; it has the shape of a circle. There are two extra empty chairs to both sides of the table. Marcus is tapping his fingers together looking at his reflection in the wooden table.

“How long is Ivy going to be ‘camping’?” Mr.Elbook asks.

Marcus looks away from his hands.

“A month.” Marcus lied.

Mrs.Elbook  puts her hands together on the table. Her eyes studied Marcus’s physical body language.

“Sweety, it’s been three days since she left.” Mrs.Elbook said, her voice sounds unconvinced by her sons’s reply. “She can’t be away from technology for that long.”

Marcus looks at his mother, quite strangely.

“Yes she can.” Marcus tells them. “I told you she ditched the car near a cliff beside the interstate.”

The parents share puzzled looks to each other, then turn their attention back to him.

“We found the car at the theater.” Mr.Elbook said. “We need to hear it from Ivy herself.”

Marcus saw the cloud shaped jet swoop by the window silently without shattering the windows. Keep acting, Marcus reassures himself, Ivy’s just applying more pressure to my lying. He clears his throat as he mentally tossed the image into the backburner for further thinking. Marcus looks to his right recalling how often Ivy lied to him.

“Check her room.” Marcus advises them. “It’s empty. She took it way before we were all awake; and I saw her bags were packed, sticking out from the trunk.”

 Mrs.Elbook gets up from the table and went down the hallway.

“She really needed a break from school.” Marcus lies to his dad. “So she forged a letter to the principal, then she emailed it to him, and decided to do one last thing before going under the radar.”

 Of course Ivy’s room is not that decorated. She had come to the house last night under the mask of darkness with a huge bag. Ivy had been driven to the house by some driver-less vehicle. The brothers were enlisted to help her pack last night when their parents were asleep. Ivy claimed to be leaving because she didn’t want to tear this family apart by Lockdown.

“Marcus, you can tell me the truth.” Mr.Elbook confides to Marcus.

Marcus raises an eyebrow, sticking to his lie.

“That she’s out camping?” Marcus asks.

Mrs.Elbooks footsteps stop at Ivy’s open door.

“No, that she’s run away.” Mr.Elbook said, shaking his head.

Tom is in his room playing video games with homework under one of his elbows. Ivy has run away, Marcus thought, but Dad won’t understand about the gigantic robots that live in Navada.

“Did Ivy tell you why she ran away?” Mr.Elbook questions him.

Apparently his dad had fallen under the impression Ivy had ran away for some reason.

“It was for our safety.” Marcus said.

“Was she specific?” Mr.Elbook asks.

“It depends on what you are thinking.” Marcus points out, pointing at his dad’s head.

Mr.Elbook’s head looms down towards his hands, his eyes briefly close and then they re-open as though he had something on his back.

“I’ve been pressuring too hard on  her to get a job.” Mr.Elbook mutters, getting up.

Marcus watches his dad go to the room where his mom hadn’t left. The door shuts behind him like a creak.The boy sighs glad this session with his parents had ended after the long, drawn out staring contest. Marcus gets up from the chair taking his woody toy with him, then grabs a camera and a box of toys.

“Toy story 2 adventures,” Marcus looks down to a box that has some strange looking bubble-heads that have unusual paint designs. “They are so gonna be better this time with Ivy’s bubbleheads!”

Marcus goes to the living room, then dumps all his toys, starts the camera and begins improvising a toy story 2 adventure.We see Starscream observing, from his jet mode, the Elbook’s house scanning for Ivy’s signature. There isn’t a high energy signature spike on Starscream’s radar.

 Ah,The seeker figures,Breakdown is right after all.

Starscream flew away from the Elbook’s house.

________                          _____________                                  _____

 Okay there are times where I wonder if a space bridge had transported me back in 2010 to the nemesis because quite frankly I recall Soundwave claiming he had no part in arriving to the nemesis. My next best guess is that some of the space bridge components were still left over on me that it sent me where the space itself had been set up at.

 “Has there ever been an Autobot named Ironhide?” I ask Bulkhead.

“I met one; stellar cycles ago.” Bulkhead said. 

Boo yeah, Knock Out’s wrong!

“Boo yeah!” I stood up and did a fist pump; then lost my balance on Bulkhead’s shoulder and fell down Bulkhead’s back—which was a nice slide—and landed square on the floor on my back. “That was cool!”

I apparently gave someone thumbs up or may I—no, raising the middle finger by accident is impossible—have done the opposite?

Apparently chasing after a scraplet that ate a spare flashlight can really draw attention to you from  the big guy. No, like literally, Miko told the big guy about me roasting a dead scraplet then dumping what remained into an acid barrel then shooting it out into outerspace on some space shuttle. A scraplet is a good scraplet when it’s dead. I had to tell prime where the scraplet came from.

I told him it was an abandoned mine—because I was exploring it for the sake of boredom without eyes—with another machine some human genius had made that acknowledges where I’m heading towards. If you think that’s called a ‘GPS’ then you are wrong, it’s a IDS: Identification Device Service. Yup, the Scraplet ate that one too

“Bulkhead, did Bumblebee give you the Scraplet-freezer?” Optimus said.

“Ice—what?” Bulkhead repeats.

“It’s for the mine that Ivy lured a scraplet out and deliberately overkilled it.” Optimus tells him.

I heard the spring from Bulkhead’s neck go off, as he looks down at me.

“It ate my slagging flashlight and my 2nd-way-of-seeing!” I interject, getting up. “Who wouldn’t follow the sound of a mechanical-evil-little-decieving-metal-eater-when-they-have-the-chance?”

 Optimus sighs, probably shaking his helmet.

“Bumblebee never gave me an Scraplet-Freezer.” Bulkhead said. “He’s probably barrowing it to clean Raf’s garage.”

“By freezing  it?” Optimus said.

“He claims tools have been disappearing.”  Bulkhead said.

I swear;I have mapped out the entire base by the back of my skull. I  walk away from the duo.

“Ivy, you are still going to show us the mine.”  Optimus reminds me.

I have sort of made a house of my own—sort of---to live in that doesn’t require taxes. It’s sort of illegal now a day. One of the Auobots might have stole the small house (more like an apartment) for me so they put it behind a large mountain. I have—pretty much—stumbled the first day until Arcee vouched to guide me around the base. When you walk around a certain place for a long time with a robot helping you,  you quickly learn where to walk and where NOT to walk.

“I know.” I said. “But I need a new IDS that can specifically Identify anything.”

“Who bought it last time?” Optimus asks, assuming the correct question.

 Five points to the leader!

“Raf.” I said, probably getting blank reactions from the duo. “He uses his dads credit card. It’s at a Tech store.”

I heard a phone ringing from my pocket. Aw slaggit, it’s Joyce calling me. I recognize her phone theme music. So much for not taking phones with me, and, usually claiming phones are not my style at all. I press a button to the side—I remember that—and then put the phone to my ear. I just hope Joyce isn’t on my back about leaving.

“Ivy, why are you not coming to school?” Joyce calmly asks.

I lower the phone.

“Quick, come up with a lie.” I tell the duo.

“We’re not in front of you.” Bulkhhead said.

Yep, I’m talking to thin air. They are behind me.

“I realize that now.”  I rub my face.  “Can you two give me a good lie to tell a friend of mine?”

“You were busy being blind and you are going to lead us to a mine that will need to be frozen right away.” Optimus said, preferring to tell the truth rather than a lie. “Honesty is your way out.”

Oh nice, that gets more people around here and into your business, Prime.

“You are camping.” Bulkhead suggests. “It always works with Miko.”

 I had to go with the camping.

“Camping.” I said.

“Since when do you go camping?” Joyce asks.

I tap my foot.

“Since the day I got adopted by the Elbooks.” I said, with a sigh. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Like you being Irish?” Joyce said.

“Joyce Denise Edwards, I AM NOT IRISH!” I yell through the phone.  “And I ain’t coming back.”

I pressed the other side hearing the  ‘phone call has ended’ voice on it.

“What is Irish?” Optimus asks.

“Irish accents is like a melody.” Bulkhead said. “They are really friendly and helpful. Miko and I visited Ireland two earth months ago.”

What a coincidence; People have been saying I sound Irish. But I don’t sound Irish! I don’t have  an accent like seriously. I continue down my merrily way about to brainstorm a prank on good old ratchet, right after the mine has been frozen permanently. You know like a forever iceberg that cannot leave it’s place.