I'm literally ~8k words away (subtracting author babbling) from reaching 100k word count. How much can I drag this out?

Chapter XXV

The Off-Grid was not as barren as Prowl had once believed. With the lack of light pollution from the city, the stars beyond Cybertron's thin atmosphere littered the sky in a way he had never witnessed with his own optics. He had seen pictures before from astronomic files but assumed those were all taken by telescopic cameras only.

On the ground was the faint hints of used energon, signs of life beyond the normal confines of Cybertron's mainstream. People lived out here. Prowl could not figure out how. He could feel the lack of supportive power beneath his tires, the absence of electricity and energon alike that Cybertronians required to stay alive. Perhaps their supplies were smuggled in. Maybe they learned to live without. Or, simply, there were alternative forms of energy out here that he never thought of.

They passed by ancient structures, some of them occupied by generation after generation of "illegal sparks" and "deviants": those who were not registered and those who refused to live by the Primes' laws. They made their lives out here. They looked after their own, shared with neighbors, and, according to Jazz, would occasionally step across to the Grid just to see how life in the cities were like. Some of them returned home, some of them stayed and tried to make it back into society without any kind of documentation that would secure their future. Most of them ended up nameless gladiators and miners, regretting the free life they left behind to slave away for another's fortune.

An hour's ride away from the Grid's border was a torn, burnt, blown, and Primus-forsaken site. It was not ancient, nor was it a recent build. It was something of a mix. Or at least it used to be. The architecture was odd to Prowl. The large central building seemed slightly elevated off of the ground with leading stairs. Each structure had titled and slanted roofs, giving the impression of artistic liberty compared to the squared and rounded buildings of the rest of Cybertron. Columns with etched art of ancient mechs and femmes supported the balconies above them. On one end of the site, Prowl saw a shallow pit lined with decorative bricks and filled with grey sand. The other end of the site had a garden much like that in Helix, only the arrangement mixed their breeds of plants rather than segregated them. This area, though previously destroyed, had found its life again through natural means.

"Welcome to Yoketron's dojo," Jazz said, breaking the sound of the wind rushing past them. He transformed, pacing slowly to the arch at the entrance. He looked to the side and put a fist against a flat hand, bowing to a sentry who no longer stood there. "My home."

Prowl followed him, documenting as he observed everything. The site had been torched centuries ago, maybe longer. The ashes had settled on the ground. The columns were blackened, the walls were broken, and parts of the garden had been torn apart. But there was an odd scent in the atmosphere that he could not place. Jazz kept talking, explaining.

"This is where I lived, up until a fight happened. I didn't know what was goin' on at that time, but after all the slag we went through the past two weeks, I know exactly what went down here." He paused and snapped his head around, frowning. "Something's wrong."

Prowl tensed, shifting his arm to a blaster out of some new instinct. "What is it?"

"Prints." He pointed to sets of pede prints that disturbed the ashes, crisscrossing and circling around the entire area. "They're recent."

The officer leaned down to inspect the marks. "They're all the same. They belong to only one mech."

Jazz launched himself high, making it to the roof of the first floor, then the second. He put a hand over his visor to block the distant sun, searching from above. He looked at the part of the structure he clung to, scanning it up and down, and shouted down at his partner.

"Someone's been renovating."

Prowl now knew what the odd scent was: Paint. Parts of the building had been painted over, parts that may have been recently rebuilt. Someone was living here, hopefully someone friendly.

"I advise caution," Prowl said as Jazz jumped back down to meet him with a hard thud. "Could be one of Shockblast's."

Jazz had no snarky one-liner this time. He took out a pair of sai and walked steadily up the stairs. Prowl stayed at his side, blaster arm raised as his other arm supported it. As they approached the wall that the stairs led to, Prowl paused. He could not find a button or a slide or a digit print reader. There was nothing to indicate that there was a door against this wall which was designed like a grid with translucent glass slapped onto it. Jazz held up a hand to stop, reached forward, hooked his fingers against a vertical oddity in the wall, and slide a section of the building to the side.

"Sliding door. Primitive," Prowl stated.

"Traditional," the ninja corrected, and stepped forward.

The inside of the building had the most rework done by the current tenant. The floors were strikingly clean, long and vertical dark lines running parallel to each other. The walls, despite some of them with holes from the attack, were washed and repainted. The tenant tried their best to revitalize the artwork that stretched across the walls, but it was obvious they could only do so much without completely ruining the tone of the piece. The room in the center was large with a high ceiling, showing the mezzanine of the second floor which led to other rooms. Prowl noted that this structure was similar to that of Blue Ring, Shadow Walker's club. But instead of a bar there was potted flora and shelves of salvaged data pads and ancient weapons. Instead of high tables and raised chairs flushed to the walls, there were tables so low that you had to sit on the mats provided in order to use them. The center was bare. Nothing was there except a dropped tablet that remained active.

Jazz walked up to it and stared at the screen's image, picking up the device. Prowl leaned over to look. He expected it to be a snapshot image, but no. It was an expertly drawn image of a style the officer had never seen, of many people sitting against the walls watching two sketchy figures in the center battle. He realized this was a recreation of the room they were already in.

"We already know you're in here," Jazz called out, setting the image back down and giving Prowl no answer as to what he just looked at. He walked to a stand and put his sai on the surface, swapping them for the long and curved blades that hummed to life with his touch, glowing a bright blue along the edge. "Come on out and I won't slice ya into a hundred thousand pieces."

There was a shuffling sound overhead. Jazz readied his blades and Prowl aimed his gun to the upper level. Both of them squinted at the mech that leaned over the railing. His form was completely and ridiculously black, so dark that no light reflected to give him form. It was a walking silhouette with bright white optics.

"Burst?" Prowl blurted. It was the first name to come to mind, the first thing he thought of when he looked at the mech. The pair of white optics blinked and widened.

Jazz wasted no time. He ran to one of the columns, using his momentum to carry himself up with his blades out on either side of him. The black mech flinched but did not run. Jazz grabbed him and threw him over the side railing. Prowl stood back, awaiting the order to fire. The ninja dropped down and pinned the tenant by a pede and the tip of one of his blades pressed to his chin.

"Who are you?" he shouted. "Tell me!"

"A servant!" the mech answered. Prowl processed the vocal print. Definitely not Burst. "I'm just a servant!"

"Servant to who? There's no one else here!"

"The Ghost said you'd come! He told me I had to be ready for you!"

"The Ghost?"

"The Specter, the Phantom, the Wraith! Whatever you call him! He doesn't have a name!" The mech's frame had changed. Its color was white. He had no face and his helm slicked backwards into two curved horns. From beneath his arms sprouted two more that mirrored his pose of surrender of the upper two. "Our Master!"

"Jazz?" Prowl called out, still wary.

The ninja held his stance, studying the lack of face in front of him. The Metacon shifted back to his true form, the vantablack silhouette of unknown shapes.

"He's harmless," Jazz answered, putting his weapons to his sides with their points to the floor. The mech scrambled, coming to sit on his shins and bending forward towards Jazz in submission with his arms laid out and bent in front of him. His helm touched the floor as he addressed him properly.

"Senpai."

"At ease, kohai."

The mech sat up, turning his gaze from Jazz to Prowl to search for recognition where there was none. The officer still had his gun trained on him.

"Kohai?" the officer questioned, optics still on the black mech.

"It's not a name," Jazz explained. "Means a student who's lower rank than you. 'Senpai' is for upper ranks."

"And 'sensei' is teacher," the Metacon finished as he straightened his spinal strut, but he never stood. He remained on the floor in a passive and subservient posture.

The officer looked between the two of them. If Jazz could trust him through just a swap of whatever code-speak this was, then he would have to learn to do the same. His arm shifted back to its original state and he swayed to make himself stand at a more comfortable position. Jazz sat down, mimicking the unknown mech's posture with his legs tucked underneath him, his hands on his knees, and placed his swords before him, parallel to one another and facing opposite directions. The glowing blue shut off once his digits left them. Prowl sat beside him.

"What's your name, new guy?" Jazz asked.

"It's Revamp."

"Revamp?" Prowl did not realize he said his revelation aloud. Jazz elbowed him to get him to be quiet. This was his interrogation now.

"How long you been here, Revamp?"

"Since you left."

Jazz's head tilted down and he frowned. "Explain."

"There's nothing much to explain. Since the dojo was destroyed, I lived here. I wasn't about to try and make a life in the cities, not with my reputation."

"Reputation for what?"

Revamp halted, optics flickering with warring thoughts on what he should say. He reached a hand around his back. Prowl shifted both his arms to pistols in warning. The Metacon pulled out something from his subspace, a triangular mesh of rare fabric striped red and black with a green symbol in the center.

"Wait a minute… You're a Rook?!" Jazz exclaimed. Revamp tied the mesh around his neck and nodded.

"What in the blazing Pit is going on right now?" Prowl said, with no hint of patience left in him after all he had been through.

"I'll let Jazz explain, as I'm sure he can do it better than I can," Revamp said, excusing himself and standing up. "In the meantime, I'll mix you both something. What are your engine types?"

"What for?" Prowl questioned.

"To make it special to your tanks."

Jazz wasted no time in answering. "Boxer."

Prowl said reluctantly, "Vee." Jazz turned to look at him and leaned back.

"You're a vee engine?"

"Of course."

Jazz pursed his lips and smirked.

Revamp left to go to another room. Prowl could hear the soft tinkling and clanking of small machinery as he worked on mixing energon types. He shifted his servos back into hands. Jazz moved so that he sat in front of Prowl, cycling a vent before he spoke.

"Where do I even start with all this?"

"Same as any story. From the top."

"Ooh, frag… Let's see…

"Okay. I told you I'm an illegal spark. That's still true; my parents were both living off the Grid, like those homes we passed by, all those settlements. I lived there for part of my life. We moved into the cities to try and live like normal folks. Then, Yoketron shows up out of nowhere, says he's revitalizing a lost culture and if we were interested in it. My carri didn't want any of it, my alpha just about kicked him on the way out the door. Me, though, I knew there was somethin' to it. I went out to follow him.

"He brought me here to this dojo, this training house, these gardens, the fighting pit, the new neighborhood. I saw mechs learning these weird fighting styles. Now, me, being young, of course I wanted to kick aft and even look good doin' it! I wanted in! Yoketron told me it wasn't all just fights, and I learned that pretty fast.

"He taught me a lot of things, Prowl. He taught me balance. Not just pretty tricks for a stage, but peace of mind. He taught me about the nature of mechs and how connected we can be—and are—to the world. That's the kind of life he wanted for Cybertronians, to be able to live with yourself and others peacefully and to be whoever you want to be. He learned it all from what we call the Ghost."

Jazz stopped to point at a half-renovated painting on the wall of a thin, alien-looking white mech with no face, swept-back horns and four arms. Orbs floated above his upturned palms with dark circles painted in the center that made them look like optics. It was the form the Metacon Revamp took for a brief moment that convinced Jazz of his innocence.

"That's the guy who taught Yoketron the lost culture, the one no one sees until they become a master.

"Now, here's where Shadow Walker gets thrown in. Oh, you gettin' nervous now? I saw that shuffle. His name ain't Shadow Walker. It's Gigamech. Captain Gigamech. Remember the old stories about the space bridges and travelling around between planets? Gigamech was one of those guys shipping stuff in between. Space bridges blew up, so he outfitted his ship with the tech so he could still teleport. Him and Yoketron were practically best friends. His nickname mirrored the Ghost, callin' himself by the Shadow, only because he was always tailin' Ghost like one. They're both ancient, alright? Older than dirt. G's been chasin' Ghost's spark for a while."

"Wait, stop," Prowl said, putting up a hand. "Your old boss, the owner of a nightclub, was a fragging sailor? In love with… that guy?" He pointed to the painting of the ancient and mysterious Cybertronian.

"Need a minute to process?"

"This is sounding ridiculous." And redundant, he wanted to add.

"And our relationship ain't?" Before Prowl could come up with a snarky answer, Jazz interrupted, "Kohai's back with tea."

Revamp approached and leaned down and offered them different colored glass cylinders of energon. Prowl stared at his while Jazz took a long gulp.

"Temperature needs some work," Jazz criticized.

"Sorry. I'm new to this—I'm still in teaching, but the Ghost left days ago with the captain. I'm glad he recognized me when he saw me, it's been a few centuries."

"'Vamp, my bro, you're blacker than sin, how could he not recognize a crewmate with that tone?"

Prowl was quiet as he piled Jazz's story so far into smaller sentences. Yoketron was the student of an ancient mech who taught him a lost culture to share with other people. Jazz was one of the interested parties. Yoketron had a friendship with a sailor just as ancient as his mentor, and who was out of an official job after the bridges were detonated. He redesigned his ship, outfitted it with photon technology so it could still jump between large expanses without aid of a space bridges, and continued doing… what exactly?

"What was Captain Gigamech doing after he was decommissioned?"

"Piracy," Revamp answered quickly, since he was evidently one of the mechs running the patchwork ship. "We tried reconnecting with lost colonies, but since we were doing it all unofficially, we knew the Primes weren't going to back us up. We started fending for ourselves."

Prowl's memory was coming back to him, pulling together pieces of information. "The Rooks."

"Yeah, that's what we called ourselves."

"The Illumnis?"

"The ship."

"Prowl's ex-boyfriend told us it's in a museum now," Jazz blurted out once a memory surfaced.

"They didn't take it apart?" Revamp asked with new life in his tone.

"I didn't look yet. I hope it's still in one piece."

Prowl looked down at his drink and took his first sip. The warm liquid stirred close to his spark chamber before resting in his tanks. His processor buzzed, discharging itself of built-up static. He started to feel calmer, more relaxed and focused.

"Ronin," he stated, expecting an answer to the implied question.

"It's a ninja without a master," Jazz said sadly, his shoulders sinking.

"Ninja?"

"A student of the three types of martial arts: Crystolocution, Metallikato, and Circuit-Su. Advanced students get to learn P.O.M."

"And what's that?"

"Processor-over-matter," Revamp said. Jazz shot him a look and the shifter bowed his head.

"What he said," Jazz huffed. "It's telekinesis."

"Moving things with your mind?"

"That's why I said it's for advanced students. Only Yoketron and the Ghost know how to use it. No one ever got close to learning it."

Prowl leaned back, propping himself up with an arm and taking another sip of his drink. "Continue your story, Jazz. You stopped at telling me who Shadow Walker really is."

"Oh, yeah, right! But I think this part of the story swings over to Revamp."

The student straightened up. "Me?"

"One of your guys quit the Rooks and ended up working under Shockblast."

"Oh." Then more somberly and with guilt, "Ohhh…"

"Your turn, newbie."

Revamp rotated himself so he was facing more towards Prowl. The officer had nowhere to look on the shifter's dark frame except at the white optics that shaped themselves expressively to make up for a missing face.

"Our hauls were getting less and less. Crew wasn't satisfied. One of them went to work on the Grid and somehow landed a job with the lord of Tarn. He told him about Yoketron's secret society out in the plains. I only know this part from word of mouth, but from what I hear, Shockblast threatened to annihilate the site if he didn't hand over some warriors for him."

"That's when Shockblast was building his army," Prowl noted.

"Right. Yoketron wouldn't do it. Shockblast was sending assassins that never finished their missions. Then, Yoketron said he'd give Shockblast only one of his expertly trained guys if he'd leave them alone.

"But… unfortunately, Yoketron already grew attached to his top student." He glanced at Jazz. The white mech did not smile, did not move. He was lost in the memory of his teacher. "He couldn't keep the promise. It'd break his spark.

"He made a deal with the captain. Take the kid away, turn him into a Rook, and let Shockblast think that he ran off. He knew the lord wasn't going to let that excuse go over easily, so they would have to stand and fight for their home. But Shockblast showed up before we could get there.

"I was in that fight. We jumped in the middle of it. It was…" Revamp stopped, staring at the floor. "It was a massacre. Shockblast had brought abominations with him, mechs that could turn into Predacons from the time before the Cataclysm. He brought guns, he brought gladiators, soldiers; he had everything and more! There was no sense in what he was doing, there was no telling what he was going to do next. He let his soldiers loose with just one order: Kill and destroy. I… All my friends, they just…"

Jazz leaned over and patted Revamp's back as the mech was beginning to hyperventilate from the traumatic recollection. He muttered names and how each of them met their ends: Kite, supercharged electrocution from a mech using stun whips; Lowgrind, dismemberment before eaten; Retrohead, the less fortunate, eaten alive; Crux, impalement by several lances until she looked like a gory art piece; Dusttracks, torn apart in the sky, his energon raining down; Autovortex, nano-creatures that dismantled her from the inside out—

Prowl told him to stop, take a sip of his own drink. Revamp was still shuddering, so he gave him a moment to let the shifter come to focus again.

"Do you remember who it was?" he asked. "Who was the one that revealed Yoketron's dojo to Shockblast?"

Revamp stared at the floor. "It was my own brother. His name was Burst."

Prowl's engine roared as he stood up and walked away from the seated triangle they made to pace back and forth, fuming. His shoulders were tensed and both of his arms were shifting madly in between states of a weapon and a hand. Jazz pointed out a standing target in the corner that Prowl could use to punch and he wailed on it.

"What's up with him?" the Metacon asked cautiously.

"Burst was Prowl's ex," Jazz said with a deflated tone. "Kinda haunts him."

"Yeah… He had that effect on people." Revamp sounded just as emotionally emptied.

"Has. Ya bro's still alive an' doin' time."

Revamp watched as Prowl's punches lost their power, now hitting for the sake of getting the last of his anger out. He called out to him so he could finish his story and to erase the impression the officer may have gotten now that he knew he was related to Burst.

"If it helps, I spent a few stellar cycles looking for someone to believe me," he said, "someone who could make Shockblast pay for all he did. He said he'd find the evidence. He was supposed to be here after his investigation. Did he send you?"

Prowl's fury died down. He had an idea of who Revamp was talking about, but it was Jazz who asked the question.

"Who?"

"Jumpspring. An agent of the DGS."

"A whistleblower," Prowl stated, and gave the target another punch. "That's why you were on the list he left behind. You were the whistleblower to Shockblast's operation."

"Left… behind?"

Prowl muttered something, and all the shifter could catch was his own name and thought the officer was trying to talk to him.

"I'm sorry?"

"Talking to myself." Last punch. It was time to focus again. Prowl claimed his seat among the two ninjas again to continue his explanation to the anxious mech. "Jumpspring was killed a little over two weeks ago. I'm assuming Shockblast caught on to him. We took over his investigation, using the list of suspects and informants he had gathered. Your name was on there, and so was Jazz's."

"So, I guess it's not Jumpspring we have to thank," Jazz said. "It's you."

They were not sure if Revamp was flustered or just thinking, or perhaps both. It was impossible to tell with the void-colored paint.

"Jumpspring's dead?"

"That's what I said." Jazz nudged Prowl again.

"Shame…. He was such a nice bot, too."

They sat for a moment of respectful silence for the dead victim. Prowl could see the guilt written on the shifter's frame like it was in bright white paint. He was avoiding optical contact, his head was down, his shoulders were raised to the bumps of his head that Prowl knew had to house his audio receptors, and his digits kept moving as they held the cup in his hands.

"Well," Revamp said, breaking the silence, "at least you guys were the ones to take up his mission. It would've been hard looking for another untouched agent."

"It would've been too late," Prowl stated monotonously, earning him a third nudge from Jazz. The white mech looked at him as if to tell him to have a bit more compassion in his tone. He kept going regardless of the implication. "Shockblast would have had more agents roaming around. And he would have gone through with his plan with or without Jazz."

"He would have to wipe my processor just to get through to me," the mech of conversation said with an air of rageful pride.

"Your turn again," Prowl interrupted. "How did you manage to sneak in and set everyone free?"

Revamp leaned forward. His optics were back up and bright with interest to hear the tale. The ronin gave his recount of the situation. Prowl was filing it all away to memory, just in case—he hoped—that if Jazz gave his story again to the station that the recounts would line up. He hated to think that Jazz would end up a double agent after all this time. The thought had occurred to him while he was in his cell. It would make sense to use a prostitute to lure unknowing mechs into service.

"I'm surprised you didn't gut out his spark right then and there!" Revamp snarled with renewed bloodlust of his pirate days, and breaking through Prowl's thoughts, as Jazz got to the juiciest part of his adventure.

"I was there just to get Prowl out. Then Packrat told me there was a whole prison down there, so I wanted everyone out. 'Sides, if I killed him, we wouldn't get a confession. I know how this police stuff works; a living husk's better'n a dead one."

There was a pause as both mechs expected the officer to interject with an opinion or observation. He remained quiet as he folded back into his previous thoughts and compiled another case in order to prove to himself that Jazz was not working for Shockblast. It was not looking good when he was looking at it factually, in an instance where coincidences were not considered. Jazz was a focal point of Shockblast's for a time. Revamp was related to Burst, Shockblast's agent, and was a former employee of Gigamech's. Gigamech was also briefly involved, on Yoketron's side by Revamp's telling, but opinions can change (and Shockblast made a compelling argument against the current social structure of Cybertron, one that would have made his former trade and occupation legal again). Plenty of Jazz's hunches were correct throughout the investigation. He alone set free a prison full of mutated mechs. He alone got Shockblast's confession. And he alone took Prowl to this secluded location. A location far off the Grid.

"I'm going for a walk," he said as he stood once Jazz got to the end of his retelling.

"Want a tour?" the white mech asked with a small smile that was tainted by the sadness of memory.

"No. An overdue perimeter sweep. I'm going to make sure we're alone here."

"That's a good idea, we'll make it a team building thing. Kohai, let's split."

"I don't think that's necessary."

"We'll cover more ground that way."

Prowl had no objections, save for one: He'd rather his suspects stay in one place instead of running off to rendezvous with possible accomplices, especially when those suspects were trained in artful techniques of stealth, immobilization, and efficient strikes.

xXx

One day I'll expect ridiculous fanart of Revamp the Shifter calling Jazz by "Jazu-senpai" with mercury-shine anime eyes and hearts floating around him, and maybe Prowl in the corner with guns ready and super confused.