Idealists

NYON. Beautiful Nyon. Beautiful, scenic Nyon. Center of culture, commerce -- a great and shining city.
Ages ago, anyway. Now it's rust and ruin, but that's okay, because let's face it: Hot Rod would look seriously out of place otherwise. At his back, the tacky lighting of a cheap sign paints green and blue across the red of his paint. The bar that he leaves is loud and poorly lit, and the drinks are probably not very good, but he still leaves with a smile, even if he leaves on his own.
It's not that far from the bar to the Acroplex, so he takes it at a walk rather than transforming. The streets are narrow and crowded, but they're familiar. He walks unerringly and distractedly.
What's Blurr doing in Nyon? Well a racer like him could be expected to pop up anywhere, so perhaps that isn't much of a question. He seems to wander across Hot Rod's path to the Acroplex, his focus apparently elsewhere because he doesn't appear to take notice of the -brightly- colored, flame-painted mech right away.
Hot Rod doesn't quite trip over Blurr, but he is a lot closer than he usually would be by the time he spots him. He visibly startles. In the first moment, unguarded and open, he looks a touch wary. He glances past Blurr and then back again, but when his gaze returns, it's with a smile. "Blurr! Hey." He catches up to and falls in line with Blurr before casually -- CASUALLY -- taking the next turn to nowhere in particular.
Blurr startles as well. And actually, he startles a LOT worse than Hot Rod. The speedster whips around suddenly, weapons quickly emerging from his arms to level at the other mech. He almost fired them too, but just in the nick of time he realizes who it is and relaxes, the blasters retracting once more. He looks relieved. "Oh, phew. Hot Rod, it's just you. You startled me there."
"Whoa-oa-aaa!" Hot Rod holds up his hands (which isn't necessarily that peaceable a gesture in a species where arms can turn into weapons), but his open palms still imply some kind of peace. "Hey, buddy. You're kind of jumpy. Not that I can blame you, exactly. There are definitely people around here that'll jump tourists. So what're you doing?"
Blurr holds up his hands in a similarly defensive fashion. "Sorry, sorry!" he laughs a little. "I know I know, I've always been like that, I just haven't always had guns in my arms." he says, still smiling. "It takes some getting used to, right? Or were you made with those?" He asks, tilting a head at Hot Rod's arm cannons. At the final question he chuckles. "What else do you think I'd be doing in Nyon besides looking for you?"
"Well." Hot Rod considers his arms and admits, "It does kind of change how people react to a wave." He demonstrates, but it's actually still a pretty friendly wave. He warms, obviously and easily flattered -- despite /everything/ -- that Blurr would come to hang out like a buddy with no other motives. He drops his arms and settles into an easy stride. "When I first got them, they were actually just racing boosters. I've upgraded since." Recently.
Was Blurr -really- just looking for Hot Rod? Maybe. "Oh, really? Heh, well I can certainly appreciate that!" he replies, grinning. "So where did you get them? Did you get the upgrade from the same place? Or person?" The speedster asks.
It's only natural that Blurr would come looking for Hot Rod because Hot Rod is great and who wouldn't just want to come find him. Case closed, mystery solved. No more thought required. "They've never exactly been street legal, but no -- had to find someone a little more willing to, uh, dabble. Actually -- you met him! That racer mechanic." It's out his mouth before he can think better of it. Oh well.
"Oh, yeah, Knock Out, was it?" Blurr nods. "I did meet him. Red guy, right? So he got you the boosters and turned them into weapons, or did he just do the upgrade? Heh, he's pretty talented, isn't he?"
"Just the upgrade." Hot Rod pauses to admire himself with a twist of his hands. "No way he'd ever agree to do anything that gave me an edge over him in speed, anyway. I guess he's okay. You're -- probably used to better care, huh?" And here he falters a little, the reminder stilling his smile into something more forced.
"Oh, well that's pretty awesome!" Blurr says cheerfully. "Right, right. Of course a racer wouldn't give another racer an edge over himself on the tracks." he laughs. "So who gave you the boosters then? Is there an athletic association here, like the one in Ibex?" He frowns slightly when Hot Rod seems to falter a bit. "What's wrong?"
Hot Rod pauses, then admits, "Maybe. I don't really know. Definitely not one like Ibex, though." The words are weighted with a dryer brand of humor than is his usual. "So -- hey! How /are/ things in Ibex? When are we going to see more races, huh? How's Feint?"
"Feint's great. She's learning to master her abilities." Blurr says fondly. He really is fond of her. "Ibex is going fine. The tournaments are in full swing, kind of crazy having to balance two jobs but for someone like me it isn't really a problem." When you can move that fast, it really isn't. "Oh, you know I heard you guys finally took down those terrible labs, congratulations."
"So you're gonna win, right? Because I will totally put my money on that." Hot Rod spreads his hands wide (and empty, just like his wallet) and says, "Blurr wins again!" He drops his hands in an awkward kind of gesture and goes, "Ha ha, yeah." He doesn't laugh. He goes, "Ha ha." He glances at Blurr and then away again. "We got lucky. Security was pretty heavy, but no one really got hurt. Could've pretty easily ended badly. You know they wired the place with bombs?"
"Heh, I can always win, but I don't always want to. There's a lot more to sports than just winning, you know." Blurr smirks a little, then nods quickly when the topic changes to the Institute. "Yeah, I heard about that! It could have collapsed a good portion of Nova Cronum if they'd gone off, right? But you stopped that from happening."
"Well, someone did," Hot Rod agrees. He starts easy, but grows more intense as he continues: "But it kind of makes you think, doesn't it? Bad enough that they ran that place in the first place, but putting up bombs like that -- not just killing everyone who was there, everyone who came to help, but bringing down the city above? People who had nothing to do with it? How do you even excuse that?"
"Dunno, Hot Rod." Blurr shrugs, his face growing sober as well. "Maybe they were just willing to do anything to keep outsiders from stealing their stuff. Pretty drastic, but some mechs are just crazy. I'm just glad you stopped it." He smiles again, patting Rod on the back. "Hey, chin up. It doesn't matter any more, does it? You put a stop to it, and now the people responsible are going to answer for their actions! Sentinel Prime is going to make sure of that."
Hot Rod chin ups. He does! So he must be listening. He looks off into the distance in a pose suspiciously heroic, like maybe he saw it in a vid and is copying it. /Maybe/. Who knows. Maybe he just always stands like that when thinking. "We weren't fast enough, though. Way too many people suffered who shouldn't have. We might've shut /that/ down, but the whole system -- the corruption, the inequality. /That/ is what leads to the kind of thinking that ends in places like that. That's not going to stop. Not without a lot more change. Who's really responsible, then?"
"I don't know, but I'm sure the best are on it." Blurr says reassuringly. "Probably some criminals, maybe someone like that slagheap Solvent, the one who wanted to vivisect Feint before." He frowns a little. "Maybe you're right about that, but what are we going to do about it? Change the way people think?"
"/Ha/." Hot Rod sounds a teeny, tiny bit skeptical about the best being on it. Tiny. Teeny. "Yeah, Blurr. We change the way people think. No, you know -- a lot of the time I think it is just making them think in the first place. It's easy to not to think about it when it doesn't effect you, but you start paying attention -- really opening your eyes and looking around. I don't know. I think it surprises people." He leans with his words, tipped toward Blurr, and they might be a little pointed -- but hopefully so. Like a hint.
Blurr raises an optic ridge at that 'ha'. "'Ha'? You don't trust Sentinel?" He glances down at his own badge, then looks back up at Hot Rod. He shrugs. "Well, I guess if you were that high up the chain, you might not have much of an idea of what it's like to not be as well off." The racer looks pensive. "So we change the way people think, or at least get them to think, by getting them to pay attention?"
"Sentinel's been standing watch this whole time." Hot Rod shakes his head. "If he really wanted things to change, he /would/." Because being Prime is like being bestowed with the magical power to make everyone do what you want. OBVIOUSLY. "You're pretty high up yourself. You ever tried living like the other side? I don't mean slumming it a little, either," he says with an aggressively careless deflection. YEAH WHATEVER. SLUMMING IT. YOU KNOW. IT'S COOL. "I mean really -- not just something you put away after a couple of hours. Think how much harder for someone like him. They've got no idea, Blurr. Yeah. People need to pay attention."
"Hmm." Blurr pauses a moment. Wow, he paused. Rare. "Maybe they don't pay attention because they don't -want- to. So the trick is -getting- them to pay attention, and -getting- them to think for themselves even if they don't want to. I mean, it's hard to get people to pay attention to depressing things, unless it's going to affect them directly." He points out. "We have to change -that- attitude."
Smile brilliant, Hot Rod says, "Yeah! Yeah, you got it. It's easier not to pay attention. Who wants to think about how much stuff sucks? I mean, look at places like that." He hooks a gesture back over his shoulder, rolling it down so that the tip of his spoiler clears line of sight back in the direction of the bar he left. "It's not like dropping a lot of money to ignore everything is limited to the higher castes. Take a look around. See who pays attention."
Blurr smiles back, his optics following Hot Rod's gesture toward the bar. "Right, so how do we change people's attitudes, Hot Rod? How do we make them care?"
Smile failing to something a little more rueful, Hot Rod says, "Still working on that one, mech. It's a big problem." He engages in a little more horizon gazing, then changes the subject with a step of his path to the side: "Hey, you might like this. So we don't really have any real tracks, but we do sometimes run some races over this way--." Too much politics. Hot Rod's processor will fry. Time to talk fun, and coax Blurr into a friendly race that Hot Rod is going to /lose/. Still beats politics, though.