Business Partners

Nyon is starting to smell like home to Moonlight, though not literally. Something about the air here is very suggestive of the life she's already lived. And as much as Prowl's offer was tempting (not really) she doesn't regret her life enough to change it. So, here she is, looking for the mech with the bold paint job and even bolder opinions. In theory, he shouldn't be hard to find; he's not exactly the most subtle of mechs. Moonlight, however, can be subtle when she bothers to...and does it quite well. Problem is, unless she's being paid for it, she usually doesn't bother. So, chances are, he'll see her about as soon as she sees him.
It really only takes a 'Hey, have you seen Hot Rod?' or maybe two before Moonlight's pointed in the right direction. This will be to his disadvantage the day they finally come for him. As it is, he's not far from the ruined wreck of a burnt bar near the Acropolex, standing outside what seems to be an empty bank, or government building, or some other shrine to the forces that govern their world. It was long ago abandoned with the shift of the planet's capital, and leaves behind an empty shell with lots of hidden places. Another mech is visible through a window above, and Hot Rod shouts up, "Yeah, I can barely see it there. That's good. Let's see how long that lasts, huh?" He glances down the street, at which point he spots Moonlight. He pauses a moment to identify her, then waves.
Moonlight should be pretty hard to forget with that (detestable?) hat on her head. She grins at the wave and waves back, approaching until she's at a comfortable level of close for conversation. "Hey there, how goes?" she says casually to the fiery mech. Flicking a glance upwards, she asks, more quietly, "What are you trying to hide?"
It's true. The hat makes her quite memorable. Hot Rod grins. "Hey. Still with the hat, huh?" He shakes his head and leans over to flick the brim with a presumptuous degree of friendly cheer. "Now that'd be telling." Which he promptly does, despite saying that, with a broad enthusiasm that carries through in his voice. He rocks up on his feet. "Replacing a hub for the datanet. Not the official datanet. Senate tried to take it down with a virus and then blew up the bar the local node was in." He points over his shoulder toward the burnt ruin down the street. "Not that easy to take us down. Nice try, tyranny."
"I like my hat," Moonlight says, patting it like an old friend and then pushing it back into place after it's been moved with a flick. Then she gasps. "They blew up a bar! What a travesty! No government that blows up an established drinking hole gets my vote. Er....not that you guys HAVE votes here. So backwards." She shakes her head. "What kind of tech do you have?" she asks, curious. "And are you doing something different this time? If they found it out once, and you change nothing, chances are, it will happen again."
Hot Rod looks gently confused by the idea of people voting for their government. Space must be so weird. "They will find it," he says with a slight grin as he looks up at the figure shadowed through the window. He waves the other mech off to slip away unseen and leave the two of them. "And they'll take it down again. But we've put up eleven more since then, with upgraded anti-viral programs. We planned for this in the first place. Distributed -- something. I don't know. Other people put it together." Read: smarter people. "Set it up so that if one piece goes down, the rest is still there."
Moonlight ahhhhs, nodding in approval. "Good call," she says. "Sometimes the best way to hide something is to leave some part of it in 'almost' plain sight." She taps her chest. "I know a lot about hiding things; it's my job." Grinning, she adds, "I think you and I should have a little chat if you have the time."
"Step in to my office," says Hot Rod with an indulgent wave at the abandoned building once used for actual, dignified functions, and now a squatter's haven. Nyon: it has its charms.
He leads the way in and leans down to right a couple of the broken, but largely serviceable chairs in what was once a grand foyer. Hot Rod wiggles them to make sure they aren't going to collapse, then drops down into one with a flop that puts that to the test. He doesn't immediately end up on the floor. They are sturdy enough. He kicks his feet up on the overturned back of another chair in the gathering. "How're you finding Cybertron?"
"It's a bit of a backwater hole actually," Moonlight says with a grin as she follows Hot Rod. "Place needs some serious fixing up, and fast. But, you already knew that, now didn't you?" She kneels on a chair facing backwards, resting her chin on the back of it so that he can only really see her head. "It might warm your spark a little to know the law is getting desperate, so whatever it is you're doing, or others are doing, is getting to them."
Hot Rod ticks a finger off in the direction of Kaon. "Megatron and his Decepticons, I expect. We haven't really been hit by any organized efforts. I'm not sure we could take it," he admits. He tilts his head and answers Moonlight's grin with a slightly puzzled smile. "But what makes you say that? Some fresh new stupidity they've thought up?"
Moonlight nods her head. "Bit of the underdogs are you?" Hopefully he'll understand what that means; she doesn't know much about the indigenous wildlife on Cybertron. "I say that because this Prowl guy seemed really intent on having me join security forces. Now, I admited I was a smuggler, and he talked on about redemption and whatnot, but honestly, if he had the chance to be picky, he wouldn't have considered me as an option. If they're taking on smugglers to be law enforcers, then they must be desperate." She chuckles. "Follow my reasoning?"
Some things surely must translate: Hot Rod's smile widens to a grin. "Come on, everyone likes underdogs the best. We're /charming/." He glances around the building, then out the door to the city beyond. Underdogs everywhere. "Prowl's cold. He might talk about redemption but what he really means is that you'd tip the math in their favor. Their loss!" he ends with a cheery sing-song. "You can do better than that. But why didn't you go for it?"
"I'm not completely without a set of morals and ethics; they're just not based upon the law," Moonlight says, still peering over the edge of the back of the chair. "Now, I can respect where Prowl is coming from, and if the law system was better, he would be a great guy to run it. But his belief in the system makes him blind to the fact that the laws around here REEK with corruption. Now, I'm all for a little corruption now and then in other areas of life, but the law needs to be stable. It's a matter of trust. You can't trust the law, and everything else falls apart. Just like I need to be trusted to ignore the law." She grins. "If I joined /with/ the law, I'd be breaking the things I believe in."
"From what I've seen, the law has pretty much nothing to do with ethics or morality or whatever you want to call it." Hot Rod shifts his feet in their prop on the chair and leans forward. "It comes from here--" He taps his chest, right in the middle of the flames, just above his spark. "--and not from /rules/." DOWN WITH RULES.
Hot Rod tilts his head and considers Moonlight. "So, what are you going to do, then? Back to smuggling?"
"Rules, well, sometimes you can't get away from them. Like, the laws of physics, or whatever. People like to believe that things are orderly, well-defined. But they're really not. At least, not when it comes to people." Moonlight shrugs her shoulders. "Now that's not to say there aren't good law systems. They just don't exist here. But whether they exist or not, it's usually my job to circumvent them. It's what I do. Joining the side of the law would be pure hypocracy." She laughs softly. "Not sure how much call there is for smuggling around here, but I imagine I'll find something worth doing. I figured /you/ might be able to point me in the right direction." She winks.
"Oh, what, are you kidding? Smuggling everywhere." Hot Rod waves a hand to the city beyond. "Only way people here can get stuff, sometimes, since Iacon strangles most of the normal supply lines. And yeah -- I know just the mech to talk to. Swindle's ah, uhm, independent merchant. He mostly works out of Kaon--" Which implies a certain something about his politics to those who have been paying attention. "--but he's one of the only places anyone in Nyon can get armed."
Moonlight smiles slowly. "I see. Well, I've got some weapons..." she starts to say. "The law took some of the more interesting pieces, but I still have a pretty good selection." She laughs to herself. "I'll have to meet this Swindle character, though how anyone can do business with a name like that is beyond me." She shakes her head slowly. "People have serious name issues around here. Decepticons? Swindle? Really! At least your name makes sense."
Hot Rod spreads his hands wide with an easy laugh. "I know, I know! I don't have an explanation for Swindle, but he plays it straighter than you might think. Decepticons -- I guess their line is 'you're being deceived', and you can't say that's wrong if you've gotten even a glimpse of what the Senate's up to." Settling back with a self-satisfied twist of his lips, he says, "Still, there's a lesson in branding in there, right?" Tilting his head, he casts a curious glance over her frame as though she might have weapons start spilling out of her pockets. "So what've you got?"
"They're in my ship at the moment; I was thinking of bringing the whole craft over. Since there's a lockdown, clamp-thingy going on, I won't be getting back into space anytime soon. We can see if there's anything in the making of the ship that can be useful apart from the supplies actually on it." Standing up, Moonlight starts to pace a bit, not in aggitation so much as animation. "Because frankly, this city is growing on me, and you seem to have a singular devotion to the place. I'd like to lend you a hand if you'll have me."
"Yeah, she'll do that," says Hot Rod with a fond glance out the door. "Nyon's worth it. There's more to the city and its people than meets the eye, you know?" One would certainly hope so, anyway, given that what meets the eye is frankly pretty rough. "If you've got a /ship/, though -- that's useful not just for transporting stuff, but people." He gives Moonlight a quick, speculative glance, then says, "Not as lucrative. But. It can save lives. Slip people past the Enforcers, help them build new lives."
"Well, to me, money is more about keeping score than anything else. Cybertron is no game. I'll worry about my finances later." Moonlight waves a hand dismissively. "I deal in goods, not death. I'm no killer, and I don't really care to see people dying." She grins. "Doesn't mean I'm not above lying to them, cheating them, or giving them a few hits with a blaster if they get in my way." Then she holds up a hand. "When I'm not working though, I can be a pretty straight shooter. Consider me an opportunist if you like." And the next moment she sighs. "My ship isn't in the best condition right now. You have anyone local that knows a thing or two about ship parts?"
Hot Rod's smile widens -- touched with approval first, then a laugh that passes in a breath. "Yeah, okay. Good. As long as you're straight with me, cheat at all the games you want." Lying, cheating, shooting people a little: it's all good, just as long as it's not him.
"Nautica can help with your ship -- she's amazing with a wrench and a pile of scraps. She made this thing -- I don't know if she even has a name for it. But it was awesome," says Hot Rod with a /stunning/ lack of clarity but a lot of enthusiasm. "So when you say you want to lend a hand -- you talking just running jobs around Nyon, or you /really/ want to join up? Do something about all the people Iacon's left behind?"
Moonlight wouldn't shoot Hot Rod, at least not as thing stand now. "Well, let's just see how we work together first, hm?" she suggests. "Though I don't anticipate any problems, I don't know who all you have working with you. Don't want to cause any problems if I'm supposed to be alleviating them, right?" She waves a hand towards the door to indicate the city in general. "Iacon is too shiny and pristine. I don't think most of the higher up types even know what it's like to struggle...to go without. Not the way your system is here." Finally she sits down again. "I know you put a big stock in trust, as you were going on about it last time we met, so you need time to trust me before things become finalize."
"Yeah." Hot Rod considers Moonlight with a quick, flashing smile. "Good. That's about what I'd have suggested." He drops his feet from the chair to lean forward. He pulls one, two, three datapads from subspace before finally settling on the last. He transfers data from the third to second, and then pockets the first two again. Tell no one he is capable of both reading and writing. It's a secret. After clearing the third, he starts putting down names, addresses. "Here. That's a couple places you can start with that'll help you, uhm, move your stuff. And I'll talk to Nautica about getting in touch with you, tell Swindle you're willing to run stuff for him. Sound good?"
Moonlight nods her head with this, taking the datapad, glancing it over quickly, and tucking it away. Perusal will come later. "Sounds good," she says. "I have a feeling this will work out nicely, assuming that no one with you objects to including a space-savvy smuggler." Afer all, she's technically an outsider.
"You're so much less objectionable than Blurr." Hot Rod laughs, then admits, "I still haven't heard the last of it for dragging him out of a fire. Nah, you're good." He offers a hand, saying, "I look forward to working with you. And I hope that we do see more of you. Nyon's a great place, but I admit we need the help. Bet you're wishing you'd kept flying when you passed by, huh?"
Moonlight shakes her head. "I came here for a reason. The clampdown served my purposes. It might be a crap law, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to use it to my advantage." She laughs softly. "Part of skirting the law is KNOWING the law." Taking the hand in one of hers, she tips her hat with the other. "Anyhow, I'll be seeing you. Time for me to go seek these others out."
Getting to his feet with a minor creak of protest from the chair, Hot Rod gives an eager nod. "I've sent them a comm to expect you. Let me know if you run into any trouble, yeah?" He doesn't head for the door, as might be expected, but looks like he's headed deeper into the building -- and probably upstairs to check on that project he was shouting about when she walked in. "Good luck!"
Moonlight doesn't need to be shown to the door, and if he trusts her enough not to escort her out, she'll take it. Humming softly to herself she makes her exit.