Not Spying

++ Nyon ++

Nyon was the capital of Cybertron during the Golden Age, the rule of Nova

Prime, when energon was plentiful and the planet's population was at peace.

Now, with nearby Iacon the capital of the planet, Nyon has become a ghetto,

and a shell of its former self.

Temples, libraries, energon refineries and places of culture have been all

but abandoned, left to corrode and rot away as their patrons moved to the

newer, better capital city to the east. Left behind were the low caste and

disposable laborers, who commute to Iacon to maintain and keep it, while

being denied the privilege of its living quarters. Poverty and crime are

rife here, with only minimal police presence to keep it at bay, making it a

fertile breeding ground for rebellion and dissent.

The tunnels below Nyon are dark and quiet tonight, that is in the sector where Blurr is currently working. Likely because this part of the catacombs was long deserted. It was once a maintenance passage used by low caste workers from the nearby waste treatment plant, but had fallen into disuse after the workers were let go due to the implementation of new automation technology.

It's a good thing, though, because he'd rather not be seen doing what he's doing, because what he is doing is planting explosives all along the walls and floors in preparation for a convoy he knows is going to be coming this way soon. And if that convoy knows the place is rigged, it kind of makes this task pointless! He carefully picks his way through the bombs he's already placed, but moves in a strategic pattern so as to minimize the risk of accidentally stepping on one himself.

Carefully laid plans seldom can account for everything. And carefully laid explosives could be a double edged sword, especially when innocent lives could be at stake. Or, just one. But then, that might be an acceptable risk.

Rounding a corner in the tunnels, a small vehicle comes, highbeams on high. It's chassis is flat compared to the large wheels coming out either side, being taller than the frame they cradle between them. Said highbeams light upon Blurr while he is setting one of his little surprises, and the vehicle comes to a stop.

Blurr whirls around to face the newcomer. Ugh! That wasn't supposed to happen! People weren't supposed to -come- down this way. Was that Swivel? What was she doing down here? Thankfully she stops in front of him, though. "Hey." he greets, standing in her way as much as possible. "Swivel, right? Nice to see you uh," he glances down at her alt form. "What are you doing down here?"

Without much hesitance, Swivel transforms back into her root mode. She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at Blurr for a while with a more or less neutral expression. "Could ask ya th'same question, now, kin I?"

"Well I..." Blurr glances behind himself, then back at her. There really wasn't any good lie he could tell, now is there? Not when she just showed up and saw him like that. That is without letting her step on the mines and blow the both of them up. "I was just scouting the tunnels for new routes. This old maintenance passage isn't bound to be used by anyone any more, good for keeping a low profile when I need to." he grins. "Guess you were thinking the same thing?"

Swivel nods her head slowly, her arms still folded. She smiles a little bit. "Yessum, sumtin like 'at," Swivel responds, tilting her head one way and then the other. She begins to take a few steps forward while saying, "'Z'ere sumtin o'er there that caught yer int'rest?"

"Over where?" Blurr asks, looking behind, then back at Swivel. "Not really, just thought this passage could be handy. Anyway..." he glances around. He needs to get rid of her. "Were you on your way somewhere? You should probably take a different route, this place has kind of fallen into disrepair you know lack of maintenance, I'll have to see about getting it fixed up so we can use it occasionally."

The small femme tries to glance beyond Blurr for a moment or two, going onto her tippy-toes. "Z'at so?" Swivel peeps, raising her optic ridges. "I dun 'magine main'ence 'ood come down 'ere much..." She then frowns at Blurr and gets a devious expression on her face, "S'pechully if ther likes o' you keep messin' wi' 'em!"

"Right, they don't, but that's why I'm going to put in a request for--" Blurr frowns when Swivel gets that devious look on her face. "Hey, what do you mean 'the likes of me'? I'm just a courier, like you." Just a courier, right. When she tries to peer over his shoulder he sort of straightens up more, trying to block her view.

"Couriers dun 'ide in ceilin's an' kill defenseless 'bots ter keep 'emselves 'idden," Swivel points out, narrowing her optics slightly. "Least, I ent ev' 'ad t'do tha. We 'liver the info, not gather it... so me's thinkin you ent jus' a courier." She takes a few steps to her right, trying to peer around Blurr. "An' yer 'idin' sumtin down 'ere. 'Ope it ent a dead cleaner."

"No, no!" Blurr shakes his head, keeping step with her in an attempt to keep her from moving further down the passage. "It's nothing like -that-, like I said, I was just scouting out the tunnels for more clandestine routes." He looks impatient. "Look, I'd hate to keep you, if you're on the job. You should take another route for the time being, and I'll let you know once this one is ready."

Perching her hands on her hips, Swivel gives Blurr a very suspicious look. After a moment or two she finally shrugs her shoulders. "Wellum, I guess yer jus' trying ter look out fer a fellow courier... if the path is oh so dangerous, mebbe y'ought ter come away wit me too. I know a fine alt route. More turns, but it ain't too much longer..." She watches Blurr carefully as she speaks to gauge his reactions. This is one of the times where there is almost a clever glint in her optics as opposed to the vacant expressions the femme usually wears.

Blurr appears slightly relieved at this. "Oh, nah, thanks for your concern, but I'm good. I have to send in a report in order to make a maintenance request--you know, they have to make sure it's actually -feasible- to fix it. I'll be fine, you know how fast I can move." he grins.

All there is left is for Swivel to nod her her head and turn away. While turned away, she says a goodbye and begins walking towards the nearest bend in the tunnels. And that is where, once out of view, she will wait.

Well well, didn't Swivel say only a few solar cycles ago that spying wasn't her function? That she was only a courier, she only delivered the message, and thus it wasn't her business to look at it? Seems she's fine with spying -Blurr-, however.

As soon as she's out of sight, he goes right back to planting the explosives. He was almost finished, and once the charges are all in place, he stands there for a moment to examine his work, looking satisfied. "Heh. They won't even know what hit them." he comments to himself.

Indeed, spying is not her function. Scouting, however, is. And if there is, indeed, danger, she wants to be sure what sort it is, and of her own observation. She leans against a wall, and then slowly peers around the corner when she hears Blurr speak to himself, a frown playing across her face. She then quickly moves away from the corner.

 The charges have been placed in a strategic manner such that if even one were set off, a chain reaction would occur, and -all- of them would detonate in succession, causing the entire structure to buckle in on itself and collapse on top of whoever might be unfortunate enough to have triggered it. Satisfied with his work, Blurr suddenly darts off, a smear of white and blue against the greyish walls. Where did he go, though? Is he gone?

When Swivel glances around the corner again, he's gone! Well, that would make most people uneasy. Instead Swivel shrugs her shoulders and heads to where Blurr had been, flashing on her headlights and peering down the passage Blurr had been blocking. She takes one step and stops, examining the area carefully. She holds out her forearm and pops open a panel to prepare calibrating some sort of scan.

Blurr doesn't reappear right away, but Swivel's scan would reveal just -what- he had been doing. There are charges planted all over the passage, with pressure-point detonators. And they're all connected. Step on one, set off all of them. If someone just came waltzing in here without realizing what had been done, they'd be scrapped real quick, -and- trapped under a pile of rubble even if they survived the initial blast.

Hazardous indeed! Swivel had actually expected there to be structural issues. The lets out a small gasp of surprise to learn the damage was a lot more intentional, and a lot more deadly. Swivel carefully takes a few steps backwards, and then pauses. She turns and puts her back to a wall, glancing about herself.

There's a soft noise...somewhere. It echoes throughout the tunnel, and makes it difficult determine its point of origin. Suddenly, Blurr is standing against that same wall, right next to her. "Well, well. I thought you said spying would go above and beyond your -function-, huh? But here you are, doing just -that-. You're against meddling in business that isn't your own, and yet when it comes to -me-, it's somehow different?"

Swivel is all frowns as she glances over to Blurr. "I wun't spyin' - I wanted a second 'pinion, - MINE," Swivel responds. She then tilts her head towards the rigged tunnel. "'Ad I been delayed, I'da been blown ter bits." She then looks back at Blurr. "Ent in ther mood fer talkin' circles. So y'kin tell me why ya'd do this, undo it, or jus' leave."

"Exactly why I kept telling you to get the slag -out- of here." Blurr explains, looking exasperated. "And stop making up excuses, you were -spying- on me. "I didn't want you to accidentally step on one of them, you weren't -supposed- to be down here, no one was except me!" Ugh. "And I can't tell you why I did it because that's classified, in fact, -you- had better not tell anyone about this, understood?"

"Ya, but you lied 'bout why," Swivel responds. "An I wunt spyin' on /YOU/, I was jus not trustin' you was tellin' truth, and I wanted ter see fer meself. If I was spying on you I'd try an' follow ya.... not tha I could, but I'd try. An' I ain't spy. Not m'fault ya din notice I din' leave all ther way. An dun tell me where I'm s'posed ta be 'coz abandoned tunnels li'this 'r valu'bal t'me work." Swivel says with only mild irritation, still keeping her back, or rather, her tires to the wall. "'Sides, dun get righteouss on me 'coz you wunt shame me fer bein' only inconsistent, when any time I see you, yer hurtin' people."

"I wasn't hurting anyone! Good Primus I was trying to -keep- you from getting hurt!" Blurr protests. He groans. "I lied because you weren't supposed to know, this was supposed to be a -covert- operation." he sighs, making an exasperated sound once again, waving a dismissive hand. "Whatever, you don't understand. And I'm not going to bother explaining it to you. Now," he takes a step closer to her. "You are not to tell anyone what you saw," he repeats. "Is that clear? Because if you do, I'll know. -Trust- me."

Blurr is not the only one who is exasperated. Swivel is pinching the bridge of her snubby nose and looking down, until she waves her hand at Blurr as if trying to blow away some foul smell. "These 'splosives 'r meant to hurt summun, now, aren't they? If they was jus' demolition, they'd be timed, not...." she shakes her head. "Know what? You're right. No point going on. No. I won't tell anyone that you set explosives here. And whoever you are working for should be ashamed of themselves."

"I meant, I wasn't hurting anyone at the -moment.-" Blurr folds his arms. "And the people it is meant to hurt, are -asking- for it." Really, she'd heard about Altihex, didn't she? "So no, they're not ashamed of themselves, and neither am I. Sometimes, doing the right thing is hard. Because the right thing is -just-, and justice is not particularly lenient. Besides, helping people sometimes means -hurting- dangerous ones. Sure, in an ideal world no one would ever have to hurt in order to help, but this is far from that isn't it?"

But she seems to have agreed not to tell anyone, and that's really all that matters. "Good, you'd better not. Now get out of here, before you accidentally blow yourself up." She should consider herself lucky, if she were a disposable, she would have ended up just like poor little YX-452 by now. Or perhaps even if he hadn't already known her previously.

A long sideglance is most of the response that Blurr gets. Slowly she shrugs and smiles lightly. "Sure, sure, whatever. The ends justify the means and all that. And I don't like talking to you, so getting out of here is fine by me... that and I don't want to be blown up." Swivel departs from the wall and heads down the tunnel, going in the opposite direction of where the explosives are. Her footsteps can be heard trailing away into the distance.

And in the distance, just before any other junctions, Swivel scrounges around for some scrap to fashion a sign out of. She piles up what she can to block off the way leading to where the explosives are and uses a small precision laser to bore the message "TUNNEL HAZARDS UP AHEAD. ALTERNATE ROUTE ADVISED".

Blurr watches her go with a suspicious gaze. Oh, he does -not- trust that filthy little slagger one bit. So why did he just let her go? Maybe because while he was standing there next to her against that wall, he'd planted a listening/tracking device on her chassis. Yes, he really wasn't kidding when he'd said he'd know if she told anyone!