On Tactics and Strategy

Some of the Troubles are gathered around the holo emitter and are entertaining themselves. The only education to be found on /those/ holos involves explosives, and Flareup is there to loudly point out the things that they've gotten wrong.

Hot Rod is standing on the far side of the room making use of a couple of crates as a desk and watching them wistfully. Fun. He wants to be having fun right now. How great would it be to have fun. SO GREAT.

Instead he does this. Whatever this is. It looks like flicking a list of items up and down on the screen and then stopping it suddenly with his thumb and going, "Okay, then." So who knows what he's doing.

Long stride taking her across the room on clanks of her feet, Chromia comes to rest beside Hot Rod's makeshift desk with her arms coming to cross at an angle over her chassis. The angle of her head cants as she surveys him.

Chromia is not here to have fun; she has spent a few minutes observing their entertainment with a bland shade of quizzical before finding their boss. Perhaps she has some kind of metal skin allergy to fun. (Nah. She's not THAT grumpy.)

"What are you doing," she says by way of greeting, and not in a tone that actually makes it sound that much like a query. "Please tell me you're not selecting targets at total random."

Hot Rod hunches his shoulders and looks guilty. He stares at Chromia a long moment and goes, "Uh." UHHHHH.

Chromia stares at him, for a moment at a loss, a little like she can't believe that this bit of predictive suspicion turned out to actually be accurate.

Hot Rod draws his shoulders up in a tight shrug. "It's not ... at /total/ random," he somewhat lamely defends himself.

Settling her weight back on her heels, Chromia lifts her head again and says, "This I have to hear." She moves, coming to the crate that has become part of his desk, and leans her weight into it on the brace of her hip, crossing her feet in a clanky slide of her ankles, and blows out her breath in a noise like a slow release of compressed air.

"Well, first I had this list--." Hot Rod breaks off and comes to take a seat-slash-lean next to her. He tips the datapad so that they both might see. The first list is a long list. "So then I sorted it by the most /hired/ security," which he demonstrates, and then chops off all but the bottom ten. From this list, he says, "Which I then sorted by distance from an enforcer station." There go another five! "So then I had these five and there's really nothing terribly pressing at the moment. No one's starving to death any more than usual, no one dying of need for medical supplies more than any other day, so any one of these five could probably work."

Chromia listens, slowly kicking her heel back against the crate: scrape, thunk. Scrape, thunk. Finally she nods a little, not exactly in approval, but more in acceptance. Her voice dry with the upsweep of optic ridges not unaccustomed to such activity, she goes, "And /then/ you just flipped through the five and decided to ... point."

"Well. Yeah." Hot Rod looks at his list. "Do you think alphabetical would be better?"

"You really have no way to differentiate priority between those five?" Chromia tips her head. She looks skeptical. Her face seems designed, in form and function, to show great skepticism; it rises to its function now as her eyes narrow. "There's no strategic difference whatsoever?"

Hot Rod makes a very ... teenaged sort of noise, winding (whining) through and past his lips: "Unnnhg I don't know. What else is there, besides how many people go and shoot you back if things go wrong?"

With surprising patience in her voice, if not in her expression, Chromia says: "Assuming things go right, what is there to gain? Assuming things go wrong, what is there to lose? Gather as much data as you can, run scenarios of each. You've started to do that work already merely by narrowing down the list."

"Well." Hot Rod thinks about it a moment before walking through the various options with Chromia. Where she questions, he has more answers than one might expect, suggesting some data already gathered, but there are many more holes that, when she turns them up, he admits, "I don't know," and then they stop to look up what they can, or make a note for one of the other troubles to look into it so that they have a better picture. His impatience to just pick one and go settles to a simmer as he begins to realize how much is yet to be learned. "Ugh, I thought I was ready to make a plan but this is just making plans to make plans," he complains.

"In ways, it is," Chromia says. She studies him obliquely or a moment. "But you can see why it's necessary," she adds, because she has more faith in his rationality than she pretends. "It's very possible that you would have been fine doing it your way, but the more you trust to preparedness and the less to blind, dumb luck, the more blind, dumb luck you'll have left when it's time to launch."

Hot Rod laughs in delight. "Well, you know me: blind, dumb luck is my favorite. Makes sense to save it up for when you'll really need it." His grin is bright as he slaps the datapad in the palm of his hand. He considers the Troubles gathered around the entertainment. "Okay. I'll put them on helping prepare and then see what we have after that. We're doing okay on supplies here, really. Nautica helped a lot with that. Tracking things, making sure we're ready to get more if we get low, things like that. I kind of want to do something for the people who aren't doing so hot. It's such a big project, though, and we're doing just well enough that people are starting to notice and want a piece."

"Mmm," Chromia says. Her gaze narrows as she eyes him, though this time more thoughtful and speculative than exactly dubious. "It is a notion full of spark. Whether it is a notion that can be made pragmatic..." (Dot dot dot.)

"Pragmatic." Hot Rod makes a face. "Sometimes I think being practical just means being willing to settle for only doing things halfway."

"Hot Rod," Chromia says, though there is more gentleness than usual in the tone of this reproof. "The other option is to do one thing all the way, but the rest not at all. Your resources are not inexhaustible, even with Nautica."

Hot Rod grunts (disgusted noise) and says, "But there are so many things, Chromia! Like. So many!" He flings his arms wide to encompass the many problems of the city, the world. "And everyone goes 'well, just make a small change' or 'wait for the right time' but sometimes I think they mean don't do anything at all." He's probably not entirely talking about current operations, eh?

Chromia lifts a hand to prod Hot Rod, hard, in the chest, when he flings out his arms. "That complaint better not be to /my/ address," she tells him. "Just because /you/ have more scope than sense."

"What? What, no, Primus -- no." Hot Rod drops the datapad with a clatter to ease her hand away and looks vaguely apologetic. "Jazz -- decent sort, for an Autobot -- sort of hinted we need to keep our heads down, keep things small, or they'll have to come after us. He knows how bad it can get -- he knows! I don't see how anyone could be expected to just not do anything."

"It's his job to enforce order, isn't it?" Chromia sweeps a hand backward to indicate Hot Rod's troubles and what could even be Flareup cackling, if she turns her head to look. "Does this look like order to you?"

"Order's a load of--" Hot Rod suggests a couple of rude things, and just where various people can shove their order, all of which are highly unlikely. "Who cares about order when people are doing bad things with it? Who cares if it's not order as long as it's good? People hide behind things, go 'well, it wasn't illegal'. Who cares!"

"Police," Chromia says. She folds her arms across her chest as she straightens away from her lean against the crate. "Lawyers. You know. Aftheads." Snorting, she adds with more sharpness, "But just because you know what you're doing is good, how do they? What if people get hurt? What if there's collateral damage? Then what?"

"A lot less people get hurt /my/ way," says Hot Rod with the fierce conviction of the (self-)righteous. "I don't know why you're arguing. You know it's worth fighting. You saw what happened to Nautica. Jazz thinks that Sentinel will investigate Ratbat and he'll be convicted or whatever and everything will be fine, meanwhile the Institute might be gone but how many people do you think got away with what they are doing? Nautica's said so!"

"I'm saying there's more than one way to be good, and some ways to be good don't involve running off and sticking your head in something that might be about to explode," Chromia says with another snort, shaking her head. "I don't /disagree/ with you. I only /caution/ you."

"Sounds like disagreeing to me." /Of course it does/. Hot Rod smiles as he says it, and somewhat aggressively tries to change the subject: "So what about helping others in Nyon, not just us? Teach people to stick up for themselves? Think you could do that? Or maybe teach some of us to teach others."

Chromia makes a noise, a kind of whirring, airy sound as she tips her head. "I will help," she says, "as much as I can. You really do need to have a care, though."

Hot Rod makes a dismissive noise, but he asks, "A care of what?" so maybe he's listening.

"Scrutiny, for one thing," Chromia says. She gives him a look only mildly dour. "But also the other hazards we were just discussing. Your best weapon is planning, Hot Rod. Even if you don't like it." EAT YOUR GREENS, YOUNG MAN.

ENERGON IS PINK. "How am I supposed to avoid scrutiny except by not doing anything, which -- by the way! -- is not an option?" Hot Rod stubborns.

"Do things /after/ planning things," Chromia suggests. She smiles. "Not before, or in the middle. That's all."

"Assuming I plan things at all," Hot Rod points out, which -- he shouldn't point out. Stop. Hot Rod. "Yeah, okay. I wish I could still get into the archives, but I don't care what Alpha Trion said, I don't think anything in Iacon is that safe. I guess I'll have to give Rewind a list of stuff, see if he can get it. It's not like everyone's just sparked knowing how to plan things. Well -- maybe some people." Blue people.

"Mostly it requires patience," Chromia says, not entirely without sympathy. "What did Alpha Trion say?"

"He said we could hang out and plan there back when we were first planning to hit the Institute," says Hot Rod with a glance over his shoulder to see if Rewind is with the Troubles. "He was kind of big on the planning thing too. Sometimes I get my best ideas when I'm in the middle of something, though."

"Strategy doesn't mean abandoning tactics," Chromia says weightily. She snorts a little, again. It's a noise she seems to make a lot with him around, for some strange reason. "Sticking too closely to plan means being unable to respond to things in the field. That's no good either. It requires balance. /You/ seem to want to apply that fulcrum ... in a very hazardous place, Hot Rod."

"Hey, I know just where to apply things!" Hot Rod insists. "It's worked out so far, hasn't it?" No sooner does he ask than he falters, a few /notable recent examples/ of things that haven't worked out coming to mind.

Chromia gives him a look that does not bother to expand verbally on the question. After an extended beat's pause, she says, "You already know I'm right about this. You just don't like it."

"Ugh, let's go back to the last time I tried to change the subject." Hot Rod drags his hands down his face and says, "You can help as much as you can, right? So what do you think? Better that you show us how to teach others?"

Chromia laughs a little despite herself at that and runs one knuckle down the curve of her face, gliding past the angled wing that shapes it. "Yes," she says, "probably, if only for the very practical reason that there is only one of me."

"Okay." Then Hot Rod stops and thinks and tries to imagine any of the Troubles turning into teachers. He winces a little. "I'll ... get back to you on that. I think that's a way we'll be able to have a big impact without putting as much of ourselves out there, but it's going to take time."

"One way to do it," Chromia says, widening her eyes slightly as she considers the look on his face, "is for me to start them off, but the rest of your team to be ... oh, training /partners/, rather than /teachers/ in a traditional sense."

Hot Rod laughs and gives Chromia a nakedly grateful look. "Yeah, pretty obvious that traditional isn't exactly our strong point, isn't it?"

Chromia glances over her shoulder, and then back at him. "Honestly," she says, "I never expected to be a combat trainer, either. I'd rather do all the hitting myself."

"Well, you're welcome here if you get tired of playing politics." Hot Rod spreads his hands wide with a tease in his voice. He is clearly happy to apply the label 'politics' to Chromia's duties in the embassy like a needling little shit.

"Ugh," Chromia generalized noises of disgust at him.

"In the meantime, since you're here, want to go burn off some energy?" Hot Rod clearly just /wants/ to get hit. He bounces forward on the toes of his big clompy feet (like a puppy, one might hopes he grows into them), light and agile and eager.

Chromia considers him with a long sweep of her gaze, and then says, "All right. Let's see if you've learned anything since last time."

"Just you wait." Full of promise he probably can't back up, Hot Rod bounds off eagerly to lose himself in the physical activity and not think of anything ever again.