The Found Arcana – Fourth Interlude [IC]
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The Found Arcana – Fourth Interlude [IC]
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“Twenty grand?” Big Stank says, more to himself than anyone else. He runs a hand through his hair. “Damn tourists…”
He holds out his hand in a gesture that says ‘enough’. “Okay, 30K for Marita because she’s not some snot-nosed punk. But 5K for each of the others because I’m not some fat-hoop corper sitting on a cushy expense account. It shouldn’t be that difficult to track down a dozen orks riding around together on choppers. Any squatter with half an eyelid open probably knows where they are.”
His aura tightens. He’s probably doing the math and figuring out that if you drag in Marita and a dozen of her followers that he’s going to be out 90K. He looks torn, like he both wants that and doesn’t want that.
Nobody really reacts when Bobby shows up. The trolls flex a bit. Maybe it’s for show; maybe their reaction and reflex ‘ware is triggering some involuntary muscle twitches.
Big Stank turns to address Jawsey’s questions.
“She’s not in Redmond, that’s all I’m certain of. She speaks some Spanish, she speaks some Or’zet. She doesn’t have any family left, just me. We didn’t leave Redmond much so I wouldn’t expect her to have many friends or contacts outside the district.”
He points a finger at Jawsey in a less-than-friendly manner.
“Don’t underestimate her. However smart you think she is, she’s smarter. However savvy you think she is, she’s savvier. She’s headstrong, sure of herself, and capable of convincing people through sheer force of will. Or sheer stubbornness, I don’t know which.
“And don’t underestimate the rewards. In addition to a significant amount of nuyen – which you clearly need – you will be in my good graces, the value of which is priceless in this day and age.”
The last part is said with his tusks showing a bit of a snarl. It’s clearly a threat and an incentive at the same time.
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AM says “It is a challenge Big Stank, but we are motivated, and we will be careful.” she says and manages a smile. Or at least curving her lips, but it is not Big Stank that bothers her. She does not like the man, but he will pay her if she does her part. She trust him enough for that. She feels anger at Jawsey for this entire situation, more anger than she realized she had just a moment ago.
On one hand, AM feels satisfied that she managed to negotiate well, on the other hand Jawsey could have done it better than her. It is his forte, not hers. if she can get 30k, then Jawsey could have gotten 40 or even 50k. Big Stank could have paid more, she feels it. If only Jawsey showed a little passion for negotiation that is. Instead, she has to defuse his impossible conditions and makes sure that Big Stank stays rational about this deal. The man came to offer them money for crying out loud, why doesn’t he want to maximize the offer before thinking if he is going to do it? For 10k she wouldn’t have done it herself, not much left after you split 10k to four. For 30k probably, they don’t get a 30k job every day. For 50k? Hell yes! She and Bobby could have cleared the entire debt with that. She could have been saved from the Mafia. He knows that she needs that money, why can’t he be as amazing as he usually is?
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Big Stank was not wrong that they needed the money. Jawsey still suspected that in the long run this was going to buy them more trouble than the money was going to resolve, but he knew that on a different day he might feel differently.
“I saw enough of her to realize how formidable she is. That is why we wouldn’t undertake this lightly. But we appreciate the warning; we won’t underestimate her.“
Taking a glance at the astral to check on Big Stank and the trolls, he saw the anger in AM’s aura, and wondered what that was all about. She got her way and they were taking the deal, and Big Stank had upped the offer far higher than Jawsey had ever imagined the orc could afford, or would be willing to spend if he could afford.
Of course, it sounded like Bonita was family. That could change everything. Well, for some people. Certainly Jawsey’s father had made huge sacrifices for Jawsey, but he was gone and Jawsey didn’t know the rest of his family much at all. Still, it was not breaking news that some people would do almost anything for family.
Family of some sort. Jawsey relaxed more fully into his astral vision, taking a harder look at Big Stank’s aura. Did auras carry a family resemblance? He’d never thought to look for it before, and certainly it wasn’t obvious, but shouldn’t there be something there, especially family willing to spend so much on each other?
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Bobby likewise had done the math about the remaining gangers. Catching them alive was a bit of a problem – but then they wouldn’t have to transport them and only keep them in place until the other CC rolled up.
“We’ll see how many of your flock we can round up for you. Just one more question: Have you hired anyone else for the same job already or do you intend to?
Because we are a detective agency, not a merc outfit. We don’t do competition.”
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Jawsey doesn’t find any traces of family resemblance on the astral. Physically, they don’t really look like each other. Mr. Stank appears Eastern European, perhaps Polish or Slovakian or Hungarian or something like that. Marita/Bonita, on the other hand, clearly has significant Hispanic heritage. No, Jawsey’s best guess is that there’s no literal family connection. But Mr. Stank is older for an ork, so it’s not hard to imagine the possibility of a father-daughter relationship. Of course, you only have Mr. Stank’s word on the matter about the nature of the relationship.
“Bulldrek,” Big Stank tells Bobby with more than a little venom in his voice. “You do competition every time you step out those doors. Every day on the streets is a competition. Every nuyen you’ve ever earned was a competition with someone else wanted to earn it, but you did instead. Every job you take pits you against someone who’s better off if you don’t succeed.
“I pay for results, not effort. I haven’t talked to anyone else but if someone else brings me Marita, I pay them, not you. Your competition is time. Your competition is my patience. Your competition is Marita.”
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Bobby shrugged: “When a client comes to us, we already made it against the competition. If we do the work and someone else you hired tries to poach our catch… My colleagues and I get upset. I’d sooner let Straight Edge escape than let someone else get paid for our hard work. I’m spiteful like that.”
Bobby put his chin forward. Involuntarily, his fingertips began to harden and sharpen into claws.
“And since you seem to be in a hurry to find her, I’d suggest you leave now so we can get to work – unless you have another problem where you need our services.”
Spoiler:Etiquette: 3d6t5 2
Yeah, Bobby actually invested in getting some manners
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If at first, the little elf was angry, she now feels a bit worried. She says in a non-confrontational voice and tries to deescalate the situation. Bobby, Big Stank It goes without saying that we entered this agreement with a certain degree of trust. We do not ask you not to hire other people, or not to accept her from someone else. However, if we need to fight over your daughter with someone you hired, then you placed her at additional risks. We understand that competition is inevitable because there are multiple organizations that seek to determine her fate. We hope that we can limit the competition from the Crimson Crush as I am not sure that more agents would give you better performance. She looks at him At the end of the day Big Stank, she is your daughter and you will do what you think is best for her.
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“Oh, excuse me, sir,” Mr. Stank says with obvious sarcasm to Bobby. He stands from the table.
“Forgive me for intruding upon your hospitality.” His derision is thick as he gestures to the glasses of water and cup of herbal tea.
But AM’s interjection seems to mollify him. For a moment it looked like he had considered flipping the table, or at least knocking over the water glasses, but in the end he refrains. His response to AM is more civil as he prepares to leave.
“My crew will only be on the job if she’s in Redmond, and she’s not in Redmond. Every gang in the district has been looking for her for the last two days. If she were here, we would have found her.”
Peeking on the astral, Jawsey sees a complicated aura in Big Stank. He sees concern and self-interest, but also deception. Mr. Stank is not being entirely honest or upfront about something, but Jawsey isn’t sure what. Maybe it’s his ability to pay, or his willingness to pay, or some other falsehood slipped in among the details. Or maybe he’s lying to himself about something? Men in distress often do, and it would be fair to categorize his agitation as distress.
“Alright, little snakes, let’s rattle,” he says to his trolls, who turn and follow him out.
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Bobby looked after them as the tuned up ganger bikes left again.
“Interesting. Sounds almost like a full blown job to me – except that we have no guarantee that we’ll actually get paid for anything we do. I’m definitely down to talk first with Bonita and get her side of the story. If her offer matches his or if we can get the mayor to chip in, I’m inclined to support her – just because I can’t stand that fragging scumbag.”
With surprise he registered the angry look on AM’s face for the first time.
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“It is almost like a good job because I used every bit of charm I had left in me to make Big Stank cooperative. Despite the fact that I stink, and miserable, and cold, and that I have more reasons to dislike the big, violent, arrogant, rude, bullies than any of you two. So you feel the same way? Good, but can we agree that we do not have to like an asshole to take his money?” Speak to Mato about it, he has charts and statistics as if we are a proper business. The brutal truth is that our day-to-day job barely pays the rent, and we also have debt and other expenses. We survive because once in a while someone asks us to do something illegal or dangerous, and pays us a large pile of money.
So when the leader of the Crimson Crush offers money, we understand that this is our bread and butter, and we try to maximize the opportunity rather than let our negative emotions rob us of the opportunity. Jawsey, you want to play hard negotiator, fine. Get him to pay for some of the damages his guys caused before you even hear what he had to say. I am sure we could get something if we played our cards right. The man literally showed us the credsticks he brought to the meeting, it is a tale-tale sign.
You suggest outrageous gun-free zones to blow up the negotiations? Why, don’t you follow the conversation and see what we can get out of the man instead? Bobby, we do not insult the man, unless it would somehow get him to pay more. Asshole or saint, SIS needs a working relationship with Crimson Crush because they are strong and are backed up by a dragon, and they made allies with all the other gangs in Redmond. We need not antagonize their organization if we want to do business in their turf.
She get her head in her hands frustrated “Sometimes it feels like you are sabotaging the negotiations rather than maximizing our revenue. I try to do damage control, but it is so frustrating. We can do much better than we did. Why am I the one leading the negotiations when Jawsey is the one charming enough to have brokered the treaty of Denver? What happened to you since the Mayor’s office? What is it about dragons? Did you lose your confidence, or what? Where is that charm that got us well paid until now? We really need you at your best Jawsey.
Bobby, I know that you mean well, and I know that you can simply kill Big Stank and almost anyone in Redmond. I understand that it makes etiquette tricky because you never had to play nice. Whereas, if I play rude people break my bones. Still, we are a pack, and SIS needs a relationship with the Crimson Crush. Besides, even if you do kill him, and even if we survive the aftermath. We’ll still need the Crimson Crush to treat us fairly, and they would still have some arrogant prick with a ridiculous name in charge.“
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“I didn’t mean to insult them – I just wanted them gone because they got on my nerves.
But yeah, I get it. Less vinegar, more honey. Sorry. I’ll try to do better next time.”
Bobby mumbled an appology.
“Still,” he continued more clearly, “don’t get blinded by the big numbers. The fact, that he didn’t commit with a down payment to retain our services, tells me that he isn’t honest with us – or at least has something else going on as well. Getting actually paid is the first and most important rule, I’m sure Mato would agree with me on that.”
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Ah, so that was why she was angry. Well, she had some good points, but there was another perspective. Worth it to try and explain? Maybe not, but she’s a team mate, so maybe I owe it to her to explain, whether or not I think it will really help? Team is good, but it sure makes things complicated when you can’t just get what you want from someone and then move on.
“Absolutely it is hard to negotiate for jobs that I don’t really want to take. I guess that is really where we were coming from totally different places, on whether or not these were good jobs.“
“ Certainly we did well by the mayor and Andrew. Good job in that way. This one could pay well too. Lucrative jobs. Lucrative doesn’t always mean good though. Look, I know that your debts are huge, it puts more focus on getting ahead on the red queen’s race track of payments. But it is still worth thinking about lucrative versus good. Please be assured that we value your knee-caps and what-nots too, and there is a lot that we could do in a financial emergency to take care of you. I can hold off paying off some of my debt to make sure you can make payments, if there is a dry month we could sell one car, and so on. You aren’t on your own for that.“
Jawsey started pacing, which was rather unlike him.
“Why am I not convinced that these lucrative jobs are good jobs? Because part of the pay was for what we gave up, and I’m not sure we got paid enough for giving up things that we can only sell once. We played pawns in dragon chess. That is never good. Pawns get sacrificed without a second thought. Urubia knows me now. Granted partially from my own decisions, but it was a known risk of the job. Anyone who was paying attention to what went down might be able to put together that we fragged with Urubia’s plans. How long do you think it would take most people in Redmond to sell that info to Urubia? So we got paid well, but we sold some of our anonymity and some of our safety.“
“And this job for Big Stank. He didn’t come here like a client, he came in like a boss, a, a, what did they used to call them in Europe, a duke or something? Sure he’s offering to pay well, but he was telling us to do this job, not asking us to do it. So now if we do it, we did what he told us. Next time he’s going to be even more sure that he can tell us what to do. And everyone else will see that we are working for the Crush, and no matter how much we protest that he is just another client that won’t convince most. Which is going to make the mayor wonder about us, and other gangs, and maybe other possible clients. So it could pay well, but doing it will be selling some of our independence.“
Jawsey turned towards the others and help up a hand, saying “I’m almost done ranting, just give me a minute to finish.“
“They were lucrative jobs. I’m arguing that they were not good jobs. What we did for the mayor was probably also a necessary job, as in there was probably no good way to turn it down. But yah, I was stalling for time, trying to see if there was a way to weasel out of it, while trying to control my aura enough not to make that obvious. The result was that I didn’t do any of those things well. Bad on me, under stress is probably not the right time to be trying to pull in two directions at once.“
He rubbed at his face. “This one though … maybe we could have gotten out of it. Yah, it would have pissed off Big Stank a bit, but I was hoping to convince him that he was rejecting us because we were crazy rather than us rejecting him. Probably I shouldn’t aggravate him, after all it was people just like him who kicked me ninety-percent to death and left me with a disfigured face for years and have still left me with surgically fused vertebrae. Piss Big Stank off enough and it could happen again, or worse, and with no father to scoop me up and pay to get me put mostly back together again. But thosethugs were there because too many people had let them have their way. I’m no neo-anarchist, I know the world is flaming drek, and the strong will always abuse the weak, but you can still push back in small ways, angle them away from some small spaces, not let them just walk in everywhere and have their way.“
He pulled his chair back out and slumped down into before finishing. “But now we’ve taken the fragging brief, so once we are done arguing I’ll go see if I can convince a spirit to work with me, to go searching for Straight-Edge’s aura. I’ve seen it enough times that maybe there is a chance. Although I’ve be honest, for the past month or so it has felt like nothing is going right. Pretty much since I came back from my work with the Vory. Soon as there is a decent chance, I’m going to have to do something to pull myself together. But today isn’t that day, so I’ll do what I can for the SIS and hope not to frag it up.“
“Rant over. I’m willing to listen to counter-points about how I could or should be framing these activities in the future, and think about it. But about what has already happened? I thought what I did about these jobs, and can’t change that now no matter what points are made.“
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“Woah, easy there.” Bobby replied. “Didn’t know that our last job stressed you out that much.
And no need to rush either with your spirit. We need to get you to Puyallup before you try that. From what I know, there is a sizeable Latino community there.But anyway, I think this needs a full quorum with Mato present as well.”
Bobby replied with something that he thought of as a placating gesture.
“If we are tangling with gangers, we’ll need his strong arms and therefore his assent as well.”
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There’s a cry from the street as the Japanese dwarf shouts, “ユーレカ!” Suddenly the lights come on! Checking out the windows, you see they’re on for the rest of the neighborhood too. There’s cheering as people open their windows to applaud the dwarf. He takes a humble bow. The Crimson Crush clap their hands sarcastically.
The gangers get on their choppers and fire them up. The street is filled with growling motorcycles that peel off down the road. Some drive down the sidewalk, because that’s what teenagers do when they’re young, dumb, and have a degree of power. Watching them go, you see Mato walking down the sidewalk, looking at the ground. This is unusual, as he is almost always heads-up and alert. Mato isn’t really known for having a rich inner life; even if you ask him what he’s thinking, it will often be factual observations about what he’s looking at, or his reflections on Generally Accepting Accounting Principles. He’s almost never just looking at the sidewalk, lost in thought, especially in a neighborhood like Touristville. On the astral, you can see that something is weighing on him. Your understanding is that he was returning to the Sioux Nation to pay off his debts to the Koshari.
The Crimson Crush swerve around him, probably because he’s an ork. They shout, “Skraa!” at him at they pass. He lifts a fist and gives a half-hearted “Skraa” in response, but you can tell he’s not really feeling it.
The HQ’s Central Home Network (CHN) finally reboots and the second-hand drones that Mato picked up off the Brain Eaters come back to life. You also get a flood of messages from Mato, who evidently started sending them to the HQ’s central commcode shortly after the power went out a few days ago:
Thursday, November 24: <<Hey guys! Paid off my debt! I’m FREEEE! I’m in Laramie right now and will take the scenic route home. I’ll try to make it to Billings tonight. I should be back in Seattle in a few days.>>
Friday, November 25: <<Wow, thought that might rate a response. Everything okay? I hope I don’t get back to find the place all shot up. I’m in Butte tonight, which is where I grew up.>>
Saturday, November 26: <<Hit snows in the mountains; evidently there was a winter blast a few nights ago? I made some friends with the Cascade Orks so I’ll be bedding down here for the night. Got some weird news in Butte. Still rolling it over in my head.>>
Sunday, November 27: <<Had a hard time sleeping, even with the sleep regulator. Got an early start. Should be there later this morning. Hopefully you’re not dead.>>
He returns. Greetings are exchanged. He does seem genuinely pleased that you’re not dead. He drinks the herbal tea that Big Stank didn’t touch while you update him on the last few days. He nods, listening patiently with a far-away look in his eyes.
Up close, he looks changed. He looks a little bigger, for one. He was always a skinny thing, but for once he now has a bit of extra mass on what’s left of his organic frame. And, overall, he’s seeming a little less awkward and a little more (meta)human. His cybernetics are certainly still there, but he’s doing a better job of little things, like blinking, and not staring excessively. It seems like he’s finally incorporated some of the social cues that he picked up from Jawsey and AM.
“Well you’re right,” he tells Bobby after the situation has been explained. “That’s not a job; it’s a bounty. If we don’t do it, he’ll post it and let the shadows take it from there. You’re right to be worried about competition. His little speech about competition sounds like he was evading the issue.
“Stank came to us because he’s stuck in Redmond. For all the power and control he has here, he ain’t drek outside the district. As soon as he steps out, the Ancients will come down on him like a ton of bricks. Or First Nations will drek on him from a great height, or Knight-Errant if he even so much as breathes in the direction of Bellevue. He needs someone to go where he can’t. And inconspicuously too, if Marita isn’t going to rabbit at the first sign of pursuit. You can’t do that with a roving pack of a hundred go-gangers.”
He drums his fingers on the table in a fancy pattern that sounds practiced. You can tell he’s been keeping up with his drum lessons.
“Brave new world,” he says under his breath about the new syndicate in control of Redmond. “We do have to figure out how we fit in, or if we do. The only reason we set up in Redmond was low overhead costs, plus a certain official indifference to the unexpected situations that people in our profession inexplicably find themselves in from time to time.” He gives a sly smile to his own joke. So what is he suggesting?
“We can move,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t think any of us were planning on a 20-year career in Redmond, were we? Touristville is a transition zone, see? It’s either for people on their way up, climbing their way out of the Redmond Z-zones, or it’s for people falling, crashing out of the nicer districts. Nobody stays in Touristville. The same goes for us. If we feel like we’re under the thumb of Andrew, or the Mayor, or the Crush, or whomever… we don’t have to fight them. We can just pack up. It’s not like any of us are from here originally. It might be a temporary setback, but it’s a big Sprawl. There are other inexpensive neighborhoods where we could move; maybe even ones where we wouldn’t be shot at so often.
“So we should do the job if we want to do it. Any reason is valid. For Andrew’s good graces. To keep the Crush happy. It could be a windfall. That’s, what, 90K if we drag back Marita and her twelve apostles? Logistically a challenge, but not impossible.
“But if we don’t want to, because frag the Crush, or the new syndicate, or whatever, then let’s run it by the Mayor. It sounds like she’s playing the long game and that Marita is an asset she would want in play. Probably won’t be worth as much, but might be a lot less dangerous if we’re not trying to stick-and-shock a baker’s dozen of angry orks who are paranoid and on the defensive.”
Bobby’s comment about checking out the Latino population in Puyallup seems to bring a dark cloud over Mato, similar to what you saw as he was walking down the sidewalk.
“Yeah, about that…” he starts slowly. “So it turns out my father… might not have been my father.” He looks around, letting it sink it. “I always took my small stature to be the result of my parents’ drug habits, even while I was in utero. It probably didn’t help. But it seems like there might have been a dalliance on my mother’s part. With an elf. An Aztlaner one at that, so I might be half-Aztlaner. Who knew?”
He takes a sip of tea. “Well, my high school bully seemed to know, or at least suspect, what with the number of times I heard ‘your mama plays with faeries’. So, cheers to you, Danny!” He lifts his mug of tea in salute. “You were right, wherever you are.” He sips his tea.
“Just kidding, I know exactly where he is. About half a meter underground behind the last gas station out of Butte. Unless the coyotes dug him up and dragged away his carcass. In which case, he lives on somewhere as coyote drek.” He seems pleased with the thought and shoots a wink.
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AM responds to Jawsey “You need to understand who walked in here, Urubia took control over Redmond. Our meddling does not change that much, and it could have been others. If Urubia is queen, then Big Stank is indeed a duke . Now here is an opportunity to get some influence over the duke. Second, the man came with a problem. He did not come to boss us around or to force us to do anything. As Mato says it is a bounty – we do not have to do it, but it is good money if we did.“
<font face=”inherit”>She sighs painfully I am too illegal to move to other districts. My SIN would not hold a serious inspection, and my Erika outright illegal. So I am in no condition to move from here anytime soon, and I trust Urubia more than I trust the Mayor. I mean, the Mayor wants to keep things as usual, but Urubia has a vision. I think it is a good change. It saddens me that we had to put some sticks in the wheels but it pays the bills.
She smiles at Mato when he admits to murdering his childhood bully. If only she could solve her issues the same way.
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Bobby tries to cheer Mato up: “Eh, don’t worry about that – the racists are gonna call you a Tusker no matter what.
Moving out of here… Well it would be nice to have a neighborhood that doesn’t despise us, but then we are diverse enough to get flak wherever we go to. But AM is kinda right: Without her papers being in order, she could be in for a major hassle.
Now, the Mayor could do something about that – although I doubt you want to be a tax paying citizen before you have paid down your debt. So I guess we have to slug it out here until Jawsey and AM are in the black.
That means we can keep an eye open for the bounty, but should look for honest work in the meantime.
Anyway: Congratulations of getting your finances in order as well. That should make the next month a lot easier.”
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“Yeah, well my father -“ He pauses to correct himself. “The man who raised me was big into finance. He would have been appalled that I spent all the money I inherited, and then went into debt on top of that. It would have disappointed him. Moreso than he was already was, I mean.”
He turns to AM.
“Oh, there are plenty of corners of the Sprawl that don’t require a SIN. Downtown Puyallup – such as it is – is like Touristville in that regard. It doesn’t have the red light district that Touristville does, if only because Loveland fills that role right next to Ft. Lewis. There are gangs and mobsters down there just as there are here, but no dragons. Not to my knowledge, anyway.”
He drums on the table some more, a rapid rat-a-tat-tat that’s only possible with jacked reflexes and hyperagile fingertips.
“I don’t know what to make of Urubia. She helps people, yes, but she also keeps the Awakened as pets. I’d trust her more, but… this whole thing with Nightmare smells to high Heaven. How could anyone with humanity’s best interests at heart work with someone – something – like that? I mean, from the sounds of it, that’s when things flipped for Bonita, when Bobby dropped that little gem in her ear. That was the breaking point, right?” He looks to Bobby for his impressions on the matter.
“The fact is that metahumanity isn’t at the top of the food chain anymore. The Sixth World has incomparable threats that are beyond our control. Well, my control at least. I’m not an elf” – he freezes for a moment at the thought, perhaps reflecting that he just as easily could have been an elf, before resuming – “so I’m not going to live forever. I’m going to die of old age, so all I need to do is figure out how to keep my head on my shoulders, and not starve to death, between now and then.”
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Bobby nodded: “I did my fragging best to make her realize how dangerous working with Nightmare would be and I think it sunk in. Pretty smart cookie that Bonita. Pitty she wasn’t able to take her whole gang with her.
Speaking of which: Nightmare and Urubia are a point in favor of moving out of Redmond. Not necessarily now, but sometime in the not to distant future. We can take our time looking for a good place. Maybe something with dwarves. Those halfers are usually good at keeping their block clean.”
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She answer Jawsey, and Mato
“Nobody has Humanities best interests at their heart, not the mayor and not Urubia. They all use us to their needs, the Mayor wants to still be in charge, so she needs the gangs divided so that she can still be the mayor of Redmond. Not that she controls much more than Touristville. Urubia wants her own dominance, so she does her thing.
I wouldn’t worry much about Nightmare. Sure he is a fire spirit, and he eats people to grow stronger. He is evil, and the world would be a better place without Nightmare. I’d kill him myself if I could but take a step back and breathe. Does Nightmare kill more people than his colleagues? Can you be a crime lord without putting people in the ground? Does it matter if you drain them out of their life force, shoot them? or harvest their organs? The outcome is the same. Like Mato says metahumans are not the top of the food chain but do you care if it is a metahuman that oppresses you, a dragon, or a fire spirit? At the end of the day, you still pay their taxes and play nice with them so they let you do business.”
“ I suspect that Urubia controls Nightmare as a puppet. Either she bounded him, or she has his true name, I just don’t see why else he’ll join. “ she sighs “If we can prove it it may be worth a lot of money for the Mayor.
she looks at Mato and Bobby “I don’t mind to move, but here we have contacts. We have a working relationship with many of the players. Why do you think that Nightmare and Urubia are a reason to move?
Mato, are you up for some cake? We need to celebrate your freedom.
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Mato looks pensive at what AM has to say about the dog-eat-dog world.
“I guess it’s true that everybody has a boss. Politicians have the voters, CEOs have the Board of Directors, dragons have their council and their hierarchy. Maybe there are some ronin wandering the Earth, but even they answer to their bellies.
“Speaking of bellies… cake? Yeah, cake would be good. I’m hungry. I’ve been walking a lot recently. Skimming, I suppose. I ran most of the way back from Laramie. Slowed down after Butte because of the mountains… and the news. Almost got creamed by some snowplows, so I hitchhiked with some truckers over the passes. Warmer and safer than skimming, that’s chip truth.”
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