The Terminal

Just settle there in the back! The road ahead's gonna be a long one, but we got all we need for it! And more, I guess they really, really needed the stuff 'cause the refuel and the restocks for later were all on the house. But then again getting it all here was pricier than any of us would've wanted, huh? Patrols were definitely on the book, but corsairs, not so much! And the detours, too… nice stops, though, I don’t regret ‘em~!

 

What, no! I didn't ask them, we'd settled on it from the start, I'm not a price-riser, deal's a deal! Sure, there'd be debt but not with them! But I guess they didn't see it that way. Or I guess they would’ve liked to, but then saw trying to settle a debt with a guy like that was gonna be-

 

...Chi, please don't say that. Negotiations are negotiations, that's just robbery. Practically a hostage situation! And starting one of those isn't just a bad move, it's doubly awful when you're about to pull it on someone like them. Bad for the soul 'cause they have a kid, bad for the purse 'cause our deals ain't done, and also honestly bad for the heartbeat 'cause did you look at them!?

 

…and besides, even if I got away with it, they’d remember it. And others would know. And you just know it’d come back to bite us later, at the worst moment. I sure know, I’ve had it happen with way less. I’m not looking forward to starting from scratch again.

 

Wait, I haven't given you the whole story on that one, right? I know Sherry knows it, and I know Chi and Qarretzu don't, Pins definitely has no idea, and, uh, Kal, I never told you this one, right…? Actually, know what, it’s as good a time as any! Gotta pass the minutes so we can pass the hours! There's gonna be plenty of those.

 

Well, once upon a time, imagine me. Well before this enterprise, well before I was the boss of anything at all. When I was just another face in the Tak-Fizun railyards. I didn't even have an office, if you can believe that! Just a booth sometimes, from which I'd see faces from all over the Caverns, coming and going... And their cargo too, one of my jobs was to dig in and check that whenever there was the slightest suspicion of anything. Or just at random, whatever gave the best excuse to go and start rummaging through. No one liked that one, that includes me, but it did paint some pretty interesting pictures of all the places I was missing out on!

 

Okay, not so much the places as the people in 'em, because the souvenirs can only tell so much about a landscape, but they sure can tell a lot about a person, about people and the actual towns and cities they've been living in. ‘cause that’s what towns and cities are, way beyond their houses and towers, it’s people. And through what they thought to bring along, and what they left behind once you thought about it all, you could piece together a whole bunch if you actually put your head to it.

And I did, ‘cause a lot of it was way too manual and left your mind running, and several bits of it were straight-up dull. Needing to call someone else once things get above your paygrade, waiting for their arrival while holding the fort, watching the guy slowly lose his patience ‘cause it’s taking too long, you gotta start wondering to pass the time. Even that was food for thought, the way they lost patience. Were they getting nervous, or just mad, clearly hiding it, not bothering? Even the ones that didn’t even mind, or saw it coming, you had to wonder…

Yeah, it all started to paint a whole picture of things. Just a couple personal situations at first, you’d see travelers you could read like a book, figure out their whole thing quick, and forget most of that. But when you knew where they were coming from, where they were going, you started to get a bigger picture. Nations at first, then by individual cities, you’d start to see the common stuff… And then after that, after enough time had passed and you actually had months to compare it to, and years eventually? You had a whole panorama of what was going on. Something way deeper than you’d get from the newspapers, ‘cause you got everyone’s look into it. You’d hear about the usual border tussles, but you’d see the folks leaving their homes in there, packing what they could, because it was all pushing against them. Or you’d see the ones moving in, packing so light, so meager, but so hopeful! Or the bigger names, packing the lightest but also the priciest, moving in to see what they could do with all the land opening up…

...but with the skirmishes and bigger squabbles came other things. That’s when you really needed to sharpen your eyes and ears for anything and anyone suspicious, start looking for all the hidden pockets, the hidden cargo, the bits of luggage they weren’t telling you about. ‘cause not every battle is fought by soldiers, you all know that one pretty well, ‘cause we’ve done our part in some of those! Some of them are fought in the shadows, and hell, some of them across desks or even counters! Tangling up the Snowbound Shields was a bit of both of those, but our final battle, the one we won, was in the silk and in trading it in, not in the corpse we left on the way there! Calling corpses victories isn’t my thing…

Okay, so now that that makes sense, you start to see how it looks when you’re on this other side of those fights. When you’re making sure the stuff they’re fought with, whether it’s actual weapons or not, won’t reach the soldiers in question, right? And turns out, since you can reach any place from Tak-Fizun, everyone wants in on that, including the dealers and smugglers. Both the lazy ones and the real clever ones using the others as a smokescreen. You see it on every scale, from the folks using false pockets in their bags to pass their actual merchandise to whole train wagons that were just a little smaller on the inside, to make room in the walls for the priciest stuff in the whole train. And of course, the swallowers, Bannerbound and the birds were big on that one, still are I bet, but when you have good ears and a better voice you catch ‘em anyways, hee!

Still, when the actual clashes happened, when you had skirmishes, or blockades, or just tax hikes on something or the other, that’s when you saw spikes on this all, and that’s when you had to get just as creative as the guys moving the stuff through. And with all these checkups, you had to get the details, way more than enough to paint yourself a picture! So, maybe against yourself, you end up invested in it all, as you get the tale from every side without even meaning to.

And investment is where the whole story actually starts, and kinda where it ends, not counting… everything after I left.

This one’s gonna be a little difficult here, but it starts with something bigger than the usual squabbles. You remember when Ishiss started making some big moves near the Lakes, right where the actual rivers started? Bunch of aquifers they just planted a flag on and refused to let go for a while?

Gheehee~! Okay so I know it doesn’t narrow it down much, Sherry, but you know I can’t just say it before ya do! But yeah, the usual water-grabbing, like you yourself said it. Except back with the Hives it was getting bad. Already not a lot of water over where those two are, especially over in husk territory. I know, they don’t need a lot, but they still need it, and yeah I guess the olms found the tunnels to start making a mess there, just popped right outta nowhere and started draining, staking claims, and being real hard to throw off…

Yeah, you’d guess there’d be nothing to do all the way back in Tak-Fizun, there’s most of the Great Dust Gyre and a bunch of Hollow-Lands before you even get there, and that’s the fast route if you wanna avoid the Siltrows! You’d think that it’s too far away, that nothing’d be heading down there, and I sure did, ‘till I found a guy, a Bannerbound, trying to slip some real suspicious bottles right under our noses. I gotta admit, I nearly bought it when he told me it was just a drink, but it looked way too oily when I swished it in my hand, and who stashes booze in a false pocket anyways, right? ...okay I know exactly who’d do it but the Hives don’t really give a crap about alcohol and the Clans would never turn that down, so why even hide it here?

Well, showed it to my boss and turns out it was something the husks drink to help with their tail poisons, makes the stuff melt things, leaves wounds that just don’t heal right. The kinda thing they’d want if it’s Ifchi they gotta fend off. You saw how Sherry bounced back from getting her hands pretty much torn off, imagine fighting a whole bunch of THAT. Like, even without the blasts, they can come back like three times in the time it takes you to come back once! Even back then I was thinking about that a little, after a chat with one of the guards back there; guy’d been a caravan guard for a Hollow-Lands route, picked up a nemesis and all, and he knew exactly the kinda thing Ifchi bounce back from.

I know, just making it clear! Anyways, definitely wouldn’t be the first time I saw those bottles. And then it wasn’t just bottles either, you’d see just about anything woven and stuck together that could hold the stuff without spilling it—’cause if it spilled, the smell was strong, real particular and it gets stuck in your nose for a while. So you got bottles, sure, but also flasks, bags, waterskins, these leathery little bags you could only open with a knife… all of these snuck where they’d fit, even if it meant inside folks! And they got clever too, with false bottoms for actual bottles and flasks, clothes sewn up with perfect secret pockets, all the good stuff. Even had one Bannerbound that molded herself around a thing, made her skin… swallow it. It sounds bad already, but it looked even nastier than that, dunno what happened there.

Anyways, it got pretty frequent. Suddenly you’d have shifts where they’d try to slip several at once, they’d even get decoys involved with false pockets full of allowed or just iffy stuff, they’d get huffy about it even while trying to hide the real prizes. Then you’d question them, and not all of ‘em stayed quiet. Few of them cracked, we weren’t even allowed to touch ‘em ‘cause that’s what the Ministry folks do, but some of ‘em cracked anyways and spilled so much… And with that, I started asking outside those busts, people who were just heading to the area had their own things to say too. And I couldn’t help but keep asking, in those moments where there was time to kill, when the lines were short and the shifts way too long.

Yeah I was getting to that, but I had to cover where I got it all from. Everyone had their opinion on it, and naturally the folks trying to slip poisons by usually agreed with each other, you could tell even when they were trying to hide it. Swung WAY too hard to the other side usually. Way more focused than the usuals, bringing weapons or drugs or what have ya, those hid their stuff better, and even when you or the Ministry folks popped a real opinion outta ‘em, it was a whole grab-bag. But they knew the side of the whole mess that I didn’t. Though honestly, even the tourists sometimes knew their stuff on that one, though they were split and ranted a bunch about the issue, so you rarely got to pick out anything good. But I asked anyways, ‘cause I found myself invested…

Yeah, it wasn’t just the land they were fighting over, or the aquifers really. It wasn’t- okay no, in a way, it was the wells they were fighting over, or rather what they found while making ‘em. Lotta folks guessed it was just a water thing from the Hive, ‘cause they don’t get much, and a border expansion thing from Ishiss, they do that a lot even in borders that shouldn’t be theirs, but here it was just the excuse. But even the actual tourists were realizing things like these didn’t usually get this heated, not for this long in the same spot at least. The regular smugglers, they gave away a bit more there, confirming it really was getting heated enough that they were making bank on something that needed to get rough, while the actual countries did their best to pretend it didn’t so they didn’t have to get actual armies in. Just bits and pieces, and making the locals pick up a weapon.

So I kept asking, ‘cause even with things that are almost wars going on, there’s still boring days. Sometimes ‘cause of maintenance, get a line that’s gotta be shut down ‘cause of incidents, then suddenly you get a big mass of passengers that wanted to go there, standing around waiting until they get more news or just getting the urge to scream at someone. Letting them talk defuses that kinda problem really nicely, so I just let ‘em talk. Asked for details, to keep them talking, maybe make them think a bit, nothing stops you from getting angry like having to stop and think ‘cause they just told you something new.

And I guess I found that when folks are pissed off but it’s not at you, and don’t really have anything to do, well, they spill stuff. I started hearing rumors of what the thing in the depths was. Lotta folks thought it was just ores, and if Ishiss cared this much for ‘em then it meant they were real energetic stuff. Bunch of others thought the waters themselves had something, ‘cause the wells were deep enough and just in the right place, maybe they tapped a special spring. But a few of ‘em thought it was something else. That somewhere in there, a thing was buried, too whole to be a ruin, that the Ifchi had sussed out through something in the water but couldn’t find until the Shumhaq tapped right above it. But they all seemed to agree the Hive only really learned what they had down there once Ishiss barged in out of nowhere… I never found out which one of these was right, by the way, but I’m real sure one of them was…

Well! I hope you guys liked the bit of history that I found out that way, ‘cause it kinda got me fired!

Okay not immediately, but see, the thing is, when you’re asking things you gotta give some away, and I guess I also wasn’t immune to boredom either, ‘cause sometimes I was hit up by folks that knew a few things I didn’t, but I knew a few things they didn’t know, and since there was time to kill we kinda patched up each other’s empty spots in what we knew. Just a trade of knowledge, you know the drill. And, I guess, at one point it was a really big trade that I kinda didn’t get the better of, looking back. Still sifting through what was a lie and what wasn’t, but… I was bored and he sounded like he knew things and also he was a Toskar so I guessed he wouldn’t be biased and the train wasn’t friggin’ STARTING!

...uh, sorry, bad memories. It was a rough day, I think someone actually broke the tracks that day somewhere further down the line, so the holdup got extra long, and, well… pebble to avalanche I guess.

Yeah I didn’t think much of it at that time, just gave him a whole bunch of info, and I guess I let slip on a few movements and how some of the folks trying to sneak weapons past me looked, ‘cause casual conversation gets like that when it runs long enough and you’ve got a good topic. Look, you know me, okay?

Anyways, I guess this habit had been catching up with me, the bosses had seen me jabbering around with customers a bit too much when I should’ve been working, I dunno what they even wanted from me those days, but looking like you’re wasting time when time’s already getting wasted as is, that’s a no-no in some spots. Reputation’s a currency and I was costing ‘em by looking like I was doing nothing, I guess. Even if I WASN’T. But that last bit, they didn’t tell me it was the last straw, but it sure seemed like it by the timing. Got brought into the office one day, and they told me that was it, I was gonna have to go.

Just like that, yeah. I mean I wasn’t there that long, but still, some years, I guess I made it further than most, except I didn’t exactly climb anything. Bleh. All the better, I guess, I was getting bored.

Anyways, by then I guessed I might as well take what I learned and find a job where actually talking to the customers wasn’t something fire-able. And if I could still get something near the station, that’s even better, ‘cause now I knew a lot about the folks that come and go there, I might know a few things about how to convince them, right? That’s what I had in mind, at least. Plus, the job had awful moments but I actually kinda liked the place, you know? The customers that technically weren’t even mine, not then, but I could fix that now! So on I went, I started looking, and I quickly found a spot in one of the bigger shops nearby, one of those “last chance to stock before you leave” kinda places, they needed someone who could… how did they put it again? “Deal with customers at their level, no matter which it may be”, I think. Not the way I would’ve put it, but, I didn’t write the thing.

So! I went in, started asking, and I guess they liked the way I talked ‘cause I was in pretty fast! In so many ways it was back to business, just with more experience, more reining things in, and with the BIG difference that if anyone started losing their patience I could actually do things to hurry it up! Of course the actual work was different, but that was in good ways. Selling people on things is SO much easier than trying to find out if they’re lying, you know? Shoplifting aside, but honestly, after all that time having to sound up people and their bags for stuff, that was easy. Could do it in a heartbeat and a chirp. Sure got me in good graces with the guys that did jewelry!

Yeah we had a jewelry section, it was the cheap stuff though. Not like “bought on the street” kinda cheap, but nothing fancy, there’s already shops for that and they weren’t near the station. Think the engine smoke stains the good stuff pretty badly. Not the great stuff, but you don’t find that everywhere anyways. Gotta get closer to the source, and Tak-Fizun ain’t it.

Right, yeah, as I was saying. Things were already going pretty well right at the start, I just kinda slipped into the role quickly and found that when you get along with folks and know even a tiny bit of what they might be looking for, it’s pretty easy to sell ‘em on a few happy extras, and I mean happy for everyone involved. A smiling customer with a full bag and empty pockets, that’s the kinda thing you’re looking for there, and kinda here too honestly, but the thing is I was doing pretty good here! Everyone wanted different things, but here if they knew what it was, they were right outta your hair quick, and if they didn’t, being chatty was a plus ‘cause I could figure it out for ‘em!

So, already the things I learned AND the things that got me fired were working out nicely in this new job, all good. But then, as I got to know the bosses around the place, and the owner too, that started getting even better ‘cause I could keep finding some common ground to step onto, and from there start making suggestions that made sense to ‘em! I knew a lot about our customers ‘cause I had seen them all by now, in all their sorts, I knew the ones that came and went, the ones that showed up just once, I knew the locals too ‘cause I was from there, I had a good idea of who we were selling to, right? And then I started meeting the folks we got stuff from, and I wasn’t out of my depth there, either! The imitators, I had a few suggestions there, didn’t always listen, but when it came to the more genuine stuff, the actual crafts? They were glad to have questions! And I guess I just didn’t pass up a chance to get involved, might as well, right?

Call it pushy, but I guess I got lucky ‘cause it worked on this one. Not everyone liked that, mind you, one of the supervisors started getting pretty snappy with me as I did that, but others were fine, and a couple of the bosses sure loved having someone like me! Or the proactiveness, one of the two. Whichever it was, they opened the door for me to start looking further up the chain, and even gave me options! ‘cause on one hand, they needed someone actually running each floor, and one of ‘em was open! No idea what happened to the guy who worked that one, I never asked. But anyways, the other spot was, in fact, dealing with the suppliers. Procurement! That’s the word. And both were looking pretty good, you know? Yeah, they were both looking pretty damn good, hahah…

…what?

No, no, I’m fine! I’m fine, just… Yeah, just… kinda staring back at the last moment of my life that looked… normal, expected, you know? Legal, maybe that’s the better word. Don’t get me wrong, this has perks, but it’s just… you wonder, sometimes. I know all of you do that, sometimes. It’s probably pointless, though. We got dealt what we got dealt. But I do it anyways…

Okay, no, no, I gotta finish this one, back to basics, where were we?

No, wait, let’s backtrack a little, get back to the whole skirmishes thing. By the time I was there running both positions through my mind, taking some time to pick? The border squabbles had pretty much ended, Ishiss got tossed out of there, lines were drawn again, and I had completely forgotten about all of that in fact, until I overheard that the deal had been signed and it was officially over. I guessed that was that, I was a bit more disconnected to it all anyhow, less time to burn up in this and the whole purchase got in the way of any news, so, figured it was just a really affordable price to pay for this whole new thing. Even if I had stayed where I was, it felt like a good enough trade, right?

Yeah, I sure thought that, right until I found out I hadn’t read the fucking fine print on it.

One thing that sprang from that, as I LATER found out, was that the Consortium apparently wanted to buddy up to the two again, but especially Ishiss, they wanted to iron out travel properly now that the borders were settled again. And probably twist the events to get some better prices out of things, I guess, and I’d bet they really wanted to know what was really inside those wells. All of this is hindsight, by the way, looking at the whole thing once I had the kind of time exile gives ya. Either way, the thing I do know, one of the things the Ifchi wouldn’t budge on was the idea that part of why they lost was that the Hives had a spy network all over, that this network tattled on everything they wanted to do, and slipped the stuff that was used to throw them out of the well fields right past everyone. And they were convinced that a whole bunch of that network was right there in the Consortium, right in Tak-Fizun, ‘cause again, you can get anywhere from there! And from there, I guess part of the deal would be to root out that network…

Yeah, guess how that ended up. Guess who ended up caught. Just GUESS who talked to the wrong Toskar who was actually a fucking flayer-bug in a badger’s skin who milked all I knew just like that and then passed it over to the Hive! And guess who found that the stuff some chatty girl working luggage at Tak-Fizun was just enough to get into actual fucking trouble! Guess who ended up discovering ALL this at the last minute while I was thrown in the back of a fucking wagon! JUST GUESS-

…gh,,,

N-no, it’s fine, don’t worry, I’m fine, I-I’m fine…!

…okay so maybe not that fine…

Yeah, guess reminiscing in detail on the part of your life where the whole thing was derailed would do that, huh. One little thing you can’t even call a mistake ‘cause it was so out of left field, and all you really did was just be you… and you didn’t even know it would cost you. That a moment of getting too bored at work and too up for chatting and knowing a bit too much also from chatting… would cost you everything you had up until then, and probably everything after it, as far as you know. All I did was talk! I thought I was helping another, and helping myself in the process a little, just getting through boredom, learning and helping a guy learn, how could I know!?

Yeah I know this was just scapegoating but I got picked out for a reason, right!?

…easy.

…that’s… kind of depressing, not gonna lie, but you got a point. Yeah, I was easier, wasn’t I. Just nabbing the luggage girl would’ve been way easier than anything else, especially catching the bug, so they went with it, and fuck me I guess…

…but the part that doesn’t match up that much with it is that they could’ve thrown way more of the book at me, make an example, maybe straight-up kill me, it’s one of the few things where they’d even do that, right? Espionage everywhere gets ya killed and the charge was there, I heard the judges loud and clear! So it’s like, was I meant to be a half-assed example all along? With all the “losing everything” but none of the real importance!? Or was there someone high up arguing against this but they could only get so far, or no one did that but they took pity anyways…?

I just don’t know… I know I shouldn’t think about it, but I didn’t do a lot of it back then, I was just… trying not to freak out, being quiet, trying not to think at all I guess, focusing on… focusing on nothing I guess. Just trying not to be there mentally. Like, maybe if I did, I’d wake up. Or wish myself elsewhere or just… disappear. Be literally anywhere else, rather than hearing everyone arguing around me like I’m sort of… issue, like a hunk of refuse that they gotta decide where to dump. I just wanted it to be over, even if it was the worst it’d at least be decided, it was…

Yeah I don’t remember much of that time. Very little of what anyone actually said. I wasn’t listening much, didn’t want to listen more than I really had to, and… I guess after it was all done and I lucked out with just getting thrown out of the Consortium, I forgot the rest ‘cause I thought it didn’t really matter anymore. All that mattered was that if anyone ever recognized me there again, that’d be it…

Nah, Consortium takes exiles pretty seriously, you can get hit with complicity pretty easy. And honestly I didn’t really get much help during the whole process? Like, most people in the rail yard were okay with throwing me under the bus, some were outright giddy about it ‘cause I gave ‘em someone to blame instead of them? And the shop, no one ever really showed up for that one? Okay no, couple of the bosses did, but only once or twice and all they could really say was like, “she doesn’t really seem like a spy”, and it’s not like that helps much? So I was already kinda alone from the start and now I was doubly screwed, no one’d hide me but myself!

…no, they wouldn’t have helped. They would’ve never helped. If they tried it would’ve been a fucking trap.

…no, no, I should at least wrap this up. I know I’m… skipping a lot, the trial and stuff took a while but there’s not much to say there. Just locked away, moved from place to place to keep me away from people ‘cause who KNOWS which one’s from a Hive in disguise just waiting to break me out I guess. Hauled out to the court every now and then, just… trying to get through it until I could finally hear the verdict and get out of… everything, I guess. It’s all stuff I don’t remember much, like I was actively trying not to be there and also when I walked away I tried REALLY hard to forget it all, even if it’s not something you can try much, so it’s…

What? Who tattled? I mean… I guess there’s- okay, Sherry, before you ask, no.

That goes for you too, Vel- it goes for all of you okay!? None of that, I’m getting back on track, just… let’s just skip to the verdict: Exile. There, I got told to pack everything up and get out and never come back. So I did, except for the “never come back” bit. I meant to, but turns out I actually didn’t have a lot, and I didn’t really have anyone anywhere, so I had no idea what to do…

…and then I found that one guy that had been at the last bit of the trial followed me to my little nook. And as I turned to look at the guy… well he was cloaked fully, didn’t let one bit of him be seen, and back at the trial I just thought he was a Bannerbound that had been watching the whole business for some reason, I couldn’t be bothered to ask why. But the way he moved was weird, like start-stop but also too smooth, so already it seemed all off… And then he told me he had an offer for me.

He had a wagon to leave on and even a knife he put in my hand- yeah this wagon and my knife, those, this guy gave ‘em to me. But back then the wagon was full of… bits. Like mechanical bits, weirdly shiny cogs for the most part? And he told me that he couldn’t afford to be spotted in literally any way out there, but I could, and I was probably a better liar, so would I mind sneaking these things out and meeting someone? He’d even give me a map for it, but he told me no one could see what was in there either. And, well, what could I do but say yes? It’s not like I had anything else to do anymore…!

So I took the offer, took the stuff… and then started thinking about the stuff that would’ve fooled me back at the station. Started aiming for that. Started putting together how I’d do this, put some funds into making the whole scheme convincing, even bought some dyes for it and everything, I started making a whole story to pull out of my ass in case someone flagged me down, packed it all up, got ready, and left…

...and then I found Sherry~!

Heehee~! I want you to know that if I wasn’t driving I would’ve jumped you right here and now, okay? I’ll cash that one in later...~

But yeah I found Sherry on the way out, picked her up, got flagged down and things got worse before she made ‘em better. But then we got past the rest way easier, dropped off the cargo, and with how doable it all felt, the rest is history!

…yeah, the drop-off did look kind of weird, looking back. Weird in how normal she looked. Like it was a practiced normalcy and she was a little too good at it? Not undershooting it like the stories you hear about flayer-bugs messing up, overshooting it. It’s like only after we left did I actually stop to think that was kind of too much. But I didn’t know if that was ‘cause I could see further into it since she was also a Vez, or if I was just imagining things, not until you told me you’d kinda felt it too…

Still, yeah, that’s the whole thing. That’s how I ended up here, running something, never thought it’d be an enterprise like this one, but there ya go! I’m not gonna lie, I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought it would. I can actually SEE the places I only heard about, there’s so much I had missed, so much they had missed in telling me about ‘em all! And I can see the people I just saw in passing, I can meet ‘em where they live, and it’s so much different… The money’s better than I thought it’d be, too, so there’s that too, even if my standards were kinda buried by then, a bar you could walk over, hee~!

...and all in all? You’ve all been the best colleagues I’ve ever had.

Okay fine so maybe I’m still not used to being anyone’s boss you know what I meant!

But there you have it, that’s how I started this little enterprise~! I guess it’s true what they say, you gotta fail a few times before you climb!

Okay so I did get screwed over but falling to the bottom is still falling to the bottom whether you tripped or got shoved in. But I- okay I didn’t climb out so much as I found a tunnel and snuck out I guess, but I like it this way. It’s gotten me places I like! Pretty literally sometimes, but not always! So honestly, I don’t really regret anything of that… or much of what came after. I just know it happened and I gotta be wary. And besides I’d feel way worse screwing over our customers for this one, than anyone at that station. Screw ‘em.

...what?

My wings? I… I didn’t tell you that one either didn’t I. Huh.

We’re gonna have to save that one for later though, I’m stepping off for a bit. Eyes feeling heavy already… Hey Pins, you drove these before, right? You wanna take the wheel a bit?

Yeah, I’ll get in the back, make me some room, will ya~? SO, who wants to go next, got any stories ya wanna tell? We’ve still got hours to go!