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>How hard would it be to just pay your debt off?
You don't have a number attached to it-- haven't ever been close enough to your debtors to ask for one.
>I have the feeling this is the kind of debt that will never be accepted as paid off.
You have a funny feeling that's probably right. Assholes.
>You have other options. Stay put. Accept your role, try to improve or stabilize your position here.
Your position's pretty stable-- shitty apartment, shitty odd-jobs, shitty food, sure, but definitely stable. Although... maybe it doesn't have to be.
>Or work the ladder and try to take over.
Your debtors pull all the strings in the Eaves. You rejected their offers-- the apartment closer to Haust-- because you wanted out of their business, not further in. Now that you're mulling over the logistics of leaving-- now that you're realizing there's nothing to leave for...
...well.
Taking over? You've... never thought about that. But it makes your gizzard warm, makes you lick your lips. All that money, all that control-- swiping it for yourself... call yourself a cultural stereotype, but that...
You like to think you're a realist-- real enough to see that a hostile takeover of a Mysterious Shadowy Collective of Predatory Lenders and Organized Crime is probably not going to be a rollicking good time. Even so?
You can't deny the appeal.
You'd need more bodies for something like that, though. A lot more.
>Or vanish at our own convenience once everything is done.
Sticking around in the bowls of Haust just to wind up in the wind again? No thanks. You'll take a life of looking over your shoulder over a life under their thumb any day. You'll leave or you'll... what? Instigate some kind of gang war? You don't know enough about your debtors to even say what you'll start, but you're not letting them use you. Pyter's gone. You can take risks, now.
You're not against changing your mind later-- adaptability's always been your gift; you aren't just going to wait for your debtors to get tired of you.
>You work for these people, huh? They are responsible for your relative well-being?
You work for them, sure. Sometimes... when you have to. They give you something to do-- usually to other people--, you do it, and they leave you alone for a while.
Agents are a very particular breed, in your experience: fucked up, you think is the technical term. In the beginning, you asked them questions about why you had the jobs you did. They answered. Now? Now you've generally learned to stop asking questions you aren't going to like the answer to.
You hardly think your debtors are responsible for you. You're one of the tools in their belt, if you're anything-- you can only guess at being that much.
>Fighting kills everybody eventually.
...you'll keep that in mind.
>You're considered a non-person?
You guess that depends on who you ask. To the people in Haust you're a pest. Down here in the Eaves... well, you might still be a pest, but so is everyone else-- it evens out. You're a person, sure. Maybe not fully self possessed or whatever-- maybe obligated-- but not a slave.
Dragons haven't ever been slaves, that you know of. Not like hares, or canids. Dragons actually did their share of enslaving, if you're remembering primary history right. Which has something to do with the Almost Exterminated thing. History, right.
You're a person, but not a people. Not human.
>Who was Pyetr to your sister and you? What did you do for her?
She was... nice. Honest. She showed you and your sister around-- helped you learn which smog exhausts could cause cancer, and which ones where mostly steam. Gutter mom, her type is-- was-- called sometimes; you never called her mom.
She was old when you first came to the Eaves, older when your sister left. It's hard for you to say how old-- humans sag, sure, but you can never the ratio of sag to age. You took care of her.
Lived with her.
That's part of why you're on the roof. You're waiting for disposal to move the body her. You don't want to see them zip her up-- ship her off to burn.
>What do you do, period? I notice you've had that earpiece UI the whole time.
Your UI. It's been flashing for an hour or two, hasn't it? You turn the alert off. As for what you do? Odd-jobs, when they're about. Otherwise? It's whatever--
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