“But Mark,” Sally deadpanned, “Money can solve problems, too.”
Mark scoffed. “Oh come on. You know what I mean!”
The four of them were at lunch in their rooms because Eliot had scored some chicken strips from the crew mess hall, through Carl, and they had to eat in private or other people would catch on to the fact that there was meat on the trip. Just not meat for everyone.
Eliot shrugged, dipping his strip into a sweet and spicy sauce, saying, “Money is fucking great. I-D-K your problem.”
Isoko said, “I agree with Eliot.”
Sally slapped the wall and announced, “By popular decision, Mark is overruled! Money is great.”
“Hear hear!” Eliot cheered, with Isoko making a, “Wooo, money!”
Mark scoffed. “I don’t want to deal with it. I want…” Mark admitted, “I like power. Not money directly.”
Isoko laughed. “A true supervillain!”
Sally went, “Mmm hmm!”
“Just do what I’m gonna do.” Eliot smiled. “Hire people who know what they’re doing so I never have to care about the money at all.”
Sally scoffed at Eliot, saying, “Now that’s completely irresponsible! You gotta know what your money is doing. You can’t let other people control it... Wait. Aren’t you a noble? I shouldn’t have to tell you this.”
Eliot laughed.
“Counterpoint,” Isoko said, “Hire out the job, and if someone fucks you over, you can literally throw them to a dragon and now no one will ever fuck with you ever again.”
Mark gasped. “Isoko!”
Eliot clicked his tongue. “That’s how you do it.”
Mark gasped, “Eliot!”
Isoko grinned.
Sally looked like she was considering murder as a reasonable response to embezzlement, of all the damned things.
Mark looked at Sally and exclaimed, “Oh my gods! You guys!”
“She makes a good point,” Sally said, which caused Isoko to practically hoot with laughter. Sally continued, “But! No dragon-shaped disposal units. You could do something else similarly villainous but less final and get a similar point across. Destroying a person’s house? That would work.”
“And I can remake it for a fee!” Eliot said. “It’s the perfect villain scheme!”
Mark was distinctly uncomfortable with destroying houses and especially uncomfortable with running a… a what? A racket? But Eliot was joking so…
Eliot was joking, right?
Mark chose to believe that Eliot was joking, but some of this conversation was very serious. There was an undercurrent.
Isoko said, “You’re way too serious about being fucked over about money, Sally. There are a lot of laws that prevent that sort of thing, and the settlement is interested in Mark and Eliot making good lives here. Us too. They’re not going to let any sort of embezzlement issues ari...se.” Isoko kinda flubbed her words there at the end, because she was feeling what Mark was feeling. Sally was beyond pissed, even though she was desperately trying not to show it. Isoko said, “Uh. Sorry?”
Sally had not told them about what had happened to her last group. Not the truth, anyway. All they knew is that Anara, Sally’s previous girlfriend, was killed in action, and their noble contact was dissolved. Sally had been lying to them, somewhat.
Sally pulled back, realizing she had gotten unexpectedly angry. “No. Uh… You did nothing wrong. I was just… Thinking.” And then she latched on to something she could say, without revealing what had happened to her, “But nobles lie to get what they want. They’re held to a different set of laws than most other people. That’s the problem. You’re gonna hire some noble lawyer and when they fuck you over you have no recourse. Eliot and Mark could totally do a housing racket and no one would care!”
Eliot rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t serious, and I doubt that ‘no one would care’. Some people would care a whole lot, and cause big, big problems.”
Isoko just let Eliot speak for her, because she didn’t want to step into this whole thing any further than she already had. Eliot was aware something was happening, but he didn’t have Mark and Isoko’s Unionsense. Eliot had no problem talking.
Mark found he could say a few things, too. He said, “There’s no two-law system at the settlement according to all of the stuff I read.”
Sally Looked at Mark, silently wondering if he truly believed that.
“… I’m pretty sure?” Mark said.
Eliot spoke up, “All of Daihoon operates under the two-law system, which has been imported to Earth, but in a lesser way. I think Mark was subject to the noble-classification of laws before Orange City got exploded, because he donated that adamantium to the city. First Citizens, yeah?”
Mark paused. “Oh?”
Sally was skeptical. “That mattered?”
“Oh yeah it did, but it’s all loose international agreements, and noble courts rarely ever happen on Earth.” Eliot said, “You only hear of people going to a higher court if they’re, like, a superhero.” Eliot looked to Isoko. “Didn’t your grandmother go to court for abducting that True Healer?”
Isoko shook her head. “Maybe someone went to court, but there was never any real legal action. Just a bunch of social action and the Villain Program telling her that she couldn’t work in the open anymore.”
Eliot said, “So that right there. That’s what usually happens to powerful people. That’s what I expect to happen to us if we get into legal trouble, or if anyone does anything harmful to us. As long as no one dies it’s just a learning experience. Aurora wants the settlement to work more than she cares about everyone playing nice with each other. Basically: We’re in the army now.”
“It’s a little looser than that,” Isoko said, though her tone had a bit of a plea to it.
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“Well yeah,” Eliot said. “Looser than that.”
Sally was still concerned, but backed off a whole lot, trying not to be worried as she said, “I’m just saying that Mark… is probably still a commoner, and nobles can and will fuck him over?”
Eliot said, “He’s probably still a commoner, yeah.” Eliot told Mark, “You’d have to fight for recognition as noble from Orange City, if you wanted that recognition.”
“Nope!” Mark easily decided.
Sally seemed relieved by that. She said, “Okay! So, as I was saying, the two groups have different obligations. First Citizens need to defend the land and are responsible for that, and if they fail or if they abandon their obligations, then they’re relegated to Second Citizens status. The law protects First Citizens who protect the land and the people, and if a First should accidentally break the car or house or legs of a Second, then the Second can only ever expect to be reimbursed by the city for their losses. The Second can’t actually fight a First in a court of law, unless they pass a review board. Even murders have to go through the review board.”
Mark had never really thought about that, but Sally clearly had.
And yeah; he understood Sally’s anger. The system was kinda fucked up. A lot.
If Mark would have been a First Citizen without giving away that adamantium cube then he could have gotten better medical treatment without needing to rely on Addashield’s kindness. Of course, Addashield hadn’t given Mark that bit of adamantium until after Addashield had had Mark woken up and Mark had forgiven him, and he had probably felt guilty—
A rage threatened.
Mark’s heart beat black, his veins edging out of his skin.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Mark pulled back from those thoughts, pulling his hand away from the hot stovetop of his past, before he burned too badly.
Only Isoko had really noticed, because Sally was focused on Eliot and Eliot was focused on Sally, and Sally was still speaking. Isoko just glanced at Mark, questioning. Mark focused and ignored the past, and his vector calmed. Isoko looked at Mark a bit more, but Mark ignored the look.
Sally said, “And any accountant you get from House Metallic will be a First Citizen, but we’re all still Second— Or at least I am? I thought Mark was still Second, too… Isoko?” Sally frowned a little. “I’m not sure about that.”
Isoko said, “I’m Second. Mark is Second, too?”
Mark said, “I haven’t thought about it and I don’t care to start.”
And now everyone looked at him.
Mark was silent.
Eliot said, “Mark is Second unless he wants to fight for First, but there’s no classification at the settlement while we’re still settling. We’re all at ‘settler status’, legally, so we’re all at the same, third level… Maybe a .5 level, actually— Point is! We’re not going to run into any embezzlement trouble. Not from House Metallic. That is just outlandish thinking. Might as well plan for the walls of every house you live in to collapse whenever you sleep. If House Metallic was discovered to have done something untoward, and there was proof, it would… Well. It would not ruin them—”
“Yeah!” Sally said. “See! They can get away with whatever they want.”
“—but it would make things difficult for them. They’d want to solve whatever bad thing happened to keep Mark and I in their good graces.”
Sally asked, “And what about Isoko or I? Would they roll over us, if they could? If they wanted to?”
Isoko hummed a little, uncomfortable for any number of reasons.
Eliot wasn’t sure what to say. He had already said it all. Sally just didn’t believe that she or Mark weren’t going to get screwed over.
The spectre of inequality loomed.
Mark made a decision and said, “House Metallic has a majority interest in the trade of biometals in the Aluatha Empire. They have a history of bringing in all of the biometal people they can, specifically through good deals and proper protection. The Goddess Pluta endorses them based on their healthy business practices.” Mark shrugged. “So, I think worrying about them fucking over Eliot or I, or either of you two, is a counterproductive avenue of thought. If they fuck with you, they fuck with me, and I hope the same is true in reverse. We can defend ourselves from anything and anyone.”
Sally got a weird, good sense of turbulence to her vector, and so did Isoko, but in a different way.
Isoko said nothing.
Eliot grinned.
Mark continued, “So I’m gonna take whoever Marigold suggests as an accountant and see about doing… like, payroll for hiring other people. Or whatever. However it goes, you know?” Mark wasn’t sure where he was going with that, but then he realized his destination. “The settlement doesn’t function in some ephemeral sort of way. It only functions when stuff is supported. So I plan on supporting whoever is gonna raise chickens and fish and stuff, because I want meat on the menu. I liked your idea, Sally, of making a restaurant and then being able to eat there all the time because I own it. Do you want to go in on that investment with me?”
Sally was very silent, unsure of what to say.
Mark continued, “It’s a long term idea, anyway. I’m sure that there’s going to be lots of options for food in the settlement. When I get a chance to talk to Reeni Thumb, of Agriculture and Resource Management, I’ll know more about all of that stuff. I have an appointment with her tomorrow or the next day; I’m not sure. But today, I have an appointment to talk with Tulo Khava about weapons and stuff. And then there’s talk to be had with Nightbolt about the Kaiju Team stuff whenever I can get around to it.” Mark looked to Isoko, specifically, and then Sally, saying, “I think both of you want to be in on that, right?” Mark asked Eliot, “I’m not actually sure where you want to be on the kaiju teams, though.”
“Kaiju support for me,” Eliot easily said. He chuckled. “I thought that was obvious.”
Isoko said, “Kaiju support. Nightbolt is having a meeting with everyone for that in three days, when we’re closer to Crytalis.”
Sally asked, “Are we actually stopping in Crytalis? I haven’t heard.”
“I heard we’re not allowed to get off the ship,” Mark said.
Sally added, “Yes, that.”
Eliot said, “We’re stopping to get some language and disease resistance magics cast on the whole settlement. Stuff like that. Vaccines, too. Some people might be coming aboard, but no one is leaving.”
“Are there many magical diseases?” Isoko asked, unsure. “I wasn’t aware that was a real problem.”
“Parasites and stuff can be a problem. That’s what the vaccines are for,” Eliot said.
Sally said, “I got all of that done last time, but there was some stuff that I didn’t get treated for that was too expensive. Like putrescent slug vaccines. Is that one on the list of protections?”
Eliot grimaced. He lost a bit of his appetite, saying, “Yeah. There’s also gobbo green, and...”
The conversation moved along, to talk of what it meant to really carve out a part of the world and make it habitable for humans.