Garus Horatius Rex tapped his fishing rod against his shoulder as he walked.
He'd achieved his goal in a certain sense. He'd met Carl again, and they'd spoken at length on various topics. Was he really the same man seen in the mornings rampaging around the city yelling about coffee?
Garus frowned. "Good talk," he murmured. Just like someone else he'd recently been talking to, the man had been more than capable of holding down a conversation. He'd gotten the odd sense that Carl's mouth didn't quite match the words he was speaking, but he chalked that up to exhaustion. He was very tired.
It'd been such a tiring few days.
He'd found any number of people he needed to help. Whether it was Attia Romuliana in D-five, who needed more regular assistance to see the fruits of her labor, Caerellia Festa in D-four, who needed a safer place to practice her driving outside the race track, Clodia Tiberina in D-four, who needed her shop repaired after Carl destroyed part of it, or even Oppius Sabucius Commidus, who needed to regain his confidence after a crushing defeat, there was certainly no shortage of those in need of the soft touch of his subtle aid.
He hopped into his car and drove towards the D-four building he was staying in. It wouldn't do for him to reside in D-one with the wealthy. He needed to feel the conditions of the ordinary citizens so he'd know who needed help sometimes.
Sure, he could still watch them from across the city, but that felt so impersonal! Everyone in the city was practically one of his own children. They fought, and they bickered, and sometimes they needed to be disciplined a little, but they were mostly good children.
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The ones who weren't would be once all these silly divisions between the districts were eliminated. Fifty points in a single stat or one hundred and fifty stat points in total just to live or own a shop in D-one? Half that just to enter? Wasn't that a bit much? And why, just because those stupid stat points tended to show up more frequently there? Hadn't it just been the wealthy district before the system because it was the closest to where the Empress lived? Then the stupid system came and made the rich even richer?
Not if Garus had a say.
He turned onto a familiar street and drove a little more before getting out of the car. Well, he didn't have a say, of course. He was just an ordinary man. He tugged his ordinary fishing hat down a little more over his ordinary face.
Returning to his earlier line of thought as he headed towards his home, he felt that the morning had been productive, even if it hadn't yielded the results he'd sought. Carl was right: he absolutely needed to stop letting little things bother him. Especially little things like people being ungrateful.
It was just…
Garus sighed. He was still upset about Barbara. It had been an unreasonably long amount of time, he knew, but it still bothered him. He'd treated her like the daughter he'd never had, even to the point of handling some of her tasks and going shopping for her when he knew she'd be too busy, and how did she fucking thank him?
He ground his teeth for a moment, then took a deep breath. He'd overreacted. He admitted it. He needed to get past it for good so he could focus more fully on helping people.
He'd had a good talk with Carl, but he'd been hoping to talk with someone else. Someone who might have tagged along. He'd never talked to her before since they traveled in very different circles, but now he had the need.
She would agree to his terms, or she would die.
It was what he had to do to fix this city.
If Garus didn't see her when Carl showed up at the lake, he'd just have to pay a visit to a certain workshop in D-five.