Truth didn’t know if the disorientation was from jumping off an eight story tall building or realizing the cruel lie of the “real world.” Of the two, gravity was the most pressing problem. He smiled as the ground rushed towards him. Could he survive the fall? Yes, certainly. But it would hurt and he might break something. He saw a convenient sign coming up fast. He stretched out and barely got his fingers on it. They tore furrows through the metal, dragging down the length of the sign and out the bottom.

He was still three floors up, but at least he was falling more slowly. He rolled out when he landed and came to his feet with casual ease. “God, I love body cultivation! I’m not saying the Meditations is my favorite spell, but DAMN do I like what it does for me.”

He was roundly ignored. He had gathered some attention by dropping in like that, but it didn’t last. He shook himself loose and vanished into the crowd. Just another son of Harban.

<>

We carry on as before. We have some clues, not the answer. I flat out refuse to believe that the big secret dream blocking thing someone, maybe Starbrite or maybe not, covered the world with is as simple as “Be more greedy. Greed is good.” And I’m not going to run around like some benevolent pacifist monk on the theory that non-violence is the answer. Starbrite is leaving, and soon. Mass peaceful protests and civil discourse are not going to prevent that.

<>

But we aren’t, are we? We create nothing. We don’t buy anything, don’t sell anything. We have certainly made work for others, but I think you would have a hard time saying we were a net benefit to the “system” of the world. We have certainly kept the System Astrologica hopping!

Truth walked through the streets of a nice, lower end Citizen neighborhood. What would they be rated in the new Tier system? C Tier? Seemed high. You had to be a citizen to get on the system at all, right? But most people would be actively unhappy to be tagged as F tier. You still had all the old aristocrats and corporate bigshots too, who would likewise be unhappy if they were anything less than A.

He smiled up at the afternoon sun. It felt good. Especially since none of that was his problem. Just enjoying the sunshine, not dealing with all that nonsense.

He did a quick mental review of Merkovah’s “requests.” Was there anything near here? Not particularly. Well… was there anything he particularly wanted to do on the list?

There was a timed one- basically a glorified stinkbomb, but one made with enough alchemical additives that water demons couldn’t just mop it off the ground, nor air demons blow away the stench. The enrollment station was going to be in an elementary school gymnasium, so there was an understandable reluctance to dump chemical weapons there. It lacked a certain something compared to assassinating one of the leading scholars of his generation, but he was okay with that.

Truth hopped on the Subway. Gleaming white tile and plaster walls, covered in flickering and dancing signs. Cosmetics, clothes, music. Vacations to tropical locations. Fighters squaring up, promoting a match that happened three weeks ago. Truth looked at that one a moment longer. He used to love watching the fights. Not as much as Soph or Vig, but he enjoyed ‘em. Now? They just looked like puppies tussling in a basket.

Not fair to them, he knew. They worked damned hard. But whatever inheritance of violence lived in his blood looked down on them. Not for sport fighting. For not being good enough at it.

Maybe the matches were rigged. All the low level ones in the slums were rigged. Wouldn’t shock him to learn that the high level matches were too. It would be very Jeon.

The worm demon roared as it hauled them through the long tunnels. Not upset. If anything, Truth now knew, it was roaring with pride. Strange world. Living in misery, providing comfort and wealth for its betters, and proud of it. Truth crossed a third of the city underground, then popped up in another Citizen residential district.

He swung past a grocery store, looking for some of the ingredients. All the cleaning products were attached to the shelves with cables, tagged with alarm spells, or both. You had to call one of the staff over if you wanted to buy them. Truth grunted with annoyance. Seems that he wasn’t the only one doing some determined shoplifting.

Store inventory control tags were not the most robust talismans ever devised. It was the work of a few moments to get them disarmed and off. He grabbed a couple large jugs of laundry detergent. Should be four times as much as he needed, which meant he had extra in case he messed up a batch.

The concentration of people wearing hooded sweatshirts, headscarves and sunglasses at this store seemed unusually high. Very, very high, in fact. Truth picked up his pace. There was some unheard signal. All the loudly suspicious sorts immediately started grabbing things off the shelves. They targeted the higher value stuff first, but really, it was whatever they could grab. Box after box, can after can, they swept the grocery store like locusts, then boiled out of the store once more. Splitting up and running in every direction.

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What the Hell was that? Coordinated shoplifting in a grocery store? Truth watched in horrified fascination as they sprinted up the street. The staff had made no effort to stop the thieves. Why would they? Each thief had stolen, at most, a few dozen wen of food. Maybe a little over a hundred. Even in Jeon, the cops weren’t getting out of the coffee shop for that. Not with everything else going on.

A somewhat more thoughtful Truth lifted a selection of chemicals and reagents at a hardware store. Mass shoplifting in a Citizen neighborhood had to point to systemic failures, right? No sane person would risk their status just for a few dozen wen in groceries. And welfare didn’t stretch far, but it did exist. Or had it been ended while he was in the well?

Truth had a sudden nasty thought. What if it was a status thing? The Denizens were now, all of them, subsisting on welfare. Work requirements notwithstanding. It was still all government subsidy, theoretically. So what if the shoplifters were broke, but didn’t want to go on welfare so they didn’t look like Denizens? He had no way to prove that, but he believed it.

He found a convenient-to-him janitor’s closet in an office building near the school. School day should be ending soon, or already over, right? He started mixing the chemicals over the sink, using an empty detergent bottle as the receptacle. Apparently the trick was to carefully funnel the ingredients in, using a very particular order. If you did it right, the ingredients wouldn’t mix until you gave the thing a few violent shakes.

He made two. Just in case.

He walked over towards the school. Mostly empty, though there were some very harried looking teachers at work in the lounge. A lot of thousand yard stares there, as well as pulls on bottles or popped pills that would surely have seen someone terminated a year ago. There were no clubs meeting. That, for some reason, didn’t feel right. Did elementary school kids have afterschool clubs? They must. Otherwise they would just be going home while their parents were still at work.

Truth remembered, vividly, doing just that while his classmates were in clubs. Even in the slums, there were hierarchies of things. Truth had to go out and earn, and he wasn’t the only one. Not seeing anyone in clubs, though… that was a policy change. This was a rule. No kids in the school after the end of classes. Why? Who knows. The parents certainly wouldn’t be okay with it. They would want their kids scoring points towards that next step up the social ladder. Networking.

Truth hesitated a moment. Babysitters? Could you have an entire school that just hired babysitters? Surely not, right? But then, what were they doing?

Not his problem. He made his way to the gymnasium. He shook one of the containers as violently as he dared, then threw it up and let it burst against the ceiling. The particles rained down over most the the gym. It took a moment for the smell to spread.

Truth was proud of himself. A new personal best on the hundred meter sprint. He had gotten out of that gym so fast it must have looked like he teleported.

Cabbages. To start with, cabbage that had been left to rot. Truth, as a proud son of… well as a son of Jeon, had an intimate knowledge of fermented cabbage. This was not that. This was a head that had been stomped into chunks and left to rot under the dumpster next to the adult diaper testing facility. The smell drilled in through your pores. The smell was so vile, Truth suspected it had achieved a level of sentience. A smell that wanted to hunt, to convert others into itself.

He still had a second bottle of the stuff too. He was tempted to chuck it into the subway, but that might actually get someone killed. Hmm. Find another enrollment site? Police station? The latter was tempting, but he wasn’t sure how much use it would actually be. Ah. He knew exactly where.

It was the right time to whistle merrily. Truth didn’t want to test it. He would save it for a special occasion.

Truth walked into the lobby of the office building. Just another maintenance worker, here at the very prestigious Four Seas Bank. The lobby was absolutely crawling with wards and recording talismans. Armed security, as well as a healthy number of golems, were discreetly positioned behind cover. Heavy banishments were etched centimeter-deep into the stone floors too.

Truth couldn’t imagine why.

The jug was well shaken after its journey. Truth leaned back, and threw it a dozen meters straight up to the lobby ceiling, then ran like Hell.

Was it petty? Yes. Was it going to be very useful in the long run? No. But was it satisfying? Oh yes. Very, very yes. Truth’s smile was beatific. Something about bankers in their suits, making the world dance by pushing numbers around on their ledgers, always bothered him. So let them enjoy a particularly stinky afternoon.

The sun was headed for the horizon, but there was still time left in the day. He would have to see what mischief he could get into next.

Sirens started blaring in the bank. Sounded like something very wrong had happened. Maybe he would get a snack. He didn’t know how he would pay for it, but he would figure something out.

Police cars came racing down the street, lights and sirens going. A lobby getting smelly was apparently more important than a grocery store shoplifting. Tsk Tsk. And that with the prices of food already rising so high.

There was the pealing roar of some terrible thing being awakened. Somewhere between a bird and a lion, with skull piercing highs and a bass that promised inescapable death. Truth slowly turned back towards the bank. The front of the bank was starting to crumble, windows falling out of the frames, cement and stone crumbling as the first six floors started giving way.

From out of the rubble, a birdlike claw stretched, grasping towards the air. Tearing open a wider hole for itself.

“Um. I didn’t do it?”