“Boat rides! Get your groceries home! Good price! Safe Boat!” Jim really was trying his hardest to drum up some business, but so far he hadn’t had any luck. Despite his enthusiasm and energy, we were still new to this area, and my hunch was that most of the people shopping here were either used to heading home with what they could carry, or had already established a working relationship with one of the other ferrymen that hung out nearby. A good number of those ferrymen were out and about taking customers to their destinations, but the rest seemed relaxed. I certainly didn’t hear any of them hawking their own services.

The rest of the market didn’t mind competing for their customers' attention, and it was easy for me to lose myself in the raucous cacophony that a hundred merchants caused, each trying to convince a passerby that they needed a new necklace, or perhaps a nice piece of fruit to snack on. It was a lot to take in, but that was what I wanted at the moment. To simply submerge myself in the sheer humanity of it all as I reminded myself of the larger world around me, that made me feel like I was spectating or participating as part of a greater whole.

Back in Shellpin I would have been able to pick out and keep track of individual conversations, learning what I could from those overheard sentences, but here it was simply impossible. Despite people talking right next to the canal that I was anchored in, there was simply too much background noise. This was where the city came to do their buying and selling, and there was a lot of city that was willing to cram into the overly packed square and surrounding streets to take care of their business. The sound of a group of people approaching was ignored at first. Most people did their shopping in ones or twos, saving themselves the hassle of trying to stay together amidst the whirling crowds, but some larger groups of shoppers had gone by before, and at first I thought this more of the same. Jim abruptly cutting his spiel short was my first sign that something was happening. Refocusing my attention I found I was able to make out the words that the spokesman for the group was saying.

“...Kid, there’s a right and a wrong way to go about things. Barging in here like this, with no respect for those of us already working here? That’s the wrong way to do things.”

His tone was cheerful and convivial, but it simply made the threat all the more apparent. This person was obviously here over Jim’s attempt to grab some of the boat traffic, and if all he wanted to do was to talk then he could have come over by himself. The men standing calmly behind him were all the stick and leverage he probably needed to convince people to go along with what he was saying.

Unfortunately for him Jim had not grown up in the city. Jim hadn’t lived anywhere with a population over a hundred, let alone a thousand. His father might have known enough to play things cautiously, but Adam had the personal power to ignore social niceties and still come out okay. Jim did not.

“Shove off. I’ve got just as much right to be here as any of you, for all the good it does me.”

If I still had hands I would have facepalmed. As it was, all I could do was sit back and watch the disaster unfold in slow motion. The goons following their lead muttered a bit, and there was a strained pause as the spokesman figured out the best way to respond.

“Sure, you don’t have any business today. You’re still a novelty, after all. We ferrymen work hard to make ourselves a reputation as a reliable method of transportation. But tomorrow, or the day afterwards? Someone might decide to take a chance on you. And when you fuck it all up, then that blows back on all of us here. But we can fix that. It’ll just take a couple days of lessons from one of the older ferrymen, and then you can start selling yourself as ‘guild-trained’. Lessons won’t cost more than a few silver either.”

“Don’t got that much, and don't see how I need your lessons anyway. What’s so hard about getting them from here to where they want to go?” Jim stubbornly replied, as he refused to take the out the other person was providing for him.

“You only say that because you haven't tried and messed it up yet. You’re new to the city, right? I have a good eye for faces, and you don’t look familiar, so there’s all sorts of twists and turns and dead ends that you don’t know about and could find yourself in. Who knows what you might bump into when you take a wrong turn?”

I could clearly hear the subtext in that statement, the implication of promised violence, but Jim couldn’t. I agonized over breaking cover, either to start rowing away or to simply try and pass a message along, but the choice was taken away from me before I could decide. Jim hadn’t said anything, but the tone of his silence and his stubborn posture told the ferryman all that he needed to her.

“Make sure he has a good understanding of how he could get hurt in this city.” He said, before walking off, the sound of his footsteps quickly swallowed by the crowd. There’s a short scuffle as some of the men move forward and accost Jim, but all too soon they’re finished fighting. Four people entered my tiny frame, filling it to the brim, but the three strangers were all experienced enough to keep their balance and prevent me from capsizing. Jim, meanwhile, was their helpless prisoner, and while I can hear him struggling, there isn’t much he can do against the two men holding him. The last gripped my oars with meaty hands and began to row. He doesn’t have quite the power that Adam did, but his strokes were strong nonetheless, and soon he has navigated us to one of those quiet dead ends that was mentioned earlier. No one else was around, and the men didn't feel the need to speak up at all. With Jim kept still by his two captors, the third man took advantage of an immobile target.

His first punch to the gut left Jim gasping for air. The second didn’t come right away, but instead the thug waited to catch Jim on the inhale. The surprise shock left Jim breathless and vomiting at the same time, and only the quick and practiced movements of the man holding his arms got him positioned over my side in time before his breakfast was vehemently expelled.

Beating up Jim was only half of their message, though. Those same hands pulled back once more, but this time their target was me. A solid punch from the inside to the side of my hull didn’t blow a hole open, but it did cause a serious crack to form in the wood, and I can feel water already beginning to seep through it. Fortunately it seemed like that concluded their percussive lesson.

Now that I was taking on water I moved slower, but the men didn't row me far, just to a nearby ladder that they quickly climbed up, leaving Jim lying curled up on his side on my floor in a slowly growing puddle of water. I waited a few seconds for the men to move away, before I sprang into action. The city was still a watery maze, but I at least could keep my sense of direction well enough to get us headed towards the pier I called home, even if we needed to correct our course later. All I cared about was leaving the men behind, and getting Jim to a place that he could recover.

Without his help I couldn’t repair the damage dealt to me, but flexing Water Resistance at least kept me waterproof, at the cost of a small amount of ongoing focus. Jim’s breathing steadied out once we started moving, and I felt my emotions relax a little at the confirmation that he wasn’t seriously injured, but I felt my concern growing when he didn’t sit up at all. He was still lying down, lost in thought when we arrived, and I was considering rowing him back to his parents when he finally spoke up.

“Why do people have to be like that?” He said, spitting some spit and bile over the side. He took a swish of water from a canteen he had stored underneath one bench, while I thought of my answer.

“Because they can.” It wasn’t a comforting statement, or one that really explained much, but it was the only truth I had to give him.

“Bastards.” He swore, before standing up on shaky legs. He paused for a moment, before swearing under his breath, softly enough I only caught the tone of his words.

“What?” I asked, wondering if he saw something I couldn’t see.

“Its.” He started, before stopping. It takes him a few tries to form the sentence he actually wants to say. “I don’t like the classes available to me. It feels like they’re made for the person I was before I left Treefall, or for the situations I’m stuck in now, but I don’t want to be either of those people.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know!” His frustration is clearly audible, and I sympathize with him a bit. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic with any of my classes either, but I hadn’t known my options could change over time, and so had rushed ahead with my decision. I could easily see myself still waiting, paralyzed with indecision and the knowledge that a better class might be just around the corner.

“I understand.”

“Thanks, but you can’t fix it, can you? I don’t want to be a woodworker, or a farmer, or a lackey.” His words dripped with contempt for the last choice, one that was probably offered to him thanks to the events of today. “I want to be free, to have enough power that I don’t need to be afraid of soldiers showing up at our house, that I don’t need to worry about gangs and bullies pushing people around. I want to make my choice, not have it made for me by everything else that’s going on.

“So don’t”

“Huh?”

“A class can help you out, but it’s not the only way to gather more power. You can create or buy skills even without a class, and there’s plenty of ways to get stronger outside of what the system can do. Exercise your body. Have your parents teach you things. Make connections so that you have friends who can lend you their power.” I cut my speech shorter than I would have liked, but oratory skills and binary transmission don’t work well together.

“Thanks, Robert. I’d probably be a lot worse off if it wasn’t for you being here.” Jim answered, and while I know he means it as a compliment, I can’t help but read the other implications of his words. ‘My situation might suck, but I can’t complain, because yours is worse’. It stings at me, because I would gladly trade my problems for Jim’s. What he’s facing isn’t anything unique, and if Jim wanted to listen either his father or I could easily give him solid advice for how to deal with things.

I don’t. It’s not fair for me to read unintended meanings into what Jim said, and it’s not fair for me to trivialize his problems because I’ve gone through what I think are equivalent issues. College had its drama, but it wasn’t exactly getting beat up in a back-alley drama, after all. Instead I waited, a friend first and foremost.

It paid off. Instead of me forcing my ideas on Jim, he started talking as he got to work on repairing my hull for the second time. His actions were still shaky, but they let him lose himself in the work for a bit.

“Got any ideas?” He asked, before clarifying. "To get back at them, I mean."

“A few.”