God only knows. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

It's been a while of internal conversation, how far is it to the shoe store still? 

She's outside it. Or rather outside a sort of mini mall built narrow, first three floors retail and apartments higher up. Her chosen shoe store is on the first floor.

Then she will go in and look at the shoes!

The place has a bored cashier, a bunch of shelves, a patch of flooring of different materials (tile, rubber mat, hardwood) for testing the walk and fit, and a cleaning robot. The shoes are nice, built very solidly. A bunch of slighty different styles of 'conservative leather work shoes' with different toe shapes or slight heels. Black, dark grey, some with subtle colored highlights and a sign saying recoloring available. 5-10 argold.

She bought a pair of cheap shoes for her last prep cook job and they fell apart within six months. She'll spring for something from the higher end of the range in classic black with no heels. Better to have something that'll still be holding together in a year or two. 

She tests the fit with a couple laps of the store, then pays. 9 more argold spent and she's off to get her slacks, following the GPS again. 

Same building, third floor! This one appears to be an all-kinds-of-pants place. It has some really expensive ones made of special and possibly magic thread. The ad copy is kind of ambiguous.

She will take a pass on extra expensive maybe-magic pants today. 

A nice pair of black slacks sets her back another seven argold, and then she's out of the store and heading back to Intake to drop off her items. Thank the Artonans for the nice System in her vision, she supposes.

The city moves around her, nobody really paying her any special attention. Someone's crying in an alley. Someone's laughing and kissing his boyfriend. Someone's showing off their ability to make things stick to their hands.

Someone's crying in an alley? 

Careful, Hazel. This is a strange city and you don't know what's going on. 

I know. People in apparent distress in public places can be dangerous. I still remember that scammer that got us to give him a hundred dollars for "christmas presents for Ethiopian children." But I can't just look away. 

Alright, then I'll lead.

She steps down the alley with the clothes still bundled in her arms. 

"Excuse me," she says as gently as she can. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

A dark-skinned young woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt, carrying a small purse. "<Um- No.>" Sniff. "<Not really. It all catches up sometimes. And it's stupid anyway.>"

She smiles as reassuringly as she can, the one she practiced at the queer club on girls in bad states with their families. "I know how it can be, if you're in a bad state any little thing can set you off. If you would genuinely prefer me to move on I will, but I can spare a little while to listen if it would help to get it out."

"<Look, it's not that I'm weak. Anyone would cry. Everyone does sometimes. Even over petty stuff. It's just so stupid, I don't even actually care about my class, I'm a fucking F and might as well be mundane. My skill- It's called F city for a reason. I just- I read about the changes to the Sways, the council finally got the Artonans to change some of the rules for Sway powers, and now it's all over the news again, and the fucking Velras did some kind of luck spell and everyone's comparing them to sways, and it's just so much anger and hate. And yeah, I'm a sway. Wooo, scary! I never actually use it, I think I've done it literally once.>"

"Damn, that's a shit hand." 

Cherry leans against the side of the alley and shakes her head. "People never learn, do they? There's always some fucking bullshit thing." 

She sighs and rubs her forehead with her free hand. "You're right, I don't have a solution for the world being broken in my back pocket."

"Thaaat's life," she sing-songs in English. "<It fucking sucks. It could be worse than free basic living, I don't want to rain on everyone's parade, those who have something good, but it sucks. And there's literally fucking feudalists out there, who don't say out loud that the biggest fist should be in charge, but you can kind of guess they're thinking it sometimes.>"

"Yeah." Cherry sighs. "I fucking hope I never turn into one of them. Went through intake this morning. I'm lucky, B-rank Unique. They say a summon's worth some ungodly amount of money and I can expect one soon. What am I supposed to do with Argold though, eat it? I've got no family left I could send it to, I'm living in intake, I'm fucking nineteen and I'm supposed to have a plan for being used as a housemaid by some alien?" 

She sighs. "Maybe I should look up a decent advocacy organization to send the stuff to, maybe they'd do some good with it."

"<Maybe. Medical research is trendy these days, I hear.>"

She nods. "I can see why people would go for that. It's nice and nondenominational." 

She shakes her head again.

"Well, I've got to be somewhere, but if you ever want someone to complain to about the news or whatever you can text me - I'm Bluebell Gardenia." 

"<I'm just going to go home and shower and not make a mess of myself in the street anymore. Have a good one and all, lucky B. And thanks.>"

She takes a deep deep breath, nods, and walks out into the street.

And Hazel continues on in the direction of Intake.

It wasn't strategic of you to share that we're a B rank.

It wasn't strategic of us to do fuckall. But sometimes you just gotta tell it like it is, you know?