She has a lot of practice at ignoring being grossed out. Roaches get set down evenly spaced about the room. <Okay. All set.>

They demorph. It is gross. They didn't have the hang of bringing clothes.

<I think the ship has clothes and food and first aid kits and everything, it's supposed to keep you until Miolee. You can touch stuff here, it's supposed to be for red transport. I probably need to go manage the fallout from stunning the cops, do you need anything ->

"- food and clothes should do. Is the boat going to leave - is it crewed -"

<Yeah. Separate section. We were gonna have you all at once but maybe we will just get you guys to Miolee right away and I will arrange another boat.>

Nod.

They go find clothes and food.

She arranges for another boat and tells this one to go to Miolee and checks how much trouble there is going to be about the cops.

The cops are confused and upset. The fire department is containing the fire just fine though.

...Isel goes home to her hotel. Showers. Showers more. Showers so much. Leaves her volume up, collapses on her couch, stares at the wall itching imaginary insects off her calves. 

Her assistant wants to know what happened.

"Police wanted to go murder a couple people to make a point about a possible noise complaint. Security stopped them. I called everyone trying to get someone willing to say "yeah don't murder them over nothing mid-transition" and Rivik has none of those."

"- don't you usually tell them to not make trouble, in the first place, like noises -"

"Yeah. Someone made a noise accidentally."

"Is everybody okay?"

"Yes."

"Is this going to make it harder to get the other districts?"

"Probably a little bit harder. The other districts will be on their best behavior but if anything does go wrong it'll be harder to pull the same trick twice."

"What did you do?"

" - this is not standard practice, because most countries aren't as bad with their reds as Rivik. But here - the government's going to kill them when they're done. They're sure, and they're right. And if we send in intermediate trainees, Anitami ex-reds, the government will probably kill them anyway and might kill those too. So the way I got them to train was I developed a contingency plan. They train right up until the government gets set to massacre them, and then they - fly away. To the boat, which has taken them straight to Miolee. They're all accounted for."

"Does this mean you're going to leave them to drown in shit -"

"Not if we can help it. There are four more districts, and they're sticking it out. But if Rivik decides to go in and murder some people they're gonna find the districts empty. I don't want it to come to that. I have called everyone I can, I would love to get them through training before the reds get out. But the way for them to avoid this would have been to operate in good faith. They're not. They are planning a massacre. I have been meticulously documenting all of this - not my solution with the reds flying away, it's a state secret that Andalite tech works without Matirin shepherding it - so everyone else doesn't have to worry that they'll try in good faith and get fucked over. They won't."

...nod.

"Next place can be somewhere nice and typical where they're honestly planning to let their reds go and I can honestly plan to get the reds on board and it will be so relaxing. At least Rivik is better run than Calado - the imperial credit system is so horrible -"

"What's wrong with it?"

"You earn them. Sounds neat but - there are waaay more people than can come to the attention of anyone who gives them out and Calado doesn't even reliably have a systemic way of earning them - so you get - a blue can just walk into the street in a grey neighborhood and say 'light that person on fire and you get kids' and - if it's your only way to get kids -"