"Like I'm between a rock and a hard place, and yet surprisingly relaxed about it. Also, I think I want to tell you the same stuff I told him."

"...okay? If you're sure. Don't feel pressured, though."

"I was under pressure this whole time and never even realized it. I cope too well for my own good. What I'm going to end up doing is all up in the air, but... I don't want to turn into a turtle. I wanna talk about it."

"Okay. I'm listening."

"...My family owes money to a gang. One of the little ones. Well, my dad does, but they're not going to leave Mom and Aunt Clare and me and my cousins alone. And it's a huge mess with no easy way out that I can't just walk away from."

"Well fuck."

"Yep. 'Till yesterday, nobody knew how bad this was eating me. Now four people do, including my parents. Oh, and they found out I'm a tinker, which was fun. Dad didn't ask for tinkertech to sell but it was certainly implied that it would be the familial thing to do."

"—what? What the duck, no, you don't—you can't even maintain tinker tech without help, the gang would get that then it'd break and you'd never get out of it—"

"I can make simple stuff that goes for a couple of months. And I'd be all 'maintenance is extra, absolutely fucking no guarantees, so on so forth'. But, yeah."

"Who would you even sell it to?"

"I don't even know. I mean-"

She cuts herself off.

Fire guy. She made a deal with him. Damn. "I just remembered something else. Uh. Would you..." She trails off.

"—hang up?"

"...Juuudge me for a different rash decision than the ones you already know about."

"I find that being judgmental is not very helpful or useful to, ah, anyone."

"...Made a deal with a guy who is definitely not a villain, very plausibly deniable he was, for a big batch of supplies, in exchange for a piece of tech. Back when I thought I was basically considered a villain already and was running out of money. And - I'd really better follow through, even if I cut him off after."

"...what is he if not a villain?"

"Maybe he's not. Call it worst-case-scenario planning. And then I'd have less reasons not to follow through, too... But he's not a local hero at least. It's the fire guy you fought off that one time. He was more civil the next time we met."

"Oh. Uh. Yeah I've never heard of him on either side of the fights before, no idea what his deal is. He just wants—tinker tech? And gives you parts? Just like that?"

"That was the deal, anyway. I gave him a place to dead-drop the parts the other day. I'll check it the next time my parents let me out of their sight for more than ten minutes."

"What's he even doing with the tech? He didn't ask you to maintain it?" Glam clarifies.

"...Come to think of it, no. He didn't. What, do you think he knows another tinker or something?"

"Other tinkers wouldn't be able to maintain your tech, though. It's... suspicious."

"...Yeah I'm gonna make a fake workshop for him to 'steal' it from. I don't want to get any closer to this guy."

"Fake workshop?"

"Like, leave a few useless tools and bits and bobs around, plus the thing the deal was to make, and let him have the tech from somewhere around there. If he finds the fake workshop by thinker BS somehow, not the end of the world."