A/N: If you're reading this chapter and the first one had someone named Keyon in it, you oughta go read it again, because I did some reformatting. Other than that, enjoy!

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Where the Right Track Is

Keyal knew something was wrong the moment he saw blood running down the alley.

It was late at night, maybe early morning, and one of his patrolmen had yet to reappear and report back. He wasn't above checking out issues for himself, so while the rest of his workers continued to sort and rummage through the goods they had acquired, he stepped out of their warehouse to look for Lalos, the missing thug.

Lalos wasn't any different than the average Bilgewater crooks: grew up poor, his birth made his parents poorer, and he was tossed out on the street at an early age. Fortunately, he was strong—capable of fending for himself. From what he'd been told, he'd joined a hunter's crew under the rule of some sort of new captain and a famous harpooner by the name of Pyke. As he stepped out of the warehouse and into the fading typhoon that whipped the ground to a deadened gray, he thought back to what Lalos had told him.

They'd been jaull-fish hunting, and Pyke, for all of his skills and capabilities, had been eaten alive. Swallowed, his line cut by this cowardly captain who didn't want to go down with his ship. Of course, at the cost of their harpooner, the crew had survived, but Lalos didn't want to work the docks anymore. Not that he felt bad for what happened, but that he didn't want it to happen to him.

That's just how it worked in Bilgewater: let it be anyone except yourself.

It wasn't like that back in Noxus, Keyal reminded himself as he walked up the water-washed alleyway, following the blood streaking down the stones and off into the ocean. There was brotherhood, kinship, trust. He wanted to build that here, in this lawless land of survivors.

And, though he had long-since deserted the Noxian ways, he still desired to finish off his last mission directive—finding a Templeforged in order to protect his family. Even if he had forsworn loyalty to his nation, he still owed it to his mother and sister to keep an eye on them, far away as he may be.

It wasn't working too well, he had to admit. Following the blood trail up, he found a piece of tattered clothing caught on the edge of a paved rock, fluttering limply as the rain tried to drag it down and away. He leaned forwards and picked it up—it was covered in blood, faded already by the water, but the shirt's design was the same that Lalos had been wearing: white and pinstriped with light grey.

He clenched the cloth in his gloved fist, and looked around hesitantly. Lalos' body wasn't here, and the man wouldn't have run. All the people working for him were carefully vetted for loyalty, he had made sure of that. He couldn't have any traitors in his midst.

There was no one else around the slaughterhouses, and Keyal looked at the roofs to see if anyone was peeking down at them. He was getting famous nowadays, and he knew all-too-well what fame brought. Complications and corruption.

He'd have to go dark if there was someone after him.

He ran a hand over his bald head and looked down across the way to see the emptied-out slaughter docks. It was the Thirteenth Hour, as the laymen called it—the one time that dock workers could get some rest from chopping up snakes all day.

But a singular, ghostly blue light made its way over the docks, towards an empty pulley and pedestal. Curious, Keyal stepped forwards, his hand reaching behind him for the golden spear strapped against his back. He made his way down the steps, leaving the slaughterhouse level behind as he approached the ghostly light, crouching low and keeping his steps as quiet as he could, muted by the rolling thunder.

Down on the docks, there was a dark-skinned man dressed in muted reds and turquoise with the face bones of a shark as shoulder pauldrons, either side being half of its jaw, so it looked like the man's head would be bitten down upon at any time. Wrapped around the man's lower face was a crimson bandana with what looked like a pattern of white teeth.

A sword was strapped to his back, and Lalos' body strung up on the pulleys.

Keyal stopped, dead still, and the man turned to face him, pulling the sword out of its sheath as he faced him. In a flash of gold Keyal pocketed the cloth in his palm and held out his spear, his clothing sopping wet but his expression one of fury.

The stranger stepped forwards, leaning slightly to one side in intrigue. "You are not from here." His voice was rasping, hissing, like someone had filled his lungs with water and then stripped them dry. "Noxian."

Keyal stepped forwards, still holding out his spear. "That's my worker that you're stringing up." Lalos was bleeding from the mouth, his face practically torn in half by the effects of this man's sword. "I can't have people picking off my men."

"Your worker was part of these slaughter docks," the man pointed his sword across the empty area. "He was part of my crew. They abandoned me, cut my line and left me in the maw." Keyal's dark eyes widened.

"You're...you're Pyke?" Keyal lowered his spear slightly. "Lalos told me about you, he said you were dead."

"The ocean brought me back to take its vengeance," Pyke replied, his sword glinting in the ghostly light of the lantern he held, before dropping it to the ground, it's blue flame sputtering out as it fell to its side and was splashed with water. "Are you going to get in my way?"

"You killed my ally," Keyal pointed his weapon at Lalos. "Yes, I'm going to get in your way. You don't get to interrupt my operations, and no one gets to mess with my men."

Pyke seemed to smile beneath the bandana. "So be it."

Pyke sliced his sword through the air, and the blade split from the hilt, firing towards Keyal like the tip of a harpoon. The Noxian had barely enough time to knock it away as it retracted back, before lunging and twirling his spear over his head, creating a circular shower of rain as he slashed and jabbed at Pyke's gut. His spear began to glow with a strange yellow light as it tasted Pyke's blood, making the harpooner step back for a moment, clutching his wound.

"Magic weapon, huh?" Pyke acknowledged before he dashed forwards and through Keyal, leaving a green-blue phantom where the harpooner used to be standing. Keyal quickly jumped forwards and used his spear as a vaulting pole, leaping into the air just as Pyke's phantom dashed where he used to be, sword slashing with a ghostly edge.

Keyal landed on the ground, seemingly unperturbed by the slippery ground. "You're a mage?"

"Not quite."

"Damn. I was hoping you might have some information for me."

Keyal then went on the offensive, his golden spear clashing with Pyke's silver-teal blade, sparks flying as they danced around each other, water kicked up by their feet. Thunder and lightning tore the skies apart as they tried to do the same to each other. Pyke's phantoms appeared every which way to slash Keyal to pieces, but the Noxian seemed to track them and evade them at every turn. Sourly, Pyke waited until Keyal was dodging one of his phantoms before extending his harpoon, the blade tearing through Keyal's stomach and then reeling him in, face-to-face with the Bloodharbor Ripper.

Keyal drove his spear into Pyke's gut as soon as he got close. Even though his skin turned a ghostly blue as the man tried to evade Keyal's attack, it still pierced through, glowing yellow with magic. They drove their weapons deeper, their blood rushing down the slaughter docks as the world around them was illuminated by lightning.

Keyal's hand reached up to Pyke's face and grasped it, trying to gouge the man's eye out while still pushing the spear deeper and deeper into Pyke's stomach. The former harpooner hissed in pain and retracted his sword, before using it to slice Keyal's spear in half. He pushed Keyal's arm away from his glowing blue eye and stepped back, the top half of the spear still running him through.

A strange, X-shaped rune appeared beneath Keyal, and the Noxian looked down at the glow beneath the rushing water, and then back up at Pyke.

Keyal clutched his bleeding gut, blood running down his gloves and onto the rune on the ground. "Good fight."

"Whatever you say," Pyke hissed, before the runes glowed brighter, and Pyke turned ghostly blue, preparing for his final move.

Keyal suddenly threw out his hand. A yellow glow emanated from the palm of his glove, and the spear tore itself out of Pyke's gut, leaving him to double over as Keyal stole away from the rune, which faded as Pyke began to bleed out.

"I ain't finished yet," Pyke groaned, and Keyal walked past him, before turning back for a second. "Gonna...kill you."

"I've heard that one before," Keyal grunted, wincing in pain from his gut wound before reattaching the halves of his spear and aiming the point over Pyke's head. "They ended up in the same spot you did. Now I have a question: have you seen a Templeforged anywhere around here?"

"A what?" Pyke asked in confusion. "What is that, a weapon?"

"Something like that," Keyal replied, pressing the spear closer to the back of Pyke's skull. "It's kind of what I'm here for, alongside the riches I can amass. I was told they were a powerful mage, and you seem to use arcane abilities."

"I have no clue what you're talking about," Pyke growled angrily. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell ya."

"Worth a shot," Keyal shrugged nonchalantly. "Time for you to—"

"Death does not come that easy for me, Noxian." Pyke whipped around with an unseen speed, slashing at Keyal's thigh before turning a ghostly blue and tearing away from him, leaping into the raging waters and disappearing into the deep with nothing but a blue glow trailing him downwards.

"Shit," Keyal said, scrunching his nose and licking his lips in worry, clutching at his bleeding leg. "Seems like it's time to relocate."

༺༻

"Yeah, my uncle's got a weird sense of style," Frei laughed sheepishly, acting like she couldn't feel Urgot's eyes boring into her back as she talked to the owner of this shop stand. "Got injured on a hunting excursion and decided he wanted twice the amount of legs that one normally does."

"And he wants…" The Yordle looked down at their note on the counter. "Seventeen serpent sandwiches and three gallons of beer?"

"He's...got an appetite, too," Frei said, before putting a heap of coins with kraken heads engraved on them onto the thin table. The shopkeeper shook their head, rolled their eyes and hopped off the counter, reappearing with a disproportionately large back of sandwiches and three tankards of beer. "Thank you, ma'am!"

"Mnh," The Yordle groaned as Urgot leaned forwards and grabbed the bag of food before retreating behind Frei. "And don't you want anything, kiddo?" She looked around Frei with curious light brown eyes. "Where are those two pirate bosses of yours? Thought I saw you hanging around them a couple times."

"They're...they're busy," Frei said easily, and Urgot let out a mechanical growl.

Across the part of Bilgewater that was labelled the Drytops, mainly for the fact that it was so far away from the sloshing water of the coastline, Graves and Fate were kicking the shit out of eight thugs who had followed them from the lower levels.

A red card whizzed around the alleyway, ricocheting across the walls and across the arms and legs of crooks. More cards swirled around Twisted Fate as Graves stood behind him, his massive shotgun against his hip as he fired a smoke bomb into the alley with a quiet kuh-thunk!

It exploded, clouding the area in grey, and Graves roared as he lunged into the alleyway, tackling three men at once as more of Fate's cards whipped through the smoke, corralling it so it couldn't disperse while simultaneously slicing the thieves back and forth.

Graves threw one of the thugs to the ground and began to punch him, not keen on using his lethal bullets in a thin alleyway up on the Drytops. Security was tight, and as such, no gunshots.

"Where. is. Keyal?" Graves asked as he pummeled the thief, taking out some of his anger on the criminal.

"Not...gonna spill…" the thug groaned, the rest of his buddies quickly being handled as Fate cleared the air and smacked them upside the head with golden guards. Graves got off the thief and knocked two of the lackey's heads together, and they went down hard, before he turned around and kicked another one into the alley wall.

All the thugs collapsed to the ground, and Fate smiled as he held his palm out, several multicolored cards flying into it and disappearing with a white flash. "Pick a crony, any crony." He gestured towards the unconscious pirates.

Graves glared at Tobias, but knelt down next to the thug he'd been beating up, and then threw him over his shoulder like a potato sack. "This one."

"Good choice," Fate said drawlingly. "How do you think Frei's doing, babysitting that oversized lab rat of ours?"

"As well as she does anything else," Graves muttered, strapping his shotgun to his back as they left the alleyway full of groaning thugs. They took a backroad so the local security forces wouldn't see them—they were mostly mercenaries, but they'd still shoot you if you were found carrying some unconscious guy around the Drytop streets. "Which is pretty damn well, all things considered."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Fate crossed his arms.

"That she's a fourteen-year-old girl working alongside you, me, and some escaped convict from Zaun, and she hasn't complained once," Graves explained. "I mean, we've literally been living in her house for the past six months, and all she's worried about is slowing us down."

"She's an interesting kid, for sure," Fate fixed his hat with a cocksure grin. "Shame that she'll be heading out after this job, though."

"Probably for the best," Graves muttered with a low chuckle. "I mean, heh, Piltover's an ambitious place to start for someone who has been stealing to survive, but you gotta admire that she hasn't given up after living her entire life in Bilgewater."

"Now how do you know that she hasn't lived anywhere else? We've only known her for half a year."

"She's got that look to her," said the criminal as they approached the sandwich shop that Frei and Urgot had just been at. "Hunger-panged, lean. You saw those nobles up in Piltover—they've got a sparkle in their eyes, meat on their bones."

"Yeah, just don't tell Frei we robbed said nobles," Fate laughed melodically, looking up at the grey skies with a raised brow.

Graves laughed heartily, and for a moment, it was like things were back to normal again—before Fate's betrayal, before the Locker, before everything had gone wrong and tore their friendship apart.

"Ah, over there," Graves pointed towards Urgot's hulking form, who was watching as Frey tore through the massive pile of sandwiches that was set on their table. He didn't even seem that interested in eating them, probably because he had tubes for a mouth. "Call her over."

Fate shrugged nonchalantly, before firing out a blue card that smacked Frei between the eyes, making her drop her sandwich and glower over at the two men peeking out of the alleyway. With a sigh that made her figure droop, she put the rest of the sandwiches into a bag and jogged over to them. Urgot followed with three beer tankards, his legs clicking on the ground and drawing eyes.

"So, you found a guy?" Frei asked as she finished off her sandwich, narrowing her hazel eyes at the unconscious thug slung over Graves' armored shoulder.

"A few," Fate said as Frei slapped the blue card back into his hand. "Thank you, young lady." He then looked over at Urgot, and down at the beer tankards. "Oh, good, you got the order. This'll be great fun."

"Don't worry, Urgot," Frei said as she walked into the alley. "We're not getting off-task. I was just hungry."

"You ordered a crew's worth of sandwiches," Urgot argued in his hissing voice as he followed her, Graves and Fate taking up the caboose. "I can't eat. You are wasting my time. And…" he pointed his hand back where they'd come from. "The Noxian was down below. Why are we on the highest levels of…"

"Bilgewater," Fate finished from behind him, and Urgot nodded angrily, his temper thinly veiled.

"Beyond the fact that Nimah makes the best food around," Frei jostled her sandwich bag. "Keyal tends to spend time up here, so it's always the first place I check when he goes dark. The problem is, I don't know exactly where he's going, hence that guy." She pointed at the unconscious guy Graves was holding.

"And the sandwiches?" Graves coaxed.

"Toll of the Riverkids," Frei answered. "They've got a lot of information, a lot of people everywhere. Apparently, giving me a discount for being one of them when I was younger is out of the question, so I just come with a surplus of food and drink whenever I want something."

"And this time, we need one of their rooms," Fate explained. "Frei here doesn't like it when we interrogate people in her house—"

"For good reason!" Frei lifted a defiant finger.

"So we need some of their space," Urgot concluded. "To torture him."

"I frown upon your word choice, but yes," Fate finished off with a flourish of the hand. "That and some potions. By now, Keyal's probably off the deck with paranoia, so we—especially you, Urgot—are gonna have to look a little different. They've got some sort of alchemist down there who can make you pass for a normal man."

"Alhan can hook us up," Frei said with an uneasy smile. "You'll have your Noxian in no time, and we'll have our gold."

༺༻

Frei sat outside while Graves, Fate, and Urgot tied up their hostage inside. She leaned against the rotting wood-paneled wall as Alhan sat across from her, eating a sandwich and straightening his blond hair with a flustered expression.

"I thought you'd be gone by now," Alhan said honestly as Frei picked at the hem of her beige tunic. "Off in Piltover, living the dream."

"Me too," Frei replied, hearing the grunts of the thug as he was gagged just behind the wall she was slumped against. "Now there's not one, but two homicidal maniacs going after this Keyal guy, one that I'm currently working with, and now I'm just wondering...is this worth it?"

"This job or your dreams?" Alhan inquired in between bites of the sandwich, before taking a sip of the glass of beer that he had in his hand. He was far too young to be drinking, but no one was gonna tell him what to do in Bilgewater.

"I-I-I...both?" Frei curled her arms around her knees and rested her head in thought. "I mean, I'm no good at engineering, and I certainly don't have the manners to act rich even if I became rich. No one in Piltover would believe that I came into money legally. I'm starting to understand why Fate thought I was joking about it."

Alhan stared at Frei for a moment, before sliding up the wall to his feet. "Come on, up. We're taking a walk."

"No, I've gotta stay here and wait," Frei said, shaking her head. "The second they get information out of the guy—"

The guy in question suddenly yowled in pain, and Urgot let out a stream of infuriated yells, muffled and made incoherent by the walls. Alhan finished off his sandwich, leaned forwards, and pulled Frei to her feet. "I said we're going on a walk. I don't want to hear that, and neither do you."

Frei stared at him for a second, before acquiescing and following him out of the hallway. They came to a balcony just a few feet over the rushing Bilgewater rivers, rife with filth, serpents, and the occasional body part running through the currents. Alhan leaned against the railing, and Frei did the same, making a point of looking him in the eyes instead of the river beside them, where a blue glow seemed to be emanating from the river floor, unseen by the teenagers.

"Why now?" Alhan asked, and Frei cocked her head in confusion. "Why is this your last heist, of all the jobs you've helped Graves and Fate with. You've had plenty of money, plenty of cash to buy a trip off this rock, but you're still here."

Frei clenched and unclenched her fist. "I want to go to Piltover with something amazing in tow, some genius invention that'll catapult me into the Academy. Most of the money I earn is in proportion to my two partners, who I think do most of the work...for the most part." She pointed over at the room they'd just left. "I don't have the stomach for whatever they're doing. Nevertheless...all the money I've earned has gone to getting machine parts, bits and pieces from collectors, blueprints from afar. And upkeep of the house, and buying food...it's a lot."

"Mm," Alhan hummed in agreement. "Not to mention, I have noticed the pouch of gold appearing at the front of my father's shack every week or so. That's you, right?" Frei nodded, and Alhan sighed. "You oughta stop, really. He takes those krakens to the bar and puts them all on red."

Frei frowned, but nodded. "Alright."

"And...the answer to my question?"

"I think I just want to go now," Frei said honestly. "There's no special reason, no catalyst or pivotal event that sends me off. I'm tired of living here, the same foods, the same bounties and people on the slaughter docks. The same shops, the same people who chase me down every time I pass them, the way I have to practice crying in the mirror just so I can do this job."

"How do you do that, by the way?" Alhan finished off his beer and set the glass precariously on the railing, where Frei snatched it up and set it down on safer ground.

"I think hard about things I want," Frei answered honestly, rubbing her forehead as she considered it. "Parents who raise me—and no, Graves and Fate don't count—a family who loves me more than anything. And then I think about them leaving. It's a different scenario every time—they're dead, they abandon me, they're plucked off by bounty hunters, swallowed by serpents. Sometimes they're there for me, every day. I go to a school, they pack me lunch, I play outside without fear of being attacked. A scenario where I walk home with friends, where I'm smart and good at something other than stealing."

"Something normal," Alhan summarized, seeming to understand this perfectly. "A life we all deserved, but never got."

"Sounds cheesier when you say it," Frei admitted, and Alhan laughed. "So yeah, I get teary-eyed over what could've been. Sometimes, I have dreams where I have a sister."

"Not a brother?"

"No, don't think so," Frei laughed nostalgically. "Always a sister. We play games together, jump the river and pretend to be harpooners. We pinch our noses as we dash across the slaughter docks, bags of loot under our arms. In a dream where we're normal, she and I sit and mess with wind-up toys that our parents bought us, we beg them for stories of where they've been all day, and late at night, we sneak into each other's bedrooms to share secrets and play games that only we know the rules to."

"That sounds...really nice," Alhan said, shifting a little closer to Frei. "So you're leaving because you want to find something new, find what you always wanted?"

"I think it's more about finding what I'm supposed to be," Frei replied. "But as far as that's going, I don't think I'm on the right track right now. I don't even know where the right track is." She stared at Alhan for a moment. "Do you gain confidence whenever you're not on the slaughter docks? Because you haven't stuttered once."

"I, uh," Alhan flushed pink for a second. "Yeah. The docks scare me. And I know I make weapons for a living, but seeing them used is a little, uh...you know. By the way…" He glanced down at her belt. "Get a chance to use those knives yet?"

"Ah, no," Frei said, popping the pouch open and pulling one out. "But I'm sure I will, whenever they work Keyal's location out from that guy's lips."

"Plan to kill anybody, then?" Alhan asked, somewhat worried about the concept.

"No," Frei said firmly. "Fortunately, for all my confidence issues in other departments, these…" She twirled the knife between her fingers and pointed it at Alhan. "Let's just say I know what I'm doing with these."

The door to the interrogation room burst open, and Frei caught the blue card before it could smack her in the face this time. Fate sighed from the doorway, and Urgot lumbered out with what looked like a disembodied arm in his hands.

"Oh, Nagakabouros," Alhan moaned in fear, turning and vomiting over the railing into the river. Frei almost followed suit, before Urgot scuttled past Fate, chucking the arm into the river along with so many others. Alhan shielded his face from the blood that followed, some of it splattering on Frei's face.

The arm was caught by a dark hand that flew up from the current, but no one was watching.

"Did you...is he alive?" Frei asked, pocketing her knife.

"We got the location. Cartel Casino. Go figure." Graves said firmly. "And yeah, Fate healed him up a tad. Urgot insisted on putting him through some pain. Something about it being important to his philosophy."

"Great," Frei said with a sarcastic simper, wiping the blood off of her face and walking past Urgot. "Let's get going then."

"Don't forget these," Alhan said, pulling a couple vials off of his belt. "Xair brewed them up for you guys, they'll last about an hour, which should be enough time for you guys to pull off whatever the hell you're trying to pull off."

"Thanks," Frei said, clipping them to her belt.

Beneath the thin wood balcony, Pyke examined the disembodied arm in his hand. And beneath his blood red mask, he smiled.

༺༻

Frei looked up at the Cartel Casino, and then down at her bare hands. It was rare to see them without their dark yellow gloves. She looked over at Urgot, who didn't look quite like Urgot anymore. He had grown long white hair and was wearing darkened clothing, but he still retained his facial features to a certain degree.

Fate's hair had gone red, donned with a wide-brimmed hat, and his eyes had become a soft green with a round face, while Graves had aged about twenty years, leaning on a cane and looking incredibly unhappy about how his illusion potion had turned out.

"Seems like you got luck of the draw," Fate said sarcastically as he pulled a strand of his hair down in front of his eyes, examining its fiery color. "Huh, Frei?"

Frei glanced down at herself. She looked pretty much the same, but upon being handed a mirror from a disgruntled Urgot, she found that her hair had fallen into a dark grey, her left eye torn up by a massive scar that left her face bloodshot and disfigured. Her clothing remained relatively similar to her old stuff, if a little darker.

"Huh," Frei said as she stared at herself, before making a funny face and handing the mirror back to Urgot, who passed it to Fate. "Do you think there's anything special about it?"

"About what?" Urgot snapped as they began to walk towards the casino's entrance.

"These," Frei said, waggling the empty vial clipped to her belt which had once held an illusion potion. "Like, why do I look like I took a sword six times to the eye, and why does Graves look like he's gonna break his back with how fast he's walking."

"Young lady," Graves scolded, and Frei shrugged, Fate stifling a smile. "I could still rock your shit with this cane of mine."

"No doubt," Frei said, before looking up at the casino, her eyes widening in awe.

If it were anywhere else, someone would probably laugh. But for Bilgewater, it was the most expensive-looking place she'd ever seen. Two stone-cut spires rose into the air over a similarly-designed wall, covered in banners of different colors, lit with braziers just the same. Music emanated from over the four walls, followed by shouts of frustration and victorious laughs.

"Let's hope all those card games made me a little better," Frei said as she fixed her tunic, walking up to the bouncer with a smile that was marred by her new scar. She didn't even say anything, just pulled out a pouch of krakens and placed it in his palm.

"Sorry," the bouncer said, still pocketing the gold. "Private party."

"Well, we should be on the guest list," Fate said, stepping forwards and looking at the scroll in the bouncer's hands. "I'm Prevair Ikaytor."

"Oh," the bouncer said with a gold-toothed smile, before pointing at the unfurled scroll. "There you are. Guests of honor."

"Wait, what? That's...he's not..." Graves narrowed his eyes in confusion, and the bouncer's grin widened.

The four of them suddenly felt the cold barrels of guns on the backs of their heads, and the casino doors opened to reveal none other than Keyal, dressed to the nines in rich red cloths and glinting dark armor trimmed with gold. His dark eyes glimmered with wicked excitement as he looked across the four of them, and Urgot growled furiously.

"Don't move," Keyal said, holding his hands out placatingly. "I'm not going to kill you. I've got some questions to ask you first."

"Like?" Graves rolled his hand, waiting for Keyal to elaborate, and instead, the ex-Noxian turned to the skies with a sneer, and then looked over at Frei.

Frei looked at him with an arched eyebrow, the other one removed by her artificial scar, and Keyal crossed his arms in slight amusement. "What's a mage like you doing in a shithole like this?"