text: [Themes: sci-fi]
  
  "Oh, you are a generous man, Raoul!" You practically want to shave his crusty lip beard off. "Please do spare me, and I won't mention this again!" If only you were holding a razor, he'd have the most clean-shaven face around. It'd be a very close shave, maybe with a few deep nicks.
  
  "Hahaha," he laughs merrily. "Come with me, follow the little folk. I think I have something for you." Raoul gently rotates a pistol of his own, which you never saw him draw. "Don't try anything on the way. I have a few tricks up my sleeve." As he says this, the pistol retracts at the end of thin trusses back into the cuff of his jacket. He leads from behind, with the midgets taking point.
  
  "Haha, this'll be a fun one," you hear from the crowd. They descend ever deeper into the cavern. The mottled pink-and-gray turns into gray and darker gray as you work you way down. Is it possible they know where the deep caves are? It's not mapped or publicized, even. And how did Raoul get all these midgets so quickly? You only know about them from a chance encounter as a kid.
  
  "Perhaps you don't know this," Raoul says in his odd delicate baritone voice, "but these caves are volcanic in origin. There are fumaroles that lead down from just two vertical shafts, into a much wider cavern. That's where we're headed."
  
  Everyone begins to squeeze through the tight crawlspace. It occurs to you this would take a lot longer for a company of full-grown men. There are a few places you figured you might get stuck in, but you manage to wiggle your way through somehow. Following the flashlights in front of you, the cavern does seem to open up.
  
  Floodlights are set up around a neat ring filled with sand. Small folding benches encircle the fighting ring, and you can see a few other midgets down here.
  
  "Flap, this nameless man here is going to do whatever you want him to do," Raoul declares to a particularly fat midget. He smiles at you in a most unpleasant way.
  
  "First day on the job, Matchstick? I know what you get to do. Go up one level with Videk here and find these." He produces a black mushroom, its stem twisted up like a dead spider leg. "These are edible and right now, we need these to lie out of sight for a few days. Those AimFire idiots are probably going to drop some kind of explosive tomorrow, but it won't penetrate all the way down here. So we need all the food we can get. Deal? Deal."
  
  It doesn't look like you have much say. Videk shows up soon enough, sporting a scowl and a hand on his gun at all times. Doesn't look like he trusts you, and he probably shouldn't. You're always sent first ahead, and he keeps the gun drawn.
  
  "I'm not dealing with bullshit, he says. As soon as we go up this shaft, you're on the ground scraping for mushrooms. These bullets are real social and they'd just love to meet you." He sure likes to talk big, but you're wondering if he's the type to fall short on those words. His height already betrays him.
  
  Your arms reach outside the claustrophobically small tunnel, and you're back in the upper levels. You pull yourself up as quickly as possible. A thought passes.
  
  > play it safe
  You think nothing of it. Right now, you've got a ticket out of Raoul's wrath and the destruction of the surface if AimFire is as insane as they're supposed to be. This is really the best opportunity you have, and you don't feel like rolling the dice on whether you live or not is worth it right now.
  
  Viden follows up swiftly, and within an hour, you've combed a handful of disgusting, withered mushrooms.
  
  "Hey, not too shabby. Keep it up," he offers. You're watched, but nobody is shackling you in place so far. You count your blessings when you can. As soon as you realize there's a rotating watch, you give up any idea of leaving in the night. You go to sleep in a bare cubby in the wall. Luckily, the government didn't find anyone overnight. Flap draws everyone into a circle (except for Raoul, who apparently spends an hour each morning to manage his mustache.)
  
  "Okay, here's the deal," he says. "We're going to stay down here and do fuck-all until they hit us. They're going to, I know, because they don't really know where Raoul is. Frankly, we're really lucky that this cave depth is completely unpublished. You can be sure some future investigation is going to encroach on this, so at some point in the future, we're gonna have to move. But right now, plan is to stay low for the day. Got it?"
  
  Everyone nods (you along with them). It does make some sense. These aren't all senseless minions it seems. You wait in a mix of worry and anticipation, but not for long.
  
  Cccccrrrackkk! You hear the deep resonation of shells detonating somewhere aboveground. Some of them land on the cave, creating strong shockwaves you can feel in your feet. By all means, you'd expect the ceiling to collapse on you at any point, but it doesn't. Someone later explains that if the rock was more brittle, it wouldn't spread the impact as well and ironically, the ceiling would collapse without you feeling the vibration. So apparently, that was a good thing.
  
  You're held under threat of gunfire by a couple of the lackeys while the rest go about checking things. The report comes back in twenty minutes: all stable. The main vent up isn't blocked, though there are some ceiling collapses elsewhere in the upper level.
  
  After a day, the operations resume as normal. It looks like they film midgets fighting down in the ring, probably through some kind of encrypted hollowstream, and Raoul shares profits from a gambling table 50/50 with Flap. In fact, Flap turns out to be semi-likeable. Viden, too. Most of the actual fighters just ignore you too often to make acquaintance, but you're really starting to question if it matters much whether you live up there or down here. Flap sets you to a variety of tasks that aren't dangerous and frequently more interesting than the boring life you led as a farmer where bots did everything.
  
  This is the place where things are really happening. So what's next?
  
  > Don't try to change the order
  You're not wont to do anything too hasty. The last time you had one of a thought like this, you decided not to try and blow Viden's head off. Following the straightest path is definitely your kind of style.
  
  After about a year, everyone packs up and moves to a new location Raoul scoped out. The inexpensive furniture is just destroyed and disposed of; it's not worth the hassle. The new place is somewhere in a jungle reserve. The planet only has a few, so it's a little tricky to sneak in and set up, but Bonoli has no problem orchestrating it all. Flap died a year ago from some kind of super diabetes. So far, Bonoli's proving to be a competent prick. As soon as everything's set up, with most of the supplies squirreled away against the base of a nearby cliff, the operations resume.
  
  Bonoli's rulership is infuriating. He sends you on pointless missions just to keep you busy the full day, dismissing it as a slip of the mind. The little bitch even had you climb a tree "to scout" for his amusement.
  
  > fight for a better position
  If you had to deal with this for another year, you'd probably drown yourself. You find a nice evening to approach Raoul. He's been increasingly busy running another bingo scam, so you have to take your chances asking him in person to make the most of his brief visits.
  
  "Hey Raoul," you ask.
  
  He turns, facing away from the deep blue sunset. "Oh, hello Matchstick. This is a first. What is it?"
  
  You measure your words carefully. "I feel Bonoli isn't using all of my talents. What other positions do you have?"
  
  He looks at you for a second. "Well, that's a curious concern. Indeed, I haven't seen you doing anything useful of late whenever I've taken to observe. Perhaps it's Bonoli, perhaps it's you. I have the gambling side of things well handled. One thing we always need is a competent smuggler, just to get goods from outside in here without alerting the rangers. You could work with Beatrice on that. How does that sound?"
  
  You accept immediately, he returns to staring at the sunset, and you hope this work will be easy enough. It certainly won't be boring! You find a place to sleep.
  
  "Hey, newbie. Wake up," Beatrice says with a light kick. "This is how it goes. We're going to bike in and out food crates. We'll be cloaked. All you need to do is not crash around in the process, especially through the areas the rangers usually travel through. There's an area along the river that's flat and easy to follow. Just do what I do."
  
  You stand up and see she's making her way to a hovercycle with small gun barrels poking out of the front. You hop up on one yourself, and she adds you to the list of riders on a data pad. It whirs into life.
  
  "You won't be using those guns. That's the end of everything, including you if you do." Beatrice presses a few buttons, suddenly causing her bike to shimmer and fade away, starting from the front, until everything is gone. A jacket flies through the air at you.
  
  "Put that on," she instructs. "This cloaks you too." With everything set in place, you take off at the slowest crawl ever. It takes half an hour to even get out of the jungle area. The tiny, crackling whisper in your ear tells you periodically how close you are to the crates you need to lug back.
  
  You get to a road and begin drifting along the shoulder at a decent pace. It's only five minutes from here to the crates.
  
  HOOOONK! A massive, extended trailer truck is swerving out of the way of some dumpy little car...and headed for the shoulder. You slam the breaks, narrowly avoiding disaster. Something invisible makes a dent on the side of it. Shit. You slow down and get off to take a look. The scene looks like a shrapnel bomb, with little pieces scattered everywhere. The main chunk of hovercycle is coasting into a tree, far in the distance. Beatrice is nowhere to be seen. You whisper for her on the headset. No response comes back.
  
  > try to find Beatrice
  There's no reason you should abandon your partner to die on the first day. You get off the hovercycle, hoping the cloak will keep going. Half an hour later, you find her dead with a massive bruise where her face met the fern-tree. That's unfortunate.
  
  Not to mention the amount of time that was just wasted. As soon as you get back to the bike, a voice whispers in your ear that the crates had to be moved. Everyone's going to be eating oatmeal for a few days (except Raoul, of course). You get back to the bike, which takes another ten minutes just to find because the cloaking didn't wear off. Soon enough, you're back.
  
  Nobody looks happy, especially the squat figure with his arms crossed in front of you. "Where's the food," Bonoli asks.
  
  "I went looking for Beatrice after a truck slammed into the bike. She's dead. The crates were moved before I could get back there," you explain. This doesn't look good. He turns another shade of red.
  
  "Why you big dumb oaf! I'll have to do it myself now, ugh!" He stomps a few times, then suddenly goes to bite your ankles!
  
  You yell out in pain as teeth rip through a few veins. The others try to pry him off, but he's looking to finish the job. As soon as you're on the floor, he's completely lost restraint. He plays a game of angry surgeon with your organs, and you're already unconscious by the time he stabs through your heart.