text: [Themes: sci-fi, humor]
  
  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.
  
  > accept some losses and complete the crate run
  The food you're picking up is more important to the organization than wasting time confirming a dead body. You manage to reach the destination. It's a small, fenced area with two crates side-by-side, in the shade cast by the side of a storage shed. You can only lug one back with you at a time, but if you go fast through the jungle, you might be able to get the other.
  
  You get back early, managing to double your speed without drawing attention. Bonoli comes up to you with some clear confusion.
  
  "I've got one of the crates, and can go back for the other. There was trouble on the road leading to the crates. A truck slammed into Beatrice's hovercycle and sent her flying. She wasn't carrying the crate or anything from here, so I don't think they can link it back to this operation. The crash was a mess of splintered metal. She must be dead from that."
  
  Bonoli cycles through anger and sadness. "Damn it all. I believe you, too. I was close with her. Don't go for the oher crate anyway; it's too late to pick it up. If we don't shuffle these around, we'll start leaving a suspicious trail of arrivals and pickups. You'll make an extra trip out for that one later. I need a moment." With that, he shuffles away.
  
  by. You're pretty important to everything, now. Crate runs only happen once every few days, and on the downtime days, Bonoli sets you to a wide variety of tasks. He stopped finding little ways to pick on you, in fact, he became a tad apathetic since the incident. So it's no surprise after a while when he announces he wants to retire. He crowds everyone together to deliver the news one month ahead of time. Then he pulls you aside.
  
  "Hey Matchstick. You know I'm retiring. I want you to carry out my job when I'm gone. You would get paid money for it. Actual, real money that you can spend on whatever you want. I cut out a month before I leave to train you for it. What do you say?"
  
  Well, you haven't stuck around this long just to say no. The responsibility is a lot greater, but there's a retirement at the end of this road. You agree and shake hands. He announces you as his replacement, and to your surprise there isn't as much as a grunt against it, even from the fighters you know the least. Everyone has been satisfied with your help.
  
  Over the next month, Bonoli glosses over the jobs and all the moving parts to managing the fighting rings. You know almost everything already; it turns out he wasn't just putting you on random jobs the whole time. He even explains some of the gambling ring details, mainly keeping track of who's fighting who and all the tournament details.
  
  He bids everyone goodbye when the day comes. Apparently he's going to take a rocket to a place called Disneyplanet, where he'll be trying all the rides in a brand new "little people friendly" zone of the theme park. He babbles something about the era of the talls coming to an end, and everyone claps.
  
  . The entire camp had to be moved again as AimFire was hired a second time to take out Raoul's midget fighting rings; this time to a different planet. It's unreasonably hot on the surface of Vant, but you are getting much better bids now that you're kidnapping midgets off-world and bringing them here to fight. These fights always reign in a much higher amount of coin. All of the old fighters you knew when you first found Raoul are either dead or injured to the point of forced retirement. It's a lonely life on Vant, but you do a good job.
  
  Years and years pass by, and even though it was clearly coming, nobody was ready for Raoul's overnight retirement. He just disappeared one day, with no more than a message about working on his mustache for a galactic competition.
  
  You start to wonder about training someone else into the organization and retiring. You probably have enough money, and the organization isn't going to last long without someone managing the clients, which sounds like a hassle.
  
  > train and retire
  You check the anonymous accounts. Six digits glint back at you, all in the galactic main currency. Telly is doing a pretty good job. You start to teach her up over the next three months. It's a long and slow process, but eventually the time comes to say goodbye. There's a few sad faces in the crowd; you've become a bit like family to them.
  
  You get off Vant as soon as you can, but where to? Coaldasfuk looks pretty inviting this time of year. You've forgotten what ice is like; it's time to get reacquainted. From there, who knows. You've got your out and nobody stops you.