Tea and Anxiety

"Alright, I can do that," you shrug. “Just thought you might be inpurrested to know. But, um, I wouldn’t bring it up if that was all it was. It is sort of gang business, after all, and I think I handled it alright. But, um, it was led by, allegedly, Diamonds Droog. And, in case you didn’t know already, he’s been dead for a while now.” You pull a face and shrug again. Just reporting the facts here. “Also, he- Droog, that is- offurred me a job as well, as a consultant of sorts fur specific raids or whatefur. As well as offuring training, which is always helpful, and some kind of payment for the help, including food, lodging, or just plain old cash. I’m suppurrsed to meet him tomorrow morning to give him my anspurr.”

You make a little purring sound in the back of your throat when he tells you not to think of yourself as dead weight. You didn’t exactly mean it in a bad or self-deprecating sort of way, but it’s nice to hear him say, first hand, that he thinks you’re worth something. “Alright. Well, um, how should I say this?” You squinch your face up contemplatively for a second or two before regretfully stepping out from under his arm again so that you’re standing face to face- or, well, would be, if he weren’t so gosh danged tall and you weren’t so gosh danged short. “I was living off the street for a while befur you happened to come across me that day. And, well, I’m still here, so you know I have to be able to defend myself, right? As it happened, I do that rather well- defending myself, I mean. And soon some of the younger street kids found out and started coming to me for help and protection. I couldn’t just let them starve, so I set up a system where we all begged and occasionally stole food, and then split it all up so that efurrybody got to eat. Soon enough, word got out, and I found myself an unofficial gang leader.” You shift back and forth uneasily on your toes, unsure about how he’ll react to that. "We nefur stole anything but food- or at least, I didn’t, and I tried to discourage it amousengst the rest. But little by little, our territory grew as word got out more and more and more people joined. So we’re technically one of the biggest, if the most noncriminal, gangs here in the City. Anyway, where I’m going with this is, one of the electronic stores in our territory was robbed. Apparently, it was under orders from the Midnight Crew."