Precedes Rome wasn't burnt in a day.

Given how many businesses were hiring in Destiny City, Eles was always astonished by how few would accept applications from an individual with no legal address or ID. Some even wanted background checks! Or drug tests! He'd even seen places advertising that required college degrees and fingerprinting! Eles thought it absurd. How did they ever expect to fill that position?

Thus, for a time, Eles's interest in finding a job cooled to lukewarm — even passive at times. There was no great rush on making his own money since Malory sent for another bank card, but his intention to acquire one never fully vanished.

He could pay for whatever he possibly wanted, sure. Eles had no great appetite for spending, perhaps contrary to Malory's habits. But as he experienced more of the world beyond Malory's forays into the magical after-hours, Eles found himself developing a distinct distaste for money as a concept. The city seemed to run on it. Its hooks had sunk deeply, too; most interactions he had felt, in some way, transactional. Even the ones where he wasn't asked to pay for something that he should have bought.

Particularly those ones.

Nevertheless, Eles wanted his own money. His money. Money for purchases that wouldn't show up on Malory's bank statements, where no single transaction would ever come as a surprise. Sometimes, that was no fun. And sometimes, people didn't accept plastic. They wanted cool, crisp, untraceable and untrackable cash.

That night, money wasn't on his mind. Malory had gone out again and Eles passed on the invitation; he'd heard tell of a festival kicking off in the city and was, at least initially, quite curious about what that entailed.

To his chagrin, it entailed an unconscionable amount of people milling about in a space that felt too small for the amount of interest in it. Pop-up shops and vendors lined up everywhere, hocking drinks and snacks and useless garbage trinkets that he kept spotting on people's backpacks and cell phones. Commemorative collectibles complete with manufactured scarcity, plastered with cautions of "while supplies last" or "only 100 in existence". The Star Festival streets were an utter buffet of smells, too, and not all of them good — while he liked the scents of seasoned meats, fried octopus balls, mustard greens and the like, he could have done without the mediocre colognes or flagrant body odors. Overall, though? He didn't regret taking a peek.

Without making a purchase, Eles had left behind the joy and festivities of DC's latest event for more familiar pastures. Sometimes Malory's nihilist wasteland pool parties occurred not far from derelict and dive bars, where the alcohol came cheap and some of the upper-crust edgelord teens showed up for the ambience and ambivalence about carding anyone. Eles rather liked those spaces, though not because they seemed grungy or dangerous or assigned some quality to his character by virtue of him being there.

He liked them because they were honest about what they were. Sure, the paint was peeling off the windowsills in one bar, the sign hung from a single rusty hook on another, a third always played its music loud enough to compete with the ******** that blasted their bass when driving by. They never pretended to be more than they were.

Eles passed a few of them on his nightly walk: Sonny's Tavern, Roadkill Bar and Grill, Martinez Bros. Most sat largely empty with only a few urchins growing into the bar stools. Locals and regulars that snubbed the idea of change or sobriety. What stood out to Eles, however, was one building that actually had a line out the front doors.

A neon sign above the cloth canopy said Starlight, and next to it was either an extremely stylized R or some image of which Eles couldn't make sense. The name gave no hint of its intended offerings. But, as he wandered closer, as he heard and felt the bass beat that made his skin sing, he supposed it must have been a bar.

Oh, but it was more than a bar. Walking past the line and to the front may have earned him rightful jeers and scathing comments, but the view through the door was much more insightful than the opaque windows on the outside of the building. Some topless woman was dancing around an elevated platform, wearing some kind of animal-themed ensemble? Clearly several men and women found it attractive, but it wasn't to Eles's taste. He rather liked the music, though.

A gruff-looking older woman and her sheepish sidekick with the darkest circles Eion had ever seen in his life had noticed his abject gawking, however. The woman — stocky but dressed sharply in a light suit, with her hair buzzed to a soft fluff — hailed him first. "Line starts back there," she said, pointing. She sounded like she would have been annoyed with him had she retained any ******** over the past ten years.

In response, Eles pointed at a sign they had posted just inside the entrance. HELP WANTED: NEED SERVER. START IMMEDIATELY.

"Oh," the youth with buttholes for eyes spoke up. "Yeah. About that. We just had a server quit on us toni—"

With a soft clap, the woman covered the youth's mouth with a callused hand. "Can you count cash and serve drinks without spillin' 'em or samplin' 'em?"

Eles nodded.

"Pay's two-thirteen an hour and you keep all yer tips. No harrassin' the girls or the boys. And for the love of God, if I catch you snortin' coke in the bathroom, I'll have Big Jake beat ya to death with yer own legs. None o' that's negotiable. Clear?"

Eles nodded again.

"Great, get yer scrawny a** inside and tell 'em Jean sent ya."

Thus began Eles's very first shift.