[i]Unwashed bodies. Toxins. Animal fat. Toxins. Sewage. Toxins.[/i]

How do these people [i]live[/i] on this planet? No, scratch that: how do they live on this planet without [i]toxin filters[/i] in their respiratory systems?

The air is choked with the chemical byproducts of the reactions they use to power their machines, the reactions that their factories use to make crude polymers as basic as the materials she could make in kindergarten, and the reactions that they put very directly into their own lungs. And that man had been [i]offended[/i] that she slapped the stick of burning tar out of his hand!

They don’t have anything between them and this world that they have made for themselves. No wonder their lifespans are barely one century long. The moment they’re born, they start the process of poisoning themselves. This would be an unpleasant enough world to live on as a Ceronian, but the Portuguese…

Ah. This is what Cash Money saw, isn’t it?

She shadows Mosiac, as if trying to throw her body between this world and someone who should remain unblemished by it. The large sack for the Lantern is heavy in one hand, gripped death-tight by the shoulder straps, and the Shield strapped to her arm is covered in a canvas sheet to disguise it as an example of Portuguese artwork.

The pack moves with her, badly suppressing the urge to whine, to flinch, to growl. Tension and Unease are draped about them, stringent underneath the toxin air. This world is worse than walking through the Underworld, because at least then, you’re dead. How can the Star Kings stand to be here? Advanced filtration?

And more importantly, how can they witness this without joining with Cash Money to try and save as many of the Portuguese from the slow death of poison, of rot in the lungs, of creeping cancers? How can they not give these creatures ships— no, not ships, not yet. Not when they’d just spread this way of life. They would need engines along with the ships, and medical intervention, and maps. Maps to places untouched by toxins, places where they could run with fresh lungs and jump over rivers and learn what [i]living[/i] is. Because being crowded into one overstuffed and dying world…

That can’t be living.