This is why you Pay Up (Graded)

[Abra]

1 Saun 719

There always came the rare occasion that people didn’t pay up on their loans. For the most part, customers were happy to hold up on their end of the bargain. A short term loan to cover groceries until their payday had a near one hundred percent repay rate. In recent history payments had stopped being so consistent.

Abra looked at the many notes he had taken on these types of loans as he let out a massive yawn. He was working on figuring out exactly what the percentage of people that took out these loans actually paid back and furthermore he wanted to know how much money he was making off of them, on average.

“If I loan out ten nel and ask for eleven nel in return, then I made ten percent profit over just a small number of trials.” He flipped through the hundred or so records he had picked out at random. “About eighty percent of them pay me back on time. So that means I make eighty nel out of a hundred customers. But about twenty percent are late and don’t pay at all.”

Abra neatly drew out the numbers on a piece of blank paper to show that if twenty percent of people never paid him back at all then he would be losing two hundred nel while only making eighty nel. That meant that out of those twenty percent that had trouble paying, he needed to not only collect one hundred twenty nel, but he also needed to collect more than that from them in order to actually turn a profit. He did a little more math and showed that each of those twenty percent needed to pay at least six nel for him to break even. Per the typical loan agreement, they would all owe him much more than that but he couldn’t always collect it.

The purpose of this round of math was to figure out the bare minimum he was going to accept from one customer in particular. She had been so late that if she honored the interest agreement she would owe a dozen nel in just fees. Now he had figured out that he would have to go find a way to get six nel out of her and work out a means to settle the debt. Before he left the house he pocketed the loan agreement and brought a number of throwing daggers. He had feeling he might need them with this rascal.

“Dannie, I’ve come to discuss your loan.” Abra knocked rapidly on her sorry excuse for a home. Much to the annoyance of the people around, Abra kept knocking for bits on end. It might have annoyed them but his rupturing spark made it so he was complacent with the repetitive motions. It got to a point where someone got annoyed enough to push Abra aside and open the door by force. Abra smiled and said, “thank you,” as politely as he could. “Dannie, are you in here?”

He walked inside and saw that the home was in even worse shape than the last time he had made this trip. There were almost no possessions left, not even a place to sleep. The only thing he could see of value was some grain and potatoes that looked stale. In the corner, curled up into a ball was Dannie. Dannie was a woman in her early twenties who had some of the worst luck in life. Her parents had left her nothing and she had no skills worth mentioning.

She had attempted to get training to become beautician which was what Abra’s seed money had gone to. He thought it was a worthy investment because if she had anything to her credit it was how beautiful she made herself appear with the little that she had. Even as she laid there hopeless and sweaty, she still gave off an aura of beauty that instilled pity into Abra’s heart. But he was not a good man and he wasn’t here to take it easy on her. She owed him money and he was willing to do whatever it took to get her to pay up. He had worked out that she owed him at least six nel before he would give up on her. She had nothing in the ways of possessions, as far as he could tell, so they would have to make other arrangements.

Dannie remained silent while Abra strolled to her side and took a seat. He put a hand on her shoulder and started to talk and use empathy at the same time. He felt his ether creep into her emotional matrix and he was able to start picking apart her emotions to find out what was wrong. The most prominent emotion was sadness followed closely by fear. Knotting those emotions came first if he was ever going to get this one to talk.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing Dannie. Tell me what’s bothering you and we can work this out. Let’s put you to work and earn some money. How’s that sound?” His words were caring and made her think of getting her life back together. Her sadness slowly faded while Abra knotted the emotions using a great deal of ether to completely negate the emotion. With each sadness strand he suppressed, another one wanted to spring up. Knotting this much of a powerful emotion was much more taxing than what he’d done in the past.

Abra continued talking to Dannie and let the bond grow stronger. “Let go of all your doubts. You’re a young woman and there is a whole life ahead of you. You’re in a bad spot now, but that means it can’t possibly get worse. I see a bright future for you. A future with a family and a real home. Come, up up up.” He found it easy to lift her to a sitting position now that she was in a better mood. He kept a close eye on the emotions within her and saw the pulsating knotted sadness finally starting to die down. He had restrained the sadness enough to where it was going away on its own.

They sat in silence with Dannie resting her head on his shoulder while he rubbed her arm in a comforting way. She was still speechless and Abra had nothing else to say. He was taken aback by how exhausted he was feeling from what’d he’d just done. He could feel Dannie continue to think of sad thoughts and the emotions started to flare up again. Knotting had a way of making sure the emotion didn’t come back but it only worked for a single source of the emotion. For someone like Dannie, there were so many different things to be sad about that keeping the emotion away from her was taxing to say the least.

The strands of emotions were knotted as fast as Abra could manage but the emotions were starting to overwhelm him. The resurgence of the sadness came quickly and he was soon up against sadness and fear many times the amount he’d seen when he’d first arrived. It drove him to frustration and he involuntarily pushed Danni away from him so that she willingly fell onto the ground again. For the first time in his life of an empath Abra had encountered an emotional matrix that he couldn’t deal with.

Abra’s head was pained with his own set of emotions now. As an empath he was more aware of his emotions making him realize how angry the woman had made him by making him fail. He had failed doubly to make his money back and to get the girl to cheer up and work out a deal. His headache pounded his head and only fueled the anger.

Abra let a small cackle escape his throat and let it grow in volume. “Fine. Wallow in your own sadness. Whether you’re happy or not, you’re going to get my money back.” He looked at Dannie with malice and put his foot onto her stomach. He shut his mouth and his lips formed a thin but very defined smile. Instead of suppressing the negative emotions, he strummed them. This was the act of increasing the intensity of an emotion which very quickly brought whimpers and tears from the overdue customer. Abra kept strumming sadness and fear and watched with pleasure.

Dannie twitched and her heart raced. Snot and tears ran down the side of her face and she bit her lip. She couldn’t understand what was happening to her. At first she was feeling calm and now that her debitor was taunting her, she felt even worse. She had a history of keeping herself from the brink of breaking down but now she couldn’t hold on anymore. She burst out into tears and cried like a little baby. Abra had strummed her emotions so powerfully that he even felt insane for doing this to her. He recognized that he should stop and did. She was broken now and would do what he wanted.

Abra helped her up to her feet and led her out of the home. She was going to earn some money tonight. Abra was going to make sure of it. Abra had given Dannie a chance to pay up with an honest job and it’d come to this. He knew just the sleazeball and he didn’t live far away. Abra didn’t ask questions, but he knew the kinds of things Dannie would be made to do wouldn’t be very pleasant. He was happy to get paid for trading his customer’s debt for a chunk of change. This was the nature of the loan shark business.

[Strange]

Thread Review

Abra

Abra

Skill Points: +10 (can be used for magic)
Magic XP: Yes (Empathy)

Renown: +5 (incessant knocking on a front door)

Injuries/Overstepping: Headache for 5 trials, a mild case of mania that expresses itself in bursts of evil cackling for 3 trials, and a short stint of depression for 1-2 trials.
Wealth Points: Handled by Seasonal Wealth Thread.
Loot: None.

Skill Knowledge:

• Mathematics: Ratios
• Mathematics: To estimate ten percent, simply put a decimal after the rightmost number
• Business Management: Calculating a break even point
• Business Management: Figuring out a profit margin
• Empathy: Stronger emotions are more difficult to deal with
• Empathy: A stronger bond makes empathy more effective

Non-Skill Knowledge:

• none requested.

Notes: Remember that there are different types of nel: copper, silver, gold, and onyx.

What a rollercoaster, which seems suitable for an empath mage. At first, Abra seemed as if he was interested in helping her out. His reaction to failing in his magic made for an interesting twist as his motivation became more pure and he followed it despite the ugly nature of it. A fine way to twist toward villainous behavior... like cackling manically, that'll do it..

Good job and enjoy your rewards!

PM me if you have any questions, issues or concerns.

Total Word Count: 1658 words.

Review Request Link: viewtopic.php?p=126989#p126989
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