Their journey started out as any other would. Roan was ushered out of the village by a mob of villagers, none of them wanted to see Roan leave them. He was someone that the whole village loved, someone they could rely on, someone that was beyond trustworthy. Plus, with Roan gone, the general taste of the whole village would take a nosedive, so everybody readied their taste buds for the horrors to come. With all these reasons, it would have been impossible for Roan to have gone, that is, if the village head Yusha didn't get involved. If there were ever a man that could get the people of the land to all run away leaving their most treasured belongings and the place of birth behind, it was the Yusha clan. Their clan was straight-down sinister. You would think that every family would have at least one black sheep, but not with the Yusha. Every single descendant of that clan has proven him or herself within the range of human possibility to be more capable of handling that village than everyone else, and when such a story is passed down through generations, a sort of reverence is shot into the brains of the villagers, If the Yusha clan think it should be done, it's probably for the best. Although there have been criminals, murders, the occasional lack of food and the usual civil unrest, life there is usually the best in all the land, a sort of paradise if you will. But that's enough for the Yusha for now. Back to the main Roan endeavor.
They left the village in peace and the rest is as is to be expected. Roan made a lot of mistakes as he had never left his village for an extended period of time, even though he wasn't a novice to travelling. After about three days of journey, they came to the gentle village of Dergo. It was quaint little place, for while it had never been the center for a specific trade, it was an amalgam of what other trade specific villages had. It was kind of when water flows and accumulates sand and other debris in a place. That place wasn't where the trade center was, but it was a place that a lot of them passed. For that reason, you find almost anything there. Bits of just about everything was there. It was a little crowded, but it was properly handled in and of itself. That is of course before the current situation of the country. The place was now rampant with thieves and crooks, people extorting people, oppression everywhere and it was really surprising, why, because you wouldn't be able to tell that anything was wrong. Roan, Ayesha and Grey got to the village through a side route. Roan looked out to see another village, unconsciously and out of nostalgia, he was comparing things with his home village. There wasn't that much difference. The houses were bigger to take more people in per unit land. The roads wound and wound, it seemed that every junction linked one road to 3 other roads, everyone was busy with something, but unlike his home, most people were working primarily for him or herself. Take it like this, in his village, they were working to sustain each other, like making food, clothes, blacksmith. Apart from food, they didn't much of anything else for export. They were contented. But Dergo was like Lagos, it thrived on import and export. The main thing that Roan couldn't get was why everyone seemed to be tense. No one even bothered looking at him, stranger or not. They just went about what they were doing without a care about anything else in the world.
Roan asked Grey, who he felt would know just about anything, like a miniature Yusha. "Mr. Grey, why is everyone so cold. I get the feeling that they would slap me if I tried to introduce myself". "This is one of the few places in the country that isn't a trade town, but is as busy as one. This and the collapse of the old ruler has ushered in a time of, hardship to the people here". Roan couldn't begin to imagine what people here were going through, but he felt that he had to do something about it. Thankfully, that's he was going to do with Ayesha and Grey. Right then, Roan just noticed that Ayesha had been keeping her head down with an old shawl over her face since they got in. It's probably because of the people here that's she's cooping herself up. Are the people here that bad. He saw people with sturdy faces, they wouldn't pay much attention to anything except where they were going and anything that blocked it. They all wore thick frowns that contoured all of their faces, the children with raggy clothes and making sympathetic eyes to the onlookers. The buildings made of cement and tar rose high into the skies so as to allow more people to live on the same piece of land. One of the children came up close to the caravan and looked at Roan with the most adorable eyes a young child suffering from malnutrition and obvious emotional turmoil could muster. But of course, Roan would rather fall flat on his face than leave that smile unreturned. "Please sir, is there anything you could give me", "Sorry, I don't have any food on me, but I have money". Immediately the child's eyes widened and he asked still with the same sympathetic face on, "How much could you give, please, my mother and I haven't eaten in 4 days", "I don't know but let me check", he checked the back of the caravan and saw a bag of rokos and gave it to the child. As soon as the pouch touched his hand he sped off. At the same time, other children dropped what they were doing as if waiting for that moment as well. They ran after with all the strength their legs could muster, they chased him up till the point Roan couldn't see them, as he was oblivious to the workings of the poor. "Wow, is that a new kind of game they're playing these days", Roan asked curiously, and Mr. Grey let out a sigh. It was well within the scope of his imagination that something of the sort would happen, and so he replied, "I thought something like this would happen. So I switched the bag of rokos that Mr. Yusha gave us with other pouches that had real Rokos and fake Rokos", "Wait what's the difference between real and fake rokos", princess Ayesha shot a bewildered look at this surprise, then almost immediately, she realized she was talking to the equivalent of a country bumpkin. "I can understand if the roko you are used to is the real one, as there is no reason to counterfeit them in your land. Real rokos are made from the evangali tree next to the center of the kingdom. It is a tree that has remarkable regenerative abilities and so provides a steady supply of Evan cork, the raw material for roko. When refined, it gives us the roko we have today", "Doesn't that mean that anyone can just carve one out of wood", Roan said asking a pretty obvious question, and Grey replied as thus, "Yes, that is possible, but there's another feature of the evangeli tree that I did not mention. It's bark, once refined, is special. When one holds real rokos, imbueing even the slightest of haki into it, the wood sends back a characteristic ting back. Many have tried to recreate the exact same feeling, but all to no avail. Only the evangeli tree possesses the bark that acts in this way, and it is the only one in the world. With its unique property and durable wood, it's become the currency of the kingdom. So using that anology, the fake rokos in that pouch are ones that I make in my leisurely time using random bark from various trees". Roan didn't really see the need to understand all that, but nonetheless having heard it wanted to ask the main question in his mind, "Why were the other children chasing him though", "Is it not obvious, survival of the fittest. If the other children catch him, they would beat him up and proceed to fight amongst themselves for the money, and the last on standing gets the money. He gets the money, goes home and uses it to buy good food, gets stronger while the others get skinnier and weaker. The stronger one wins again and again until if by chance, he realizes that he can't stand alone, if all the others come together ad revolt against him, wouldn't it be easy to defeat him, so he'll start sharing little bits to the ones he deems worthy and wins them to his side. Eventually, it's no longer survival of the fittest, It's the strongest one leading the strong to oppress the weak. This vicious cycle is what produces many of the common gangs around. The gang ruling one area leaves and gives another group of oppressors opportunity to sprout". The cold realization of the fact that that process could be happening as they spoke made Roan want to get down and stop it. He couldn't seem to grasp the fact that some places in the world weren't worth writing home about. He didn't want to believe that so many people would know that something this bad was happening and would do absolutely nothing about it. Then like a solid wall, Grey's voice bellowed a resounding "Stop". "Why would ask me to wait when you know you could easily stop this". Mr. Grey didn't even bother looking at him as he began to advice him, "Whatever you do to them won't last, you stop one scuffle and they begin to fear you. You don't stop it from happening again, you just stop it from happening when you're around. When you leave what do you think will happen". Roan couldn't say anything but stare in stupefied awe as to what just dawned on him. Still, he couldn't give up, he sat and thought thoroughly on what just happened and also came to the sound conclusion that breaking up that fight would not bring about much change, although of course, he had his set of ideas in his head.
Night came and Roan, Grey and Ayesha had settled down in a far edge of town that wouldn't attract anybody of questionable character, it was just right for a group of potentially loaded visitors to stay the night while staying up all night to protect themselves. At around 8:30pm, It's Mr. Grey's turn to keep watch. Roan asks for a toilet break and goes off to do his business. He waves and issues one of his custom-made smiles simply shooting off warm feelings. As he turns around a building and Grey and Ayesha are out of eyesight, his expression suddenly comes down and is now the one of "Time to get to business" faces. He had put a bunch of roko in his pocket so he could give it to the child he saw and advice and maybe even take him along on their journey. He wanted more than anything to free other children from a similar fate, but he couldn't do it all at once and so wanted to start from just one of them. He could get to the root of the matter and could try and solve it. He looked around the town for about an hour until he found a lanky malnourished and rather scruffy looking figure. His whole appearance had just seemed to be bursting with the essence of a pauper. He couldn't even afford a blade to cut his hair or nails. Seeing it more intently now, Roan hadn't noticed all these little features about him, but there was one that wasn't reason for concern. Clutched in his right and was a pouch which seemed like it had been through hell and back several times over, it was the pouch that had the money that Roan had given to him. Roan couldn't help himself as a smile broadened on his face. He was glad that the little boy didn't give in to the procedures of a cruel hierarchy. Just as Roan wanted to approach and talk, the boy slipped into an alleyway which of course didn't affect Roan with his amazing eyesight. He trailed him for a while until the boy came to an opening with three men. The one on the left was slender, tall, arching his back the same way a sinister proud anime villain would, his hands were his pockets and a ferocious smile on his face. The one on the right was a rather burly, stronger looking, still pocketing, and with a more rigid expression on his face. The one in the middle was like a solemn figure, with a wide shadow cast over himself. He had a radae in his mouth, he was sitting on a chair in between the two other guys and seemed to be debriefing them about something. The two guys on either side took a look to their side and there laid the boy, bent on the ground like a servant offering a sacrifice to his God. "You two take care of this for me". The one in the middle walked off to do things that he obviously considered as better use of his time. And so walked off, finally exposing his face to the light coming from behind him. He was tall, with flowing linen clothes that bared strange similarity to a suit and walked off to handle other things