Tayo Cruise walked down his street; he'd been down to the greengrocer and had his meals with him. Breads. Cheeses. No meats. A pear. Not much, but enough to keep him going another week. The guards he passed stared at him. They knew him, and they had marked him.

On the way home, he was stopped, then searched, and the guards took his groceries.

After making another trip from the greengrocer and back, he finally returned to his workshop. It was a small thing in the streets of Threed, but it was all he had. Truth-be-told, it wasn't even his. It was registered in the name of his brother Sam, and paid for by his Adams, a Brewer and an Industrialist that lived in Castrisya. Perhaps that was why he had returned to his home to find it upended twice a week.

At first, he was bothered by it, but now he had simply left a map of his home-turned-shop-turned-lab. He'd hoped that the guards would at least abide by it.

Unfortunately though, last week a thief used it to steal from him.

He wouldn't be surprised if Duke Tomas pinned a medal on that thief's chest. Stealing from a Castrisyan Conspirator and Traitor!

He looked over at his worktable, to that experiment.

Shit. The guards, of course, upended that too in their search of Cruise's workshop.

His supply of Igneus? Gone.

His Dragonpowder? Taken.

That Nitroglycerin? Confiscated.

A jar of ammonium nitrate? Broken.

The Guards had certainly been thorough. He'd been trying to make a good fertilizer. That would be his big break, fertilizer. Nitroglycerin, as everyone knew, was good for the heart and had been used for the better part of 100 years to treat Duke Tomas Braid's forefathers. Ammonium nitrate was well known as a fertilizer. Igneus made a great burner. The Dragonpowder... well, he could see why Guards too that. But in Tayo's defence, he was studying that to see how to keep the damn thing from exploding.

He couldn't keep it stable. He'd mixed in every stabliser that he knew of. Antacids, blood of leeches, a plethora of salts. All in the standard ratios! Tayo never left home without his pocket copy of Hartmann's Chemical Compendium.

Now, though. Well, the clay in the jar had mixed with the ammonium, and that had mixed with the sawdust. Perhaps that would have to do. Tayo sighed as he resigned to procure another source of Nitroglycerin. He was tired of pretending to have a heart conditions.

One Month Later

Shit. The flower died.

At the very least, he'd managed to make a mixture that didn't explode on formation, and managed to disguise his experiment so that the guards would leave it alone on the biweekly searches. But the plant died.

Perhaps he should've mixed in more guano?

He sighed once more, and resigned himself to trying again. He did what he always did with his failed mixtures (that didn't instantly explode). They were a biohazard, as they had shown, and one couldn't leave biohazards lying around or dump them in the streets. The Guards would surely arrest him for that. So all biohazardous waste was to be burnt.

Tayo Cruise looked down at his failed fertiliser, and looked at the brazier. Without a second thought, he dumped the powder in.

He immediately regretted everything.

[M]: Fourside invents dynamite, and the Inventor (though doesn't die) regrets everything. I keep wondering why my characters are never happy people.