"Viller, my city..."
Early that morning, Lorne got off the train and stretched.
"The train isn't much faster than I am on foot..."
To test his stamina, he had chosen not to take any transportation after leaving the wilderness. Instead, he had run for some distance under cover of night. Only when he was a few stops away from Viller had he bought a ticket and boarded a train to avoid attracting attention.
"Too bad my endurance still falls a little short of a train's. I can't run all night..."
Once I'm strong enough, I have to get myself a private train to play with. No, make that an armored train... heh heh... Lorne amused himself with the thought.
When he walked out of the station, quite a few early risers were already out on the streets.
"Extra! Extra!"
"Counterfeit banknote crisis erupts in Backlund! Major banks hit hard!"
"Sir, buy a paper! The latest breaking news! A counterfeiting case that's shocked the whole city!"
A young paperboy stood on the steps outside the station, waving a stack of newspapers that smelled of printing ink and loudly hawking them.
"Backlund..."
Lorne stopped at the words. He approached the paperboy, handed him a copper penny, and bought the latest issue of the Viller Morning News. Then he read it as he walked toward his hotel.
"Counterfeit banknote crisis... counterfeit notes of various denominations with serial numbers beginning with 171 are circulating on a massive scale... someone actually dared to counterfeit money in Backlund..." Lorne found the headline rather novel.
"People are already counterfeiting banknotes in this era? No, that's not right. Counterfeit money has existed in every era..."
"It's just..."
As far as Lorne remembered, Loen had never really had any particularly famous counterfeiting cases. At least, Backlund never had...
There