The Kattelox Times

February 5595

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MAYOR COMES CLEAN IN COURT
This week in court, Mayor Ameila admitted to involvement with the 'Refractor Cartel', and City Hall has published a statement detailing her 40 years history of involvement with Loathe Inc after being named by the tesimony of a Diggers' Guild worker mid-November. We've been granted permission to print a condensed version prepared by our editors, so you can read for yourself her perspective on these issues and what could very well become a made-for-TV movie sometime in the next few years. For the full version of the document, visit City Hall, or call KL5-GOVT.

Well, to be honest, it started back in 5546, when I was 21...I was attending Gold City University, and was in my 3rd year...I was having financial problems and couldn't afford the tuition...I didn't qualify for a student loan, and my job as Professor Barrell Caskett's teaching assistant wasn't paying the bills... It was the 1st week of classes, and a dormmate gave me the opportunity to talk to what she called was a 'businessman' who invested in people needing to pay for their education...that businessman introduced himself as Lex Loath, and loaned me all of the money I needed with the condition that I'd pay it off working for his company after I was out of school. I agreed, because, at the time, it sounded like a great deal - get funding for schooling and a guaranteed position in a corporation when I'm done?

That year, I started seeing Barrell outside of classes, and a relationship grew...we had a baby boy late 5547, around when our relationship became known to the school administration and fired Barrell for having a student-teacher relationship...and since I didn't have a job anymore, I had to borrow even more money from Loath Inc. to pay for my 4th year...

Jump ahead to 5549, a year after I graduated and Barrell and I had married...Barrell had started getting into independent archaelogical studies, occasionally going into ruins with professional diggers to study hands on. It was about this time that a collector from Loath Inc. had shown up demanding he be repaid in full - plus the 200% usery I apparently agreed to - or to come with him to work for Loath Inc. to repay my debt. Since neither of us had that sort of money, I agreed to work for Loath. Barrell was furious when he found out that I had dealings with a man who had turned digging into a for-profit industry, and a few months later, we ended up getting a divorce... I felt that I didn't want our little Banner to be punished for my mistakes, so Barrel agreed to raise him...

I spent 5 years working at one of Loath's banking centres when Loath decided that, since I had a degree in law, I should get into politics to help them with the Katteloxian government which had started to give them problems. Throughout the next 15 years I held various positions in city hall, doing minor things to help Loath Inc. get ahead...in 5570 I ran for Mayor and got in because Loath helped fix the count. Since then I've been paying them a large portion of tax dollars, as well as changing various laws to make what they do more legal...

12 years later in 5583, I had found out that Loath Inc had been busted for various criminal charges, so I cut off all connections with them, and tried to run a clean government...with the added money, we used it on a city beautification project...the next year, there was the famous pirate attack of 5584, which destroyed most of the town and exhausted our budget...and I knew if I didn't go back to Loath, the city would've stayed in a financial crisis, and I would've been elected out, left with nothing...

So now for the last 10 years, it's just been one stupid mistake after another...borrowing money for a proper airport, the highway, building Loath's casino on the edge of the island...

I don't care what happens to me anymore. I'm disgusted with myself that I did all those things...but if it changes anything, I really want to see Loath and his company shut down for good.

It seems like a bit of a stretch, but if what she says is true, she would have all the evidence to lock Loath and his associates away for the rest of their lives.

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