“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!” (ch. 135)
it's always really interesting to think about all the color fixers when they were just low-grade rats. especially because all of them (that we know of) were backstreets residents (or worse) who just did shit to survive.
like, young kali before she had her inhuman strength or had ever met carmen, struggling to survive but still showing kindness to others. and that terrible night where her own neighbors took advantage of that.
a young vergilius who didn't have his own strength or prowess to rely on yet. maybe taking any job that came his way just to eat. maybe being worried he wouldn't come home.
a low-grade iori, maybe just caring for her son, having to kill people who may well have also been mothers and fathers to her own children.
grade 9 argalia and angelica, with no background to rely on except each other, wondering where they'd get their next meal.
and roland and xiao and yujin and olivier and all the other non-colors who certainly went through the same shit.
like, something that still sticks with me through early ruina and now limbus company is how incredibly desperate things are at the bottom. canto v showing how ishmael and her crew would be willing to do ANYTHING, and having tight bonds with one another (much like we see in low-grade offices like streeglight office in ruina, with mars and lulu for example) DESPITE the fact that, at every turn, every project moon game will tell you "dont get attached" "dont get attached" "dont get attached."
all these untouchable, above-it-all fixers are still human and still went through all of that. thinking about how the stone-cold vergilius may have cried over his comrades, how the unbeatable kali probably lost many fights, how the intangible argalia and angelica may have cannibalized other outskirts residents just to live another day.
it adds another layer to them yknow. how much of that humanity do they still have? how much did they give up to get to the top?