As he walked the streets, a petty thief, dressed in rags, he wondered how it had all come to this. A plane flew overhead and the noise was like a dagger through his heart.

Hugo had always loved flying. He was fortunate enough to have been exposed to it as a young boy due to the extravagant wealth of his parents. His father was the beneficiary of an infamous Mastrosimone Mutual Fund payout and had made millions. A few sound investments later including into a particularly robust vineyard which produced an almost stereotypical high quality produce, and bingo, the Legionella family were set for generations to come. Despite losing his father, (the family had been befouled with health concerns but that was a story for another day), Hugo had inherited the family assets, which meant only one thing; time to learn to fly.

He had progressed quickly through his own improvised flight school where he brought instructors to his estate and paid them handsomely. His modest runway and hangar had been constructed in fallow land to the northwest of the grounds and he had freedom to practice his craft. Lesson after lesson and he devoured it with an enthusiasm he had felt for nothing in his life before or since. 

Originally, Hugo had intended to enter into the family business but he soon realised that life wasn't for him. His dream was to conquer the skies and visit the corners of the earth. To the surprise of many, he sold up his entire portfolio, accepting discounted offers for the Legionella interests and liquidised the lot. The conclusion? Hugo became a VERY wealthy man. Cash rich, asset poor, just the way he liked it. Without a background glance he had travelled to America to live his dream as an airline pilot and that was where it had eventually all gone wrong.

TheAirlinePilot, as he was now known around town, plonked himself down on the sidewalk in The Strip. He saw a half-finished cigarette butt in a puddle and thought about picking it up and smoking it. No. No, he thought. It hasn't come to that...yet. 

Hertha was a man of few words and always preferred to let his actions do the talking for him. It was a chaotic world out there right now and many good people on both sides of the conflict had been slain. He lamented the loss of family and friends and considered the lives still yet to be taken. Would he make it out alive? Would his family?

With these thoughts swirling around his head, he was grateful for the protection his boss had acquired. The local cops were on the take and he knew nobody could try to make a move on him for the next few hours at least. 

As he walked through the Strip, he noticed a downtrodden man in a tattered airline uniform sat on the sidewalk. He didn't usually engage with street trash, but as today might his be last day on earth, he changed his habits. 

"You alright, pal?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Hugo looked up as a man approached him. He supposed he was glad he didn't take the cigarette at that stage as that would probably have been even more embarrassing than where he was right now. How had it come to this? He asked himself that question regularly, but if he was honest with himself, he already knew.

It had all been going great to begin with. He cane to America as a wealthy immigrant and his dream of touring the skies could quickly become a reality. A fast enrollment in a flight school to obtain his licence and he was good to go. It seemed a simple chore, easily completed. How wrong he was.

Hugo had not factored in that the airlines here were owned by The Mob. A bright, loaded, and dare I say, handsome wannabe, pilot was too good an opportunity to miss for them. They saw Hugo and knew they could develop and asset and he had been too stupid to realise it.

"Is that yours, buddy?" The man said gesturing to the floating butt ahead of him.

Hugo sighed.

"Is that yours, buddy?" Hertha asked, gesturing towards the forlorn cigarette floating away in the puddle. He was severely regretting getting involved with this at all now and was cursing himself inwardly. The man had just given him a blank look when he had asked if he was alright and this was looking increasingly like a bad job.

"No. No, it isn't mine," the man said, finally meeting Hertha's eye. There was a spark of recognition there but Hertha couldn't place him.

"Oh, right. I knew a guy once who used to find cigarette butts on the ground and then put them in his mouth," Hertha absently scratched awkwardly at his chin. "It was kinda weird actually."

"Yeah, I can imagine it would be," he said, seemingly to snap out of whatever daydream he was in. "This is The Strip, right?"

Hertha sucked his teeth, the guy was obviously nuts. "Yeah buddy, Las Vegas, you know it?"

"Las Vegas, ha. Do I know it? Oh I know it, pal. I know it alright. I've flown over every stretch of this miserable little place. I've seen every light. Back and forth, back and forth," he snorted, "do I know it? Pfft."

Hertha squinted down at the wretch. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Know me?" Hugo allowed himself a small smile. "Oh I doubt it, I'm a nobody now. Maybe once upon a time I might have been someone," he thought back wistfully to when things had been different.

The Mob had identified him and he had fallen right into their neatly laid trap. He graduated and acquired his pilot's licence and quickly found work in Las Vegas. A rookie pilot, even one as wealthy as Hugo Legionella, being able to fly their own plane was unheard of and the opportunity was too good to miss. He found himself chartered across the country from his base in The Strip and life could not have been better. 

On the face of it, everything Hugo was doing was completely legal. He was just flying passengers from one destination to the next, completely unaware that some of his cargo was 'less than reputable'. That didn't matter to him, so he thought, he was only interested in sailing across the skies and saying 'hello' to the clouds. Nobody was as sweet to him as breaking cloud cover and feeling the sun touch his face. It was his own little trip to heaven.

After a few months of living this dream, everything came crashing down. He was stopped on the runway in The Strip and hauled in by the cops. They wanted to know who he was working for, why he was flying for them and what he was transporting. His assets were frozen. He could be as wealthy as anyone, but while the cops put a stop on his bank accounts, he couldn't do dick. 

The opportunity, created entirely by The Mob themselves, allowed them to furnish Hugo with a top attorney. He just thought his bosses were looking after him and when the cops agreed bail, unbeknownst to Hugo having been on the take all along, they had him.

"Huh, not anymore though, eh?" he said, snapping back from his memories.