Deciding to ignore the aircraft, you spend a day hiding the pit with an illusion of unbroken forest so as not to be found if they search the area around Mountain Glenn. Once you run out of magicka from doing that, you spend the remainder of the day planning how to speed up construction on the ship.
More capable laborers would really be the most helpful at this stage, but would that be the best choice, you wonder. Bringing in the faunus working at Kwama Korp would reduce the business' capacity to cater to customers and therefore the profit as well, hiring more would take more money than you can afford long term, and either choice would let locals know about the ship before it can even fly. For a similar reason you don't want to do anything that would gain a large force of undead, since raiding graveyards is always noticed and killing an entire town runs the risk of somebody escaping to mention your involvement. Not ideal in either case, though you're confident that you can think of a work around if one becomes necessary.
Rather than focus on the short term, perhaps it would be better to look to the later steps?
The vessel is going to need large amounts of Gravity Dust for the designs being lifted from Trobror's omni-tool once its superstructure and shell are in place and the other technological pieces that Raymond is designing will probably need expensive materials as well. Having the money to pay for whatever he needs as he needs it will go a long way toward keeping construction on schedule. To that end, you work on a method of increasing income that is complementary to your current business.
Alcohol.
Everywhere you've ever been has had a demand for alcohol and Hei's bar serves as proof that Remnant is no different. Since Kwama Korp is already borrowing heavily from Dunmeri culture, it would only make sense to continue that trend with beverages that match the food. Which is why, after sending order to Shino to search around Vale for any opportunity to strategically relocate Dust supplies, you spend the rest of the week summoning Dark elves and summarily executing them before they can get their bearings.
The resulting corpses are made into skeletons and thoroughly looted for any ingredients you can get. Flesh, hearts, various articles of clothing, a few hundred septims, a pile of poisoned daggers and a pair of swords, some Jewelry, an ebony gauntlet, and six bottles of the exact alcoholic drinks you intend to make. None of that is as useful as the trio of farmers you get that are carrying bags of Saltrice and Comberry.
With those two plants, you can make three products; Shein, Greef, and Matze. Greef being a brandy distilled from Shein, itself being a bitter comberry wine, both go well with kwama based foods. Matze is the one that will make the most money though; it can be sold cheap due to being easy to produce in large quantities and is historically popular everywhere its been sold. The reason for its popularity is because it is both invigorating and mildly addictive due to the brewing process bringing out some of the stamina fortifying properties of saltrice, enhancing consumers' dependence on it.
Having Cattleya take a break from transmuting dirt to metal for a day, you let the undead workers dig into the surplus steel while she uses all of her magicka and some of your teachings on Reachmen magic to rapidly grow both plants in large quantities around the chasm. During that time, Raymond and some of the few scientists that survived the moonfall put together the needed equipment for processing the plants. With the looted bottles to test the taste against, there shouldn't be any problems in making all three drinks... though the Shein probably won't be as good since it takes time to age properly.
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Blake was a jumble of emotions as she walked through Vale. Angry, confused, sad, annoyed. Nothing pleasant, that was for sure.
It was only their fourth weekend and already she was at the end of her patience with her team leader's racist behavior. Oh, he never did anything to her, but that was just because he didn't know she was a faunus. That thought made her smirk, since the fact that he hadn't figured it out despite what seemed like half of the school doing so already just highlighted how unintelligent he was.
Her good humor vanished just as quickly as it came, the memory of Vicky's blonde teammate's promising not to tell the Schnee heiress about how she was a faunus. It was nice to know that they didn't care and would help her hide it, but it shouldn't need to be hidden! Oh, she knew it was best due to her previous life in the White Fang, but how many other of her people were hiding their traits due to fear or some warped sense of shame? People like Cardin made it seem like hiding was the only option and oddly enough, even the Schn- even Weiss was nicer to her faunus team member than that idiot.
Almost every day, at every chance he got, Winchester would spit out some bigotry or 'accidentally' knock over one of their classmates that just so happened to have animal-like features. He'd even tried to intimidate Vicky during combat class with some line about squishing a bug, as if the absolutely massive girl wouldn't be the one doing the squishing!
That of course brought up her thoughts on her blonde... friend? Comrade? Whatever they were to each other, there was something fishy about the spider faunus' story and not in a good way. For one, she'd never even heard of a spider faunus. More than that though, the blonde's deviance from the norm was extreme; she was a giant from the waist up and below that was an entire spider. Add in the lava part and the whole thing smacked of science gone awry, but no matter how curious she was, Blake tried not to pry since neither Vicky or Tsun pried into her past.
And she was so very curious. Her four armed team mate never wavered at the attitude of their teammates, never flinched at the comments thrown his way, and bore it all with stoicism because she was too weak to stand up for him if it meant exposing her own secret. It was the same with that rabbit girl, Velvet, but this was a member of her own team; somebody she had to live with and it made her feel disgusting. Blake knew Tsun knew about her, how could he not when Vicky and all their friends knew?
Yet... yet he didn't look at her with betrayal, anger, or anything of the sort. He just let it all roll over him as if he didn't notice, only reacting once when Cardin made the mistake of physically assaulting him. The ignorant bastard didn't make that mistake again and even stopped his bullying for a few days after the nurse let him go. Between his good looks, cool and collected attitude, obvious strength, and a past she could relate to, Blake would be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat interested... but so was most of the female, and some of the male, population of the school.
Not that she would seriously consider acting on that interest. Even if he didn't hold it against her, she could hardly look him in the face without feeling guilty for not standing up to Winchester. She was a coward and she knew it. He was quiet, considerate, and never failed to take the hits for her when they went on live training exercises in the forest. His Semblance let him ignore pretty much any damage to himself, but what kind of trauma did he have to suffer for his aura to give him something like that? She didn't deserve him as a teammate and he deserved someone better than her... better than their whole team after the things he'd been through.
Somehow having found herself on a rooftop and the sun going down, Blake sighed as her feet dangled over the ledge. What was she supposed to do to make things right? She couldn't just attack her team leader for being an ass and it wouldn't help anything if she did. Her thumb hovered over her mother's old number as it always did at times like this, even though she knew it had been years since that number had changed. Her mom had been planning on getting a new scroll just before Blake had run away, so there was no way of calling home for advice even if she deserved help from those she'd hurt. She'd wanted to do the right thing with the White Fang and left home when her parents gave up, but that had ended terribly and now she wasn't sure she could trust her own judgement.
In the end, it all came down to the White Fang. Somebody wants to stop racism, join the Fang! Somebody wants to hurt others, Join the Fang! Somebody wants somebody to blame for their problems, look that the Fang! Somebody wants justification for their racism, look at the Fang!
It was so stupid and Blake had been one of the key members to lead them down their current path. She'd encouraged Adam to do it because it got results, but now- now she was looking down at a member of the White Fang sneaking through the alley below her?
Dropping off the roof and cushioning her landing with her Aura, the cat faunus silently crept along after the masked terrorist. It was a boy in a high collared coat and sleeves too long to see his hands. Watching him pause at a dumpster, she held her breath as he pulled the mask off to reveal the familiar face of a boy she'd seen Hinata talking to weeks ago.
Looking around, Blake noticed that the area they were in was a block away from Kwama Korp, her legs having unconsciously taken her to where she'd spent the weeks after leaving Adam on that train.
What do the White Fang want with Cattleya's business?
She wasn't dumb enough to think a pair of humans like Cattleya and Mr. Tyne were in an all faunus terrorist organization, but that didn't mean that nothing sinister was going on. Hadn't she stayed to work there partially because she wanted to make sure her people weren't being mistreated? The fact that the White Fang was already making moves to at least investigate them, if not to recruit members and sympathizers from among the workers, was bad enough. What if they knew she'd been there and were looking for her? What if the more hateful members saw the security fences and human guard took that as a sign that the place was as bad as the SDC?
With a determined frown, Blake waited until the boy was at the door before following him in, nodding to one of Junior's enforcers when he gave a friendly wave. Junior and his men were... not what she'd expected when going to them for forged transcripts. Putting thoughts of the big teddy bear of a crime boss aside, she entered the building and went into the back room as if she still worked there.
Barely catching sight of the terrorist's head as he disappeared down into the basement, she hurried to catch up and saw him walk through a door that was made to look like the rest of the wall. Just what was going on?
Waiting several moments until a strange 'whoosh' noise came from the other side of the door, she forced it open to see a the boy walking through a swirling pool of blue light that was contained in a black archway. No time to think about what she was seeing, the girl sprinted and dove through the rapidly closing portal.
Landing in a heap, she looked up to see a strange and foul smelling environment. Earthen walls with a weird waxy substance at seemingly random intervals, toothy worms half as big as her forearm squirming along the floor, and pulsing red root-like things holding the eggs she'd sold to people a few weeks back.
"Oh gods, where am I?" She wondered aloud, not entirely convinced that she hadn't somehow stumbled her way onto the set of a science fiction movie featuring alien parasites.
The screeching from the worms and the answering roar outside the dimly lit chamber didn't help her peace of mind, but worse was the monotone voice in her ear. "I thought you were following me because you were one of the workers. I see that is not correct."
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Looking at the familiar cat-girl lying unconscious on the floor, you sigh in annoyance. It makes sense, you suppose. Send a ninja, self professed masters of stealth, to go steal some Dust and it is not even a week before somebody follows him back to your secret facilities. Why is it that the girl who routinely dismembers herself is a more competent subordinate than everyone else?
Then again, Shino evidently accomplished his mission, seeing as how he was unrolling his storage scroll to release another pair large Dust crates. You don't really care how he's getting it so long as it doesn't cause problems for you. Much more important is what to do with Louise's friend... Blackie, you think her name was.
Status: Healthy
Magicka: (650/650)
Choose:
[] Curiosity killed the cat... well, that and a knife to the throat. No need to risk her spilling your secrets.
[] Wait for her to wake up and then explain things, maybe this can be turned to your benefit.
[] POV Switch: Louise.
[] Write in.
