oh, for fox's sake | Glowfic Constellation

...well, no one said industrial espionage would be easy. She'll work something out. Somehow.

She walks over to Sasha. "Hello, I'm Marena."

"Hello," she says with a very distinctive accent. "I am Sasha Inovich. You will follow me. You will keep up with me when we fly. I do not say this to browbeat you, we have a job to do. It is a short flight by my standards, so we will go quickly. Tell me now if you cannot handle that."

Her Essense isn't, like, super high at the moment, but short flight should be totally doable. "I should be fine."

"Good. Job gets done, probably, you get paid, probably, all are happy and we have a party. Let's go."

And they're off.

Off she goes!

...she's going to feel really silly if this turns out to just be something ordinary instead of jade.

It's twice as long as going to Cardiff. Her interpretation of 'short flight' is not the same as the locals' apparently.

She'll be very close to empty if they head back straight away... But maybe not totally empty.

The cargo appears to be a bunch of complicated metalworking tools and two engineer types in nice outfits like that boat guy had! Well, the 'wings do have a single passenger seat.

"An honor, isn't it? Picked for an important visitation like this."

"Don't be daft. We're just the first two metallurgy graduates the dean saw who weren't doing something important at the time."

"No, no, he was very excited. He passed right over Marcel."

"He doesn't trust Marcel. Trust me, this is going to be some pointless stupid errand and a waste of everyone's time. Seen it before. You get excited, and it turns out to be a mistake or a lie."

"A pessimest, are we?"

"A realist."

The optimist scoffs and starts pacing away from the crowd, looking thoughtful.

...She'll see about taking a nap when she gets there. That'll renew her Essence a reasonable amount.

But first: investigations. She heads over to the optimist. "Hello, nice to meet you."

"Hello! Likewise I'm sure. I take it you're our ride to Bristol? Or part of it at any rate." He holds his hand out for a handshake.

She shakes it back. "Yeah, I'm one half of it, Sasha's the other. First time I've ever shipped people. Well, other than myself."

"I'm probably used to more comfortable rides, but that people can travel so easily is amazingly useful. Flight is probably the greatest power of witches, I'd think."

"One of the more common useful ones, at least. So, how's it feel to be part of an emergency shipment?"

"Annoying. But I rather imagine standing in rows pointing an arquebus at the Neuroi is far worse, so."

"Yeah, there's plenty of advantages to not being at the front."

"So being shipped around to investigate some supposedly-" He looks thoughtful. "You know, I'm not actually sure how secret the UDF thinks it can keep this, but I should maybe not help the gossip spread."

"Aww, but gossip's so fun! I know it's probably metal, because why else would you send mettalurgists--"

"Yes, well. One could tell that by inspecting our tools too. I suppose I can tell you it's been kicking around for a few days as something interesting and potentially useful but unique... And now they think it's not."

"Oh, that sounds intriguing."

...and not at all like jade. Because they should have pretty limited amounts of that on hand.

"I think any witch would be interested in the rest- But alas, I've said too much already."

"That's fine, I won't tell."

"They all say that, you know."

"I mean, yeah, but it's also true I don't have much to tell. 'A company that uses a lot of metal has some ~secret~ metal' is somewhere between crazy sounding and 'yeah, no shit.'"

He laughs.

"Yes, trade secrets existing is not surprising."

"Marena! Mr. Bolard! We're off in a moment!"

"Ah, time to... Fly. Please don't drop me."

"Well, if I screw this up I'm also dropping, so I at least have an incentive."

He's visibly nervous and straps in very tight to the second seat, despite this assurance.