SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Daily Login Complete.
Daily Bonus: "Fieldwork Focus" (Consumable)
Effect: +10% Training & Trial Efficiency (Duration: 24 hours)
Active Objective: "Phase 3 Trials — Hamlet #4 Deployment & Stabilizer Architecture Upgrade"
Secondary Objective: "Investigate Secondary Broker Leads — Trace Buyer Network"
Quest Update: Crew Node Count: 10/10 (Full).
MC Status Check:
Name: Vegito
Race: Full-Blooded Saiyan
Tail: active; Appetite: Colossal
Abilities: Kame Style (Advanced); Advanced Haki Conditioning (Practiced); Gravity Manipulation (Adept); Marine Six Styles (Observer — Familiar)
Inventory: Compasses x2 ("True" gifted), Spices (Bell-mère's delight), Capsule — Gravity Chamber Accessory
Ship Bonding Level: 66/100
Mood: Famished. Alarmingly theatrical. Quiet sense of protective amusement.
P.O.V.: Vegito
Mornings on the Embrace lately tasted like success and stew—both of which are best when served hot and in generous portions. The sanctum hummed a satisfied tune; runes blinked like someone clapping politely. Aoi's workshop smelled of hot metal and the kind of optimism only craftspeople can make, while Emiko's ledger—that gentle island of tidy human stories—sat open by the galley where Bell-mère had laid down a breakfast that might be considered a small sacrament in three provinces.
"Vegito," Aoi said without preamble as I wandered into her corner with a spice tin and an eager grin, "we've tested the redundant seals. The new runic mesh resists transponder bonding at the micro-level. But you have to let me graft it directly into the stabilizer's outer sheath."
"You want access to the engine's soft spots," I observed, which is to say: you smell like someone who loves the innards of things.
She looked at me like a person who enjoyed the diagnosis of machines. "Yes. And privacy," she said simply. "We put redundancy in parallel. Somebody tries to splice a signal in, the mesh reroutes and flags the attempt. It does not scream. It informs."
Saki—the auditor whose face read propriety as a roadmap—nodded from her seat, ledger balanced like a small island. "Informing, not shouting," she repeated, voice that could make law feel warm. "That preserves anonymization while detecting tampering."
Misaki had already positioned herself beside Aoi with a tray of rivets and an expression of delighted rivalry—those two together made the hull feel the sort of loving pressure that produces durable things. "We add a mechanical catch," she said. "If someone physically binds a tracker to a plate, the catch triggers and isolates the node. Simple, effective, not interesting to sell."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Upgrade Module — "Runic Mesh & Mechanical Catch Integration"
Effect: +15% Stabilizer Anti-Sabotage Resilience (Pending Implementation)
Hint: Pair Aoi's runic seals with Misaki's mechanical redundancies for best results.
I handed Aoi the spice tin—the sort used to bribe hearts and staff—and watched her go to work like a woman entering a prayer. The sanctum became a choreography: Aoi's hands etched glowing seals in a language that felt half-warmth and half-scorch, Misaki's hammer sang a rhythm that made the hull sound like great, patient laughter, and Reiju read the power curves like a woman who could place a margin of safety around chaos.
"Use conservation," Reiju told Aoi as she checked a runic weld. "Don't overbind. If you make it too rigid, field harmonics blow at the seams."
Aoi nodded, eyes on the weld like a cat that has found a comfortable window. "Fine control," she said. "Like a chef with salt."
"Ha!" Bell-mère declared from the galley, passing around little bowls. "You lot who fix things will starve if you don't learn to eat properly. Put your heads where your hands are and your hearts where the stew goes."
We installed the first upgraded sheath in the sanctum under careful, deliberate hands. The system ran a simulated tamper and the mesh reacted like a sensible animal—quiet, alert, and discreetly reporting the attempt to a sealed log only Saki could unlock.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Anti-Sabotage Protocol Implemented — Stabilizer Architecture v1.1
Result: Tamper Detection Active; Reporting Channel: Auditor-Only (Saki).
Effect: Anonymization Integrity: +10%; Public Trace Hardness: +12%
That afternoon we sailed for Hamlet #4: a narrow place tucked under cliffs where the wind sliced stories into ribbons. Emiko had arranged an "Open House"—a community open-day that was less show-and-tell and more "we will teach you to tell your own stories." The idea was simple and elegant: transparency that did not reveal secrets, local stewardship that could be verified in public minutes, and an accessible version of the tech that looked useful but left the bones safe.
"You show them the interface," Emiko told me as she folded minutes into a neat stack. "You teach the maintenance but not the alloys. You give them a month of training enough to keep the stabilizer running and no more. And you let them sign minutes that give them control of the public narrative."
"Emiko," I said, handing her a spoon as if that sealed the pact, "you have the steady voice. Salisbury—one of the great diplomatic things in history—had food and a firm hand. You are both."
She tasted the stew and made a small, pleased sound—her version of "Ha!"—and then smiled with the ease of someone who'd weighed consequences and found them manageable. "We'll make them the loudest defenders of their own dignity," she said. "That way strangers who want to buy people will find only voices and public minutes."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Community Outreach Plan — "Open House & Stewardship Minutes" (Emiko)
Expected Result: Reduced Bounty Interest: -6% (Per Event)
Bonus: Increased Local Ownership: +12%
Hamlet #4 greeted us like a place that had forgotten to hope for miracles and had therefore learned to be suspicious of them when they came. Emiko and her assistants—Mitsuki and Nojiko primarily—arranged tables. Aoi and Misaki set up in a corner for live demonstrations on maintenance that emphasized tools and patterns not raw schematics. Hana organized the med-station and taught triage refreshers. Reiju and Reiju's pencil did the rest of the diplomacy by making the technical language readable.
"It's show time," I said quietly to the crew gathered in the little square. "We will be honest, we will be kind, and we will not let anyone treat these people like a market."
Emiko stood on a crate like a magistrate who preferred tea to gavels. She told the hamlet why the device existed and, more importantly, why the hamlet would keep a voice in how it was used. Villagers signed minutes—plain-language records of who had access and what they were allowed to do. The mood shifted from caution to a kind of civic ownership. People who had once been taught to be quiet started to tell jokes and to teach each other how to check seals. It made my throat feel like a kitchen chimney and my eyes fill with a ridiculous heat.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Open House Active — Hamlet #4.
Result: Stewardship Minutes Signed; Maintenance Training Initiated (Village).
Reward: Bonding Pulse +14 (Hamlet #4 & Emiko)
Effect: Bounty Interest: -6% (Short-term)
We ran the Phase 3 test with the upgraded stabilizer installed by Aoi and braced by Misaki's mechanical catches. The device hummed a little like it was enjoying the attention. Reiju watched output curves; Saki took notes with a gaze neat as a ledger. Nami coordinated volunteer teams so the hamlet could see that maintenance wasn't a foreign thing but a set of learned hands.
Halfway through the day, as a cluster of children chased a cockle shell into skittering laughter, a man in a dark coat arrived in a small skiff. He walked like someone who'd practiced indifference in a mirror. He had the soft, careful steps of a broker or a buyer—the sort who deals in commodities that shouldn't be commodities.
"Excuse me," he said, approaching Emiko as she held a minute-page. He opened his hand and revealed a card with neat printing: Kurokawa Trading. The name pinged like a cold note. The man smiled as if he'd been gifted the right to charm. "I'm Seki Kurokawa. I represent interested parties. I saw your device and thought perhaps we could discuss... acquisition."
Emiko's face smoothed into the perfect magistrate expression that had likely persuaded a hundred folks into better solutions. "We do not sell our stabilizers," she said plainly. "We train people. We retain core designs. If you have willing partners that will log and learn in the open, we will talk about collaborative maintenance. Otherwise—" she tapped the minutes, "—we will refuse."
He tried charm. Then he tried money, slipping a sealed envelope with tasteful coins across the crate. It made the children look up. It made my stomach wrap itself like a knot.
"Noted," I said, stepping forward with the deliberate smile of a man about to perform a small play. "We appreciate offers. But these stabilizers are not wares. They're a promise."
He looked at me then, appraisal like a scale. "Promises have value. One could compensate the village."
Emiko's hand tightened on the minutes. "The village decides value," she said. "It decides with minutes, not whispers."
Saki, with that ledger patience that makes people tell truths as if they were being read aloud by an impartial judge, stepped in. "Mr. Kurokawa," she said evenly, "you must understand that any procurement that bypasses documented stewardship breaches international goodwill and our anonymization commitments. I can file evidence. That makes acquisition legally messy for your clients."
The man's smile thinned like tinfoil. He licked a neat, careful grin. "Perhaps we can be pragmatic. A private purchase, under confidentiality."
"I will not be your silence," Emiko replied. "If you want to help, do so openly. If you want to buy something for private profiteering, leave. We will not barter dignity."
He had the look of someone finding a door had been locked on his way to a ballroom. He tried one last thing—bribery via a villager, offering ridiculous sums to a young fisherman who looked like he'd never seen such numbers. The fisherman blinked and then put the coins back into Seki's hand as if they'd been hot.
"Stew and reputation are worth more," the fisherman said, surprising everyone with his certainty.
Seki's temper flashed for a heartbeat. Then he smiled once more, a practiced, dangerous curve. "Consider this an introduction," he said, and he retreated to his skiff.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Operative Interaction — Buyer Representative (Kurokawa Trading) Contacted Hamlet #4.
Result: Attempted Acquisition — Rejected (Public & Auditor Presence).
Effect: Public Pressure Applied: Local Stewardship upheld. Buyer alerted to resistance.
Caveat: Higher-level buyer interest noted. Trace attempt initiated.
Seki's departure left our stomachs tight with the knowledge that a buyer had been watching and that someone would now tell larger interests that our stabilizers were resolute and our villages vocal. That was both good—because it meant obstacles might be deterred by scrutiny—and bad—because scrutiny tips the map of the market toward those with deeper pockets.
"Trace his route," Saki said without melodrama. "We might learn who funds Kurokawa."
Aoi crouched and tapped at a panel on the stabilizer cover—clever hands and a mind for patterns. Misaki tightened a bolt and watched the sea like a hawk. "If he has an operative, they won't be dumb about it," Misaki said. "They use unassuming hands."
We recovered a small signal from the skiff's transient uplink—someone careless who favored a relay in a port two nights' sail away. The trace wasn't clean; it was layered in merchant-band noise and commerce static—exactly the sort of thickness a buyer who did not want attention would prefer. Saki smiled small and ice-cool. "Kurokawa will be a thread," she said. "Follow the thread quietly."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Trace Initiated — Kurokawa Trading Contact: Pending. Signal: Merchant-Relay (Port: Keito Junction) — Estimated ETA: 2 days.
Effect: Secondary Broker Interest Elevated. Prepare for buyer-level approach.
We left Hamlet #4 with bonding warm as a loaf—people had minutes and maintenance, and the device hummed with that particular pride a machine has when it knows it has a home. Emiko walked the deck with a cup of dregs and an expression that suggested she liked seeing things fall into order. "They'll speak for themselves now," she said. "That is the important part."
"You taught them how to be loud without breaking anything," I said, meaning both literally and in deed.
She smiled—a small, steady "Ha!"—and then added, "And you were very good at not making enemies with swords today."
"I prefer applause to punctures," I said. "Mostly because applause is easier to clean up."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Field Report — Phase 3 Trial (Hamlet #4) Completed.
Result: Stabilizer Architecture v1.1 Successful; Village Stewardship Established.
Rewards: Bonding Pulse +18 (Hamlet #4 & Empress Crew)
Effect: Ship Bonding Level: +6 (Now 72/100)
Caveat: Buyer Alert — Kurokawa Tracing Initiated. Secondary buyer network likely aware.
Two days later we trailed the merchant relay that had been careless. Keito Junction was a market that loved anonymity like a cat loves laps—soft, territorial, and easily bribed. The port was a maze of stalls and shadowed corridors where men in tasteful coats traded secrets like bright coins. Saki and I moved through it like a pair of ancient librarians: quiet, precise, and prepared to read anything people left in the margins.
We found Kurokawa's office upstairs in a building that smelled faintly of varnish and quiet menace. The receptionist—a woman with precise makeup and a thicker ledger—made a call that sounded like a veiled warning. In minutes we met a man who called himself a facilitator: calm, persuasive, and evidently hired to make deals stop smelling like predatory rot.
"You are persistent," he observed, voice the kind that had learned to sound harmless in libraries.
"We are curious," Saki said. "Who are your buyers?"
He smiled the sort of smile that compensates for conscience. "There are several. Wealth cares less for names than for returns. But I can say that some are private collectors, others are intermediaries who sell to more institutional clients. You are fighting a market structure, not an individual."
He offered a meeting later, if we liked formality and if we liked being used as footnotes in transactions. I flirted—because that is what I do when a man offers a blank signing paper and an opportunity to ruffle his comfortable ledger.
"Tell your clients we will not sell," I said lightly. "We will teach. We will defend. We will publish minutes. We are not merchandise."
He laughed—a tiny, businesslike sound that suggested he believed in the economy of social cruelty. "You are an odd vendor," he said. "Perhaps inconvenient. But remember: where there is demand, supply follows."
We left with more questions than we came with and a small device misfiled in the office—a transient linker that Kurokawa had used as a tap. Misaki, with her thieving grace, relieved it from a careless clerk while I performed a mild distraction that involved a spice tin and a smile that bribed course-syllabus suspicion. It was the sort of theft that felt like a proverb—professionally executed and morally thin.
Aoi ground her teeth in that beautiful way she reserves for machines that misbehave. "This will show us routing," she said. "But it is layered. There will be nodes under nodes."
Saki set it on her ledger and began the sort of work that made paperwork look like prophecy. "We will have names," she said. "But pray do not think this will stop with a single man. Higher buyers will notice. That is the caveat."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Intelligence Collected — Kurokawa Relay Device Secured.
Result: Trace Layering Analysis: Pending (Saki & Aoi).
Effect: Secondary Broker Network Map: Partial (Expected Update: 24 hours).
Caveat: High-level buyers possibly alerted by contact; recommend tightening sanctum security & public stewardship.
That night on the Embrace, Reiju and I walked under a moon that looked like a coin someone had dropped and decided not to pick up. "You handled the hamlet well," she said, the kind of praise that is both small and weighty. "You keep a dangerous kindness."
"Kindness with a good punchline," I answered. "And an even better stew."
She laughed—an exact, bright "Ha!"—and we were quiet for a moment, leaning on the rail like people who'd learned small courtesies mean less than small truths. "Prepare for more attention," she said finally. "You do not have infinite shadows."
"I never did," I said, and the truth tasted like spice and iron. "But I like the ones that smell like stew."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Daily Summary Saved.
Achievements: Stabilizer Architecture v1.1 Implemented; Phase 3 Trials (Hamlet #4) Successful; Trace Initiated to Kurokawa Network.
Rewards: Bonding Pulse +18 (Collective — Phase 3 & Integration).
Effect: Ship Bonding Level increased by +6 (Now 72/100).
Next Objective: Complete Kurokawa trace; monitor buyer escalation; plan sanctum mass training to accelerate stabilization upgrades.
Hint: Use Embrace Sanctum for mass training; deploy Emiko's community minutes as legal leverage. Prepare Nami & Saki to assist in quiet trace verification.
P.O.V.: Vegito
I stood on the foredeck that night and let the sea slap a rhythm across the hull like applause for a job done with fewer dead bodies than the alternatives. The Embrace hummed beneath me, content and slightly smug. The crew—my crew, my loud, dangerous, compassionate tribe—passed through the lantern light like a favorites list come true. Aoi joked with Misaki about a rivet they'd nicknamed "Percival"; Bell-mère sung a low tune about sacrificial onions; Nojiko folded a new plate like she used to fold her fear into useful things; Nami traced a possible route for next week with the precise face of someone solving a puzzle she had patience for; Hana patched a volunteer's blister with a bandage that looked like a medal; Kasumi read a book about unconventional ethics with a smirk and slightly suspicious interest; Mitsuki practiced compass drills while Emiko and Saki compared notes about the minutes with the kind of mutual respect that was a practical comfort.
I looked at them and felt the sort of absurd warmth only a man with too much stew and too many good people can feel. We had upgraded a device, trained a village to own its story, and told a buyer that our dignity was not for sale. In doing so we'd also waved a small flag at a market that does not respect those flags for long.
"Tomorrow," I said into the night, tail curling like the punctuation at the end of a good sentence, "we follow the thread to Keito Junction fully, and if that produces a string to a higher buyer, we find out who in the world thinks these devices should be traded like spices. We will remind them that people are not spices."
Reiju bumped my shoulder with a small, affectionate nudge. "And we will make sure our people can mend faster than the buyers can bribe," she said. "Security and stories. Keep both."
"Yes," I said, grinning. "And more stew, because logistics taste better when they're full."
We laughed—little Ha's and Ufufu's that made the runes blink like a pleased audience. The world was complicated. The market smelled hungry. But we had a sanctum that could sear out spies, a crew that refused payment for souls, and a village on the other side of a cliff that now had minutes notarized by a woman who liked tea and English.
The Embrace settled into its sleep like a cat satisfied with its nap. My stomach growled, obliging the universe's rules, and somewhere below decks Bell-mère swore she could hear the perfect time to ladle a midnight portion. I went below to apologize in person and to be fed something that might be called a midnight blessing by those who take their miracles sauced with umami.
"Ha!" I announced into the galley before I had a chance to be stealthy. Bell-mère answered with a laugh and a spoon. The night tasted like warmth and the promise—small, stubborn, utterly human—that we would keep our hands steady, our words honest, and our stew hot.