Chapter 15: Chapter 14

While one of me was training, the other was brainstorming other jobs I could take up to make money. All positions monitored by The Academy were out, it would only take one person doing an audit or something to expose me. Outside of those, there weren’t a whole lot of positions. Everything that could be managed by an Academy board or club was, leaving only foreign organizations or small businesses that had a presence in the city. Most of these wouldn’t be things I’d do if I had a choice: customer service, entertainment, and/or something in the docks. Of course, there was almost assuredly underground work- but I’d rather keep my slate clean.

 

I did have one place that sounded like it had potential called the Independent Vigilantes Guild. Essentially, they were an organization that dealt with civil and military issues that would only get worse if the government or military directly stepped in. Being technically separate, it would be unlikely that one person would check ledgers or whatever from both. I say technically because while they do handle miscellaneous jobs submitted by civilians, the bigger ones are directly issued by The Academy and usually involve provoking actions like capturing criminals that fled to another country and protecting important shipments that require numbers that could be seen as an invasion if you squinted. The more strictly legal jobs were things like gathering ingredients for classes or shops, and dealing with monsters that get a bit close- but not enough to justify mobilization.

 

That might have made the organization seem shady, but from what I’d heard out in the city- if you had the aptitude for it, the requests paid well and if you made a name for yourself you might get scouted by mercenary groups or militaries. That last bit surprised me as times appeared peaceful as far as I could hear, but maybe the peace is held by mutual distrust and only engaging in “isolated incidents” using groups like the Vigilantes.

 

Seeing as I had only just started learning to fight, I would stick to gathering and preparing materials. I also didn’t have much knowledge on that front- but I could remedy that by parking a body in the library and looking up what I needed given enough time. This still definitely wasn’t the best solution, but it was the one I came up with, so I decided to go through with it. Even though this would maintain on-paper separation between bodies, I still needed to hide my defining physical traits in the case that someone recognized me outside of work.

 

For this I decided to take a page out of The Headmaster’s playbook and hit up some used-items shops. My budget was pretty tight for this, but I was only looking for a few longer coats and scarves. After looking through a couple places, I got what I was looking for: an oversized cloak, a light scarf, a long-sleeve shirt, and a pair of pants. I brought everything back to my room to do some altering. The pants needed a hole cut for my tail, the shirt was a bit loose, and I wanted to put a button on the inside of the cloak to hold it closed around me. I had a few needles and a bit of thread laying around and some practice patching up clothes from getting to the university initially from… wherever I’d been.

 

All this was finished by the time the other body got back from after-training brunch with Charlotte. I put on my new clothes and scrutinized the outfit carefully. My tail was predictably the largest issue, I had to keep it coiled around my body or legs to hide it- but that required attention, so I wrapped a belt around it after getting it in place. Doing so was quite uncomfortable, but did the trick in combination with the cloak. Speaking of, while it wasn’t a massive issue, I wanted to figure out a way to keep the thing closed without it being obvious something was doing so. After a couple tries and more buttons it looked better, but if someone suspected or knew it was still obvious. As a bonus it also allowed me to stick a hand out without undoing it.

 

The last issue was my eyes. They were the only facial-feature exposed after the hood was pulled up and the scarf wrapped around my face. I could make it better if I pulled the hood deeper, but doing so would have it flop down and blind me. The (semi-intentional) jank continued with the addition of a bit of wire to hold the hood’s shape even when I did pull it down more.

 

With the outfit complete, I was confident that it was less conspicuous than I was normally and hid my identity. It would look out of place in the nicer parts of town- like where I lived- but if I changed once I made it to around where the Vigilante headquarters were, it would fit in a bit more. Hiding what you’re wearing, carrying, or look like isn’t uncommon for travelers- but I may be taking it a bit further than normal. 

 

To really call my disguise done, I needed to come up with an alias and voice to use. My initial thoughts were also water themed: wave, river, ect. However, that was asking for someone to put two-and-two together- so I settled on Elly. It was simple and could be a nickname for all sorts of things, which would hopefully make people think I wasn’t clever and my name was among the longer versions somewhere. The voice was trickier. I wasn’t an actor or singer, so I had to do something close to my normal voice. Going deeper was probably the better choice along with some rasp and a bit rougher way of talking.

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