Sam texted me to say he had some work for us, so I stopped by at the Pit.

"Couple more pig cullin' requests came in. Couple counties over, though...that a problem?"

"Not if we can make it in one trip. Go out, make the estimates, phone 'em in to you, you clear it with them, we hunt after midnight and come back. Probably Saturday and Sunday. People from that far out come here?"

"Friend of a friend stuff. Speakin' of, looks like someone's got a friend in the state Wildlife office, passed on a message."

"About unlicened pig hunting?"

"Reckon they're okay with solutions to problems they don't gotta worry about. No, this is about fishin'. You guys fish?"

Fishing leve. Interesting. "Haven't really since getting here. Issues with licenses and all."

"Well, the Aquatic Nuisance Species program apparently don't care much about that if you can tell 'em where there's bighead carp. Reward for information regarding the location of."

"So that means you'd be handing fish over to them?"

"Not if it means you bringin' fish in my bar. Here's the number. Use my name if you want."

"Cool. Anything else?"

"Yeah. Got somethin' from Frank."

"Frank. Deputy Frank. He's got work for us?"

"Says he's passin' on word. Didn't mention you. Says the Bureau of Narcotics an' Dangerous Drugs is lookin' fer information about the unlicensed cultivation of intoxicatin' plants in counties along 51."

"...So...a narc. The state is looking for a narc."

Sam just grinned.

"Is it reasonable to assume there's a nonzero chance of discovering illegal cultivation of intoxicating plants if one looks?"

He kept grinning.

"Dude. We gotta live with these people."

"Ain't passin' judgment. Just passin' word."

"Yeah, well, maybe pass word you couldn't find anyone?"

"You couldn't even find sumac. Why should I think you could find weed?"

Because we probably hadn't been looking in places that weed might grow. And if we did find where we could harvest it, that didn't necessarily mean anyone was planting it there, so we might be out of luck if we wanted to narc for money. We might not even be able to deal in it...google searches suggest the Oklahoma weed market is oversaturated, so we couldn't sell it on the street. If we wanted to sell drugs at all.

So I got the info for the pig jobs and gmapped the addresses for GPS locations. Sam watched as I pulled out my journal. "You got one o' them smart paper books too?"

"Standard issue."

"Uh huh."

It shouldn't be that bad. We can probably fly the goobbues out after the Thursday diner shift, camp, do the estimate during the day, call it in, Return, do the Pit shift, goob back out to do the hunting, then fly to the next site, camp again, and so on. Long as we clear it with the customers we can probably just camp on their land and not even camo the tent.

Though camo-ing the tent was still an idea. I brought it up with Tsu'na. "So, remember the gatherer role quest at the Crystarium?"

"What is a gatherer role quest?"

"Um...did you notice there weren't any quests from our class guild leaders once we started in Norvrandt?"

"I assumed it was because the guild leaders were not in Norvrandt."

"That...probably was the story reason, yeah. But also, they had role quests instead. Like the people at the bar in the Crystarium with the tank quest, the healer quest and so on."

"Those were role quests? So when you speak of a gatherer role quest, you mean at the Crystalline Mean?"

"Yeah, there was that woman who wanted to find legendary creatures..."

"Qeshi-Rae."

"...Right, her. And she said she found traces of stuff like glamour prisms in the samples we found and brought back to her. Which suggested to her that the creatures were somehow naturally glamouring themselves to blend in with the background...effectively becoming invisible."

She thought about that. "You want to do that with the tent. Make it invisible?"

"No, if it was invisible people could still see us inside. I want it to blend in with what's around it."

"The pieces in the Emperor's New Glamour Set are invisible."

"Are they? Or are they blending in with us?"

All of my accessories are glamoured to the Emperor's New set, so I lent Tsu'na one of my two Augmented Cryptlurker's Rings of Healing. It became visible as soon as I took it off and it didn't have me to blend to. Something for us to brainstorm over later.

I'd worked up the rough numbers for how many aluminum ingots translated into how many inches of aluminum frame bar, so we worked up recipes for pieces of the frame. We could maybe make a single recipe for the whole thing, but ultralights in general are designed to be collapsible for transport, so we kept with form. It was how Eorzean workshop airships were designed too.

We needed to do similar calculations for rubberized cloth and foam plastic, then apply those to the component recipes. Math and guesstimating, sitting side by side on stools at the workbench. It was coming together. The seats and propeller would be entirely different recipes, and the fuel line and control wires I'll simply buy.

Tsu'na was taking it seriously. It had felt like a bit of a struggle at first, but yesterday it seemed like she was leaning in. Maybe it's finally firing up her imagination. Which means we should probably go into town and try out Flight Simulator. It'd likely run on the laptop, but I think it would be better on a decent screen.

Oklahoma supposedly doesn't freeze during the day, but it'll still be chilly to fly in winter. I mean, we flew in Coerthas a lot, but we had more control over our mounts than we will over the ultralight. Tsu'na may end up wishing we'd crash and burn just to warm up. And it does freeze at night, so we might need to plan our flights between cheap motels if the tent isn't viable.

All this work we're putting into it, and only now, typing this, thinking about the tent and the ring, am I wondering...could we just glamour the manacutter to an ultralight? I suppose we'd still need an ultralight to use as a base for the glamour.

One impossible thing at a time.