I took the parchment and went out to find Emilia who had gone to the deepest room to look for loot.
Pushing open what looked like a reinforced door, I found her kneeling in front of a large pile of coins while tossing the coins in the air in celebration.
“Money! Money!! So much money all for me!!”
Ahem… I’ll just pretend I didn’t see that…
“Umm… Emilia?”
The Nekomata actually jumped into the air and retreated to a corner of the room while clutching a bunch of coins to her chest with her hackles raised.
“Nyaaaa?! Hisssss!! My mone– Oh… Hello Lady Aster… Umm… Do you need anything?”
She really acts like a cat too I see… So cute~
I waved the parchment at her, “I found this in the leader’s room which might be of interest to you.”
She took the parchment from me and read through it, her eyes narrowing as she did so.
I was about to ask her what it was when she swore and threw the parchment on the floor and stomped her foot in frustration, though not a single coin fell from her arms which I found quite impressive.
“Those little pieces of alley rat trash!! Ungrateful little pieces of shits!! I knew it!! I fucking knew iiiiit!!”
I waited for her to calm down before asking what her outburst was about.
She seethed, “I was sold out, that’s what!! Those wild cats sneaking on the ship was a diversion on its own!! Those little shits!!”
The door opened behind me and Odeta walked in, drawn by Emilia’s angry shouts.
“What’s going on?” The Amrap asked.
Emilia bent down to pick up the parchment to wave angrily in the air, “This!! Thiiiiiis!! It’s a design made specifically for my ship!! Do you know what that means?!!”
Both Odeta and I gave her a look that told her we most definitely do not know what it meant.
She slapped the parchment with the back of her hand, “The only people who have access to this design are my close aides!! The only reason why this band of no name pirates have it is because someone betrayed me!! Their main target was to get me out of the ship and have someone find and destroy the device, acting like they had nothing to do with it to strand me somewhere and leave me to die!!”
Odeta frowned, “Why would they do that? Aren’t they your friends?”
Emilia spat on the ground, “Ha! Friends? I don’t have any friends. They were my associates, employees and staff. Definitely not friends. As to why they would stab me in the back like that? It’s simple, really. With me out of the picture, they have effectively taken over the ship and its riches.”
Oh wow… And this was right after she told me how she only trusted money too… Now she tells us she got betrayed by her own people for money…
Odeta crossed her arms at her, “Are you saying we aren’t your friends either?”
“Ha? Of course not. When have I ever said that you were my friends? You were my clients, though that changed now that it’s clear we can’t expect a pickup from my ship anymore. Besides, if someone were to pay you a million Creas, would you stab me in the back?”
Odeta scoffed, “What’s so good about a million Creas? I still need to go and bother someone to trade me stuff for it! I might as well just go hunt and forage for what I need myself!”
That definitely sounds like something Odeta would think.
Emilia turned her gaze to me and I shrugged, “You’re looking at someone who doesn’t have monetary problems… Besides, I at least have enough morals not to betray someone when they have done nothing to warrant me doing so.”
The Nekomata blinked a few times at us, as though she was just realising who was in front of her.
“I… I see… Ahem… I suppose that is true…” She muttered, though it was quite clear she didn’t fully believe us. Not that I blame her of course.
I wanted to ask if she would betray us for a million Creas but decided against it.
“Putting that aside,” I continued, bringing the subject back on track. “Why does this group have the plans for the tracker?”
Emilia immediately went right back to scowling, “I’m pretty sure they managed to convince those stupid backwater Nekos into believing they had sympathisers on my ship… Then they got them to hire various small-time pirate groups and criminals to stage an attack on the ship while planting copies of this within those groups. They can then pin the blame for my apparent demise on those pirates and get away with my ship with no repercussions.”
“And they managed to do it all under your nose?”
“Tch… This is why I don’t trust people.”
Odeta had been looking back and forth between us for a while and she scratched her head, “I don’t understand… If they want your ship, why didn’t they just fight you for it? Why do they need to do all this complicated stuff?”
Emilia raised an eyebrow at Odeta, “Forgive me for asking this but… How old are you?”
The Amrap puffed up her chest, “I’m twelve! I’m already an adult!”
Emilia then shifted her unblinking gaze to me and I shrugged, “I’m the same age.”
The Nekomata stood there for a moment, sucking in a deep breath before breathing out heavily.
“I see…” Was all she said before she turned to face her back to us, covering her face with her palms.
Oh come now, I know that we don’t act our age but there’s no need to do that! If it makes you feel better, I’m actually in my thirties already, ok?
Odeta looked at me and gave me a look that asked what was wrong with her so I shook my head to show that she should just ignore it.
“I’m stuck with two kids… This is why I never wanted to be a mother…” Emilia muttered under her breath before turning back to face us, acting like nothing happened.𝔬𝔳𝔩xt.𝚌𝑂𝑚
She then waved her hand in the air vaguely, “Alright, let’s just forget all that now, we have more pressing issues. We now know that the ship isn’t looking for us and we’re on our own. As nice as this island is, I definitely do not want to live out the rest of my life here where there’s absolutely no money to be made. What’s more, we already took those Siren’s money to take them with us away from this island. Plans?”
Odeta chuckled, “Wahahaha! Isn’t that simple? We just swim back!”
Ok, that’s too much even for you, Odeta…
I cleared my throat, “The pirates here must have some kind of seaworthy vessel to do their raids right? Especially since only their leader was a Merman. We just need to find it and navigate it to the port that your ship is supposed to dock at to get your ship back.”
Emilia widened her eyes, “Ohhh! You’re a genius, Lady Aster! I suppose you are a student of Aerialla Academy after all! Let’s go find it then!”
I’m just going to refrain from pointing out that this was pretty obvious if you thought about it and just followed her out of the room, though we had to pause for her to gather up all the money into bags to carry along as well.
I did offer to help her store the money in my Pack of Folding which she vehemently rejected, stating it was her find and thus she will take care of it herself.
I think she just doesn’t want her money in the hands of others.
Now that we’re looking for a ship, we would need to look for a place that they could dock and also hide it from being seen.
Since the outpost was located rather high on the mountain, it did grant us a rather good view around the place which showed us a very clear problem… There were no docks around the island at all, much less a ship…
Don’t tell me this group of pirates relied on the leader swimming out to sea by himself to take out their targets while the others just sat around doing nothing?
Yeah, there’s no way that’s possible.
“There must be a hidden cove around, we just need to find it,” Emilia announced.
“I could fly up and do an aerial search around the island?” I suggested.
“That would be great, Lady Aster.”
I let my wings explode out from my back and took to the skies, only realising belatedly that I wasn’t wearing my enchanted dress which meant I just tore two holes in this perfectly good dress.
Great…
Ignoring the waste of a dress, I flew around the island to look for possible locations for a ship to be hidden, which turned out to be quite simple since I quickly spotted an inlet that seemed to flow underneath the pirate outpost.
Gliding my way there, I realised there was a relatively large cove inside the mountain itself and inside said cove was a medium sized ship anchored at a dock, completely unguarded.
That’s not even the best part too.
At the docks were several crates stacked on top of each other which I assumed to be cargo they stole from passing ships and one of the crates was opened to show rows upon rows of what were undoubtedly chocolate.
There’s my sweeeeets!!