Chapter 40: What I Had Created
"I can," said Jun Li in a reassuring manner. "Is there anything that you aren’t willing to sell?"
I thought about it for a second. "Is there any way that we can find a list of what people are looking for and then try to cater to that?" I knew that it wasn’t exactly along the lines of what I was originally thinking, but I think that it might be easier if we catered to demand. After all, that was what most successful businesses on Earth did.
Or they created the demand. But I wasn’t going there yet.
"I think I can find it," answered Jun Li, not sounding the least bit off. "Once I have, what do you want to do?"
"I was thinking that we would either need to go out and get the weapons on the list or hope that we had them in storage," I said with a tired sigh. I didn’t know if I was cut out for being a weapons dealer, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do in this new universe.
"Sounds good, I’ll let you know what I find," replied Jun Li as he turned back around and started typing into the console.
"I’ll be in the lounge on deck C," I said. I had set up all the different machines that produced clothing in a single spot to make it easier. Getting out of the captain’s chair, I laid my blanket and pillow on the seat and made my way from the bridge on deck A, down two levels, to deck C.
Jun Li had given me complete autonomy to redo and rename the ship as I needed for things to make sense in my head and I did. Now, instead of names and levels that I couldn’t pronounce, I went through the alphabet and labeled each level accordingly. Therefore, the uppermost level, the one with the bridge on it, my room, a lounge, and a few other spaces, was Deck A.
The level just beneath that was Deck B. It was the level where I had set up my new theater (in the old nightclub), a study room, and a separate library. The library still had to finish being set up to my specifications, but I had books in almost every language available from Earth, each in their own section, plus books in the languages of the main species in the Alliance.
There was an additional room inside the library for even more books from other species that we may encounter in our travels. In other words, I wanted to create my own Library of Alexandria. One where all the knowledge of all the ages was preserved for eternity.
The only other thing on the second level was the kitchen. I figured that with the amount of time I would be spending on the top two levels it would make the most sense to have the food on one of them. However, it was Deck H where the food was stored, think a giant pantry that spanned across half a country (yay me!). It wasn’t until we got to the lower levels, Deck P, that we got to the place where the robots were actually growing the food.
But I digress. Deck C, where I was now, was where I set up my passive weapons, the bolts of fabric that we found as well as the machines that were needed to produce the clothing that I wanted.
I went to one of the large tables that I had installed into the middle of the manufacturing room and pulled out a pen and paper from one of the drawers in the middle.
I thought about what I wanted and what I needed in terms of the outfit that would become my trademark as a weapons dealer.
I needed a hood of some kind or a mask. Something that completely covered my face and head so that no one would be able to tell what I looked like. I sketched a woman’s body onto the first paper and then repeated it a few times on the subsequent ones.
With an outline done, I began to draw the hood that would completely cover my face. I knew I wanted it black and sheer enough that I could easily see out of it, but no one could distinguish my face in return. I thought about the Hive hoods that I had seen on the dead bodies on my first day free.
I wanted something similar to that, but maybe with silver or gold designs going around my face. I closed my eyes and pictured exactly what I wanted.
Once I was satisfied with that, I moved down to the outfit itself. I needed something that was going to completely over every last inch of skin. So I knew I needed something with a high neck, gloves, and tights, but the rest of the look escaped me. Did I want a skirt or pants?
I knew that I wanted to make a statement and create a look that would never be duplicated, so I chose a skirt, or more exactly, a dress.
I would make it out of the black, impenetrable fabric. I wanted the best of both worlds, so I needed a slit in the front that went up to about my hips with a pair of black pants underneath. That way if I had to fight, it wouldn’t be limited by the dress. Quickly adding my ideas to the sketch, I looked at it with a critical eye. This was too basic, and although I liked it, it wasn’t giving off the aura of a badass woman.
I added a diamond shape to the torso in sliver, leaving my breasts bare of the decorations and only covered by the fabric itself. I added silver ’armor’ to the arms and shoulders, similar to what my actual armor looked like. For the split skirt, I added drapes and texture to it to make it more majestic than a simple panel.
I looked back at the hood that would obscure my face and realized that it was not going to be enough in comparison to the dress itself. Thinking about it more, I kept the hood but added a silver crown for my head and a light veil coming down in front of it. That way, even if there was a breeze, my opaque hood would keep my features hidden.
Adding thigh-high boots, once again a copy of my actual armor, I sat back and looked at what I had created.
