Fayette liked direct methods. A factory was doing nasty stuff? Simple—get rid of it. Need to get rid of something? Simple—fire. However, the reaction from the others was not quite what she had been expecting. Three silent stares were all she got for her proposal.

Eventually, Mireille sighed deeply. “Fay—we can’t just burn down the factory.”

“What? Why not?” Fayette shut her eyes, thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Oh, right, of course! Because it’s made of brick, right? I don’t think you can burn brick.”

“No! That’s not the issue here! It would be like, a really big deal! Smashing the whole place up would have us all caught in moments! How would we even do that?”

“Well, something has to be done to stop this. You have a better idea? Maybe a bomb?”

Elise slowly raised her hand, a nervous look on her face. “Excuse me, stupid question." She flinched back a bit, gulping under Fayette's enthusiastic stare. "I- if you bomb, burn, whatever else to destroy the factory, where am I going to work?”

Fayette blinked her eyes, disbelieving. “Your own mother is sick, probably because of that stuff your factory is pumping out! Are you seriously saying that? ”

The [Labourer] shifted uncomfortably on her bed, gripped her braid, pulled it taut, and lowered her gaze “Well, yeah. I know. It’s frustrating, but it’s also true. Work is short out here, and we really do need it. A lot of people will end up on the streets if it shuts down. What if we just spread the word? If people knew, we could make them stop.”

Olivia scoffed. “A risky effort, that. I’ve dealt with highborn. A [Lord] as high up as ours here can’t have news getting out that his factory would do something like this. Once his people get one whiff of word spreading, the hammer gets brought down, hard.”

“Can he really do something like that?” Mireille asked. “Workers from his own factory are being affected, right? Surely he can’t brush off poisoning them.”

“Hm, you would have a point were the situation more acute... but right now it’s not serious enough for that.” Olivia answered.

“What do you mean?”

“Two factors. One: the illness is not that severe in the short term. People fall sick for a few weeks, then eventually get better, building a tolerance. The young and hearty don’t get affected much at all. This type of thing doesn’t really get nasty until the long term.”

Mireille nodded. “Alright, that makes sense. The second reason?”

Olivia gestured outside her window. “It’s only affecting one segment of this one district. Patients are found on a long, but narrow tract, which expands as it nears the river. If it comes to it, the factory can just fire everyone from here, and hire from elsewhere. There are lots of people in need of work. It would hurt for a bit, but their machines don't really need high levels to work.”

Fayette frowned. It sounded like all their problems were coming from one source.

“Isn’t this simple?” she asked. The others turned to look at her, and she raised her hand in a lecturing manner. “We have a bad boss here, causing trouble and doing bad things—I’ve been in that situation before. Just kill them and get some new work! It’s worked well enough for me.”

Elise gasped in horror. “Kill him? You can’t just kill a [Lord]!”

Fayette shook her head. “Actually, you can. It’s not really that difficult, much easier than monsters to be honest. Just take a blunt object and—”

“Fay.” Mirielle interrupted. She had a palm to her face and was frowning deep. “We really don’t want to make murdering [Lords] a habit, alright? Out in the countryside with a minor [Lord] there were less eyes and such, but this is a big city, and the man probably has a formidable defense. Also, if he just went and died, you can bet all possible measures would be taken. We would have a lot of people after us.”

Fayette frowned. Things were getting a bit too complicated and weird again. She hummed for a moment. “—so, I guess it’s back to burning down the factory then?”

“No! We are not doing that! Enough with the fire.”

Olivia slammed her fist on the table, getting everyone’s attention. “If not fire, what? Something has to be done. Something immediate. I’m done letting this fester now that I know the cause.” She turned her gaze around the room, meeting everyone's eyes. "It will stop."

Mireille shut up for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Alright, you are right. We’re just going in circles right now. We need to plan. Whatever we are going to do, it’s not going to be simple.”

She looked around the room. “Do you have drawing supplies somewhere? Ink and a board, or something else?”

Olivia frowned but did not rebuke the question. She walked off, shifted through a few piles of junk, then came back with a wooden board, a quill, and some ink.

Mireille accepted them, propped up the board on a table against the wall, and started drawing. She first drew a fat man with a tophat sitting atop a factory, then a pipe leading out of the factory, then a district at the end of the pipe. Fayette thought the drawings were just a bit too cute for a serious planning session like this.

Mireille trailed her quill on the pipe from the factory to the district. “So, we need to stop this whole process at some point here. Do you have any ideas?”

“You sure we can’t just sabotage the factory directly?” The [Doctor] asked.

Mireille sighed. “We’ve been over this. Whatever we do—it can’t be too obvious.”

“Then do you have something better to offer?”

“...A longer pipe?”

“You know that’s stupid.”

“It’s hard, alright? A good answer won’t come immediately!”

Olivia and Mireille fell into a debate, thinking on the merits of various plans, while Elise interjected here and there. Fayette really didn’t care for it. It was all getting so... complicated. Why does this have to be such a pain? They’re trashing the place, but we can’t stop them because people need to work on their trash-the-place machines so they can live in the trashed place? What the hell is this? No sense at all.

She started to get angry. When things at the mansion started getting bad, the solution had been simple: Get rid of the man in charge and ditch the place. But now, all of a sudden she wasn’t being allowed to go give the [Lord] a good broomful of justice. Stupid city. Stupid [Lord] and stupid factories. This is what happens when people don’t hire enough [Maids]—trash just piles up and nobody takes care of it.

Irritated, she slammed her fist on the wall, interrupting the debate the others were having. “I wish we could just make the [Lord] and his ilk take care of it! If only we could, like, move the trash to those who are making it. I bet that would have them thinking twice!”

Mireille looked at Fayette, amused. “Fay, you know we can’t just—”

“Wait.” Elise interrupted. Her face was thoughtful, measuring.

Mireille turned to her, quirking a brow. “What, does that plan actually make sense to you? Don’t be silly.”

The [Labourer] shook her head. “No— it’s... You remember, the factory is high up on the ridge, right? It’s actually located just slightly on the other side—the rich side.” She pointed at the image of the pipe on the board. “That’s why they need that whole pipe setup. If they just let that stuff off right there, on site, it would naturally flow down, towards the better folk’s side.”

Mireille tapped her quill on the board. “So, you’re saying that if we just, say, punch a hole in the pipe somewhere—” She crossed out a segment. “—our problem would be solved? It would flow away down from here, to the other side?”

Elise nodded. “A-at least I think so. It would make sense. Things flow down, right?”

Fayette smiled. This was more like it, let the ones responsible deal with it. “I like this plan. Is this ok with you, [Doctor]? Or is it bad to let the factory run and keep polluting? It would be going in a better direction.”

The [Doctor] wasn’t quite smiling, but the savage gleam in her eye was answer enough. “I have no opposition to something like this. And please, call me Olivia.”

Mireille still looked sceptical. “Alright, so we do something to change where all that nastiness goes, fine. Won’t someone notice? Also, how will we be doing this? Get some workers to sabotage it?”

Olivia shook her head. “Risky letting word of our operation spread too much, especially to workers at the factory. Their [Foreman] might have some loyalty check skill, those are not uncommon. We might be discovered.”

Elise raised her hand. “What about me then? I know about this stuff now.”

Olivia looked at her, and poked at the Labourer’s injury, causing her to wince. “You’re not going to directly participate in this with injuries like that. By the time you’re back to work, it should have been long enough. You should be distanced from whatever has happened.”

Mireille grimaced, then drew three stick figures at the bottom of the board. One with a frilly apron and broom, one with a surgeon's knife, and one with a long, pointy needle. “So it’s going to be us three who do this then? Any ideas on execution?”

Fayette first looked around the supplies strewn throughout the room, then turned to the Doctor. “Olivia, do you have any alchemy supplies? I have an alchemy skill, maybe we could make a bomb, and clear out a new path for the runoff. Like, blast a hole into the pipe and ground.”

“Hmm, yes, I do have supplies. And an alchemy skill of my own.”

“That sounds... difficult.” Elise said. “It’s going to make noise, doing something like that. Won’t people want to investigate such a thing, and then discover what you've done?”

Everyone turned silent for a moment, pondering over the issue. Finally, Mireille spoke up.

“I think we’ll need a distraction. People will know that something has happened, but if we fool them into thinking we’re after something completely different, they might overlook everything else. Especially if we mask our tracks carefully, and make sure the breach in the pipe doesn’t get noticed.”

Olivia frowned. “How would that work, in practice?”

Mireille drew an explosion over a segment of a pipe, then tapped at it. “As you said, this is going to make noise. People will notice something has happened. So—” She moved her quill towards the factory, to a corner as far from the pipe as possible, then drew a plume of smoke. “We make them think something completely different is happening.”

Fayette suddenly grew more enthusiastic. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I think that’s a saying. Are we back to the burn-things-down plan?”

Mireille nodded. “Well, yeah. A bit at least. So, an explosion happens in one place, makes a bunch of noise, then smoke starts coming from somewhere else. A simple misdirect. Then we, I don’t know, steal some important looking papers or something like that. They’ll think that’s what its all about, then we take care, and cover our actual tracks carefully.”

Fayette started taking out her alchemy supplies, ready to get to work. “This sounds good, let’s do it. Olivia, can I see what you have?”

Elise tried to stand up on the bed but winced back down from the pain. “Sorry for not being of help here.”

“Relax.” Fayette said, standing up and placing a comforting arm on the woman’s shoulder. She pointed at herself. “I’m a professional, I’ll make sure this will get handled.”

Elise first looked doubtful. But. She ran her eyes over the group. A [Maid], a [Seamstress] and a [Doctor]. A motley party that really didn’t look like it belonged together, but there was something there. Some type of strength she didn’t believe she yet had.

“I... guess you really will do this. It’s actually going to happen.”

For some reason—she believed.