When Seira woke up she felt nothing but sheer hunger. The vampyress had burned herself out the day before, as it seemed, and the night had been kind of rough. After going on jobs day after day ever since she had arrived in Hargeon Town, Seira had barely allowed herself some rest and needed more blood than usual. The young woman woke up and noticed that her entire body ached terribly. She sighed, slowly got out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror. It was still dark inside the hotel room she was staying it but her night vision allowed her to see everything perfectly clear, as if the sunlight was shining through the window. She looked like a hot mess. Her hair was all over the place, she had dark circles under her eyes and her usually beautiful porcelain skin looked pale and unhealthy. Seira had yet to figure out how much blood exactly a vampire needed and ever since she had arrived in Hargeon she had made it a habit of hers to sneak into the hospital to steal some of their blood every now and then, but the young woman had also noticed that she wasn’t getting the exact right ratio for herself and that some days she needed more than on other days. Also, whenever she consumed human food she was doing fairly well, but lately she had stopped doing that as well simply because she felt as if it wasn’t necessary. Once she had become a vampire she noticed for herself that human food didn’t taste quite the same and while it was definitely bearable, some things were better than others and unfortunately unhealthy things such as alcohol were the most delicious things to her now. Seira had never been much of a drinker, but alcohol sort of calmed down the inner thirst and helped her at least until she got herself some actual human blood. She barely got drunk these days either and her alcohol tolerance was extremely high. Too high for a young girl of her size of course and thus she made sure never to completely overdo it unless she was alone. Now was one of those moments and since she had run out of blood bags about two days ago, Seira walked over to the shelf and pulled out a bottle of bourbon. She dank directly from the bottle and the burning liquid heated up her cold body, if only for a moment. This extremely unhealthy diet was nothing she was proud of, but some days it just couldn’t be helped. Ignoring human food while doing physically exhausting tasks during daytime was usually what caused her fatigue and exhaustion and especially when it came to things like swimming in the ocean during a storm it was only natural for her body to boycott her for a while. That was a few days ago and Seira, even though she was hungry, had been too lazy to fetch herself a blood bag ever since.

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Furthermore, she didn’t want to gather any unnecessary attention with the constantly disappearing blood bags. Of course it was about time for her to get something now and Seira took a few more gulps from the bourbon before she placed it back into the shelf and went into the bathroom. There, she would take a long hot shower, wash herself and try her best to make herself look presentable again. Sometimes, and this was almost ironic, it became painfully obvious when a vampire hadn’t been able to feed themselves for a while and from the books she had read about the race, they were known to be eternal beauties that never aged and were basically flawless creatures. As long as they were able to drink human blood that seemed to be the case, but the moment she forgot to do so, or rather, there was no opportunity presenting itself, things would look very bad for her. When Seira stepped out of the shower she blowdried her hair and put it up in a ponytail. Then she chose some relatively simple clothes for the day. A black dress, black boots and a black coat. As per usual, most of her body was hidden underneath layers of clothes and she could even conceal her face if she wanted to, but that wasn’t necessary. A little bit of makeup did the job and she looked just fine again. When Seira left the inn she was staying in she realized that she also hadn’t been able to sleep through the day like she usually did. It was only 9am, the sun was up and it was way too early for her, generally speaking. Usually, the vampire stayed up during the night and slept past the early morning hours and into the afternoon for the sake of avoiding the sunniest hours of the day, but it seemed that she hadn’t been able to do so due to her lack of feeding. She sighed quietly, pulled the hood deeply into her face and started walking through the streets of Hargeon Town without even thinking about touching human food. It wouldn’t exactly do her any good for now anyways and so she headed straight to the hospital, where she knew she would find something proper to eat. Hargeon’s hospital was alright, it was relatively big, definitely bigger than the ones in places like Orchidia or Marigold Town, but at the same time not as big as in Magnolia or Crocus. The good part about it was that Hargeon, especially with Blue Pegasus being here, was generally speaking considered a low crime city and thus the hospital didn’t require any security whatsoever. It was mostly the harbour where security guards and sometimes even Rune Knights could be found, which made things a lot easier for Seira. She did what she always did when she entered the hospital. She pretended to be a guest visiting a sick family member who was in a coma, even though this was ruthless, even for her.

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Seira used an elderly lady as a cover, who apparently never had any visitors other than her. She wasn’t awake, the coma kept her asleep and thus she obviously couldn’t confirm or deny the fact that Seira was an actual family member. It was sad, in a way, but couldn’t be helped. The nurses didn’t question her, in fact, they were glad that there was someone visiting the poor woman who was probably going to pass away soon and Seira made sure to always bring a few flowers at least, because she wasn’t a total monster. So before she entered the hospital she stopped by the same flower shop as always and picked out a bunch of flowers she liked. Seira was a generous person, so she bought a bouquet of peonies, alongside with some pink hydrangeas and carried it all the way into the hospital, where she was greeted by the nurses. The elderly lady, Mary was her name, was asleep as expected. When Seira entered her room, she put the new flowers on the table, decorated them nicely so they looked good and threw the old ones away, since she had no further use for them. Once that was done she opened the window to let some fresh air into the room and took her blanket to shake the dust out of it and make it all nice and fluffy again before she returned it to Mary, who smiled with her eyes closed throughout the entire process. Once Seira made sure that Mary was alright and had everything she needed, she waited for a good moment to sneak away into the storage rooms where they kept the blood bags. This was usually fairly easy since not many nurses were so far away and whenever she met one she said that she was simply going to go for a little walk and see if there was anything else she could get her “gran”. Sneaking into the room, stealing the blood bags and leaving again only took about five minutes, if at all. Seira was perfectly quiet and once she entered the room and got herself two blood bags she decided that it was time to leave the hospital again. She even ran into a few people here and there, greeted them and then left and returned to the streets of Hargeon. Seira was unsure whether or not she was ever going to see Mary again. The young woman had plans of leaving soon if she managed to find more job, and she was most likely going to leave tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. but she wasn’t sentimental so this shouldn’t matter. Seira knew a few places where no one else was and once she scouted into those dark alleys, knowing that no one else was around to spy on her, she took started drinking from the blood bags. Seira finished the first one in a matter of a few minutes and immediately felt the strength returning to her body.

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The blood was still cold and tasted absolutely delicious. After finishing that blood bag she pulled out a flask and poured the liquid from the second one into the flask so that she had something to drink from for the rest of the day. It was almost magical to her how quickly human blood restored her entire health and improved it pretty much immediately and when Seira pulled out a small mirror to look at herself she noticed how her teint had improved and she looked much healthier again. It was great and she felt much better now. Seira decided that it was finally time to visit the docks and look for a job. She assumed that it would go as usual. The woman would eventually run into Reagan Hullston, who was a client of hers, and he would have something to complain over that needed fixing. The smuggler was one of her only clients here in Hargeon ever since she had traveled here and Seira was perfectly fine with that. None of the work she did for him was exactly legal and she didn’t want to have to deal with other people besides him, seeing how that alone was already enough work for her. It was quite the walk from the hospital to the docks and Seira walked for about twenty minutes casually until she arrived. It was quite the busy day and Seira saw that a lot of ships were coming in and the few people who were actually working today seemed very stressed. Sometimes it just was like that at the harbour and sometimes she noticed that it was overflowing with security and Rune Knights and whatnot and then there were these days when she could barely spot any. That should please Reagan, she thought, but when she walked around for a while to see whether or not she could find him somewhere, she spotted him a few meters off looking out onto the sea with an expression on his face that showed dislike and unhappiness over something. Seira approached the man and frowned at his strange face. “Good morning,” she said and he slowly turned towards her. She could see by the look on his face that he was already trying to figure out for a way to her to assist him. “You are up awfully early, young lady. This is so unlike you.” She shrugged. “I plan on leaving Hargeon soon, so I’m looking for a few more jobs before I do that.” He nodded. “Well, it seems that you came at the right time because I’m having a problem with something and I need you to help me fix it. Today, several ships are set to arrive in Hargeon, carrying with them numerous boxes of tea that's to be spread throughout Fiore. Precious tea, actually. Great quality, very rare, hardly to be found here in Fiore. As you probably can imagine, I need that sort of tea. It’s good for my business. However, all of those damn ships have refused to work with me.”

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He sighed, visibly stressed out. “How unfortunate,” Seira responded with a hint of sarcasm in her voice and the man shook his head. “I’m tired of losing out on business like that. I refuse to lose out on business like that only because the government and the damn Rune Knights won’t let me. But you are going to help me, and I’m going to tell you exactly how!” He pointed his finger at her and Seira perked up. “How exactly?” The man grinned. “You are going to make them believe that their businesses are actually failing. Make them believe that they are not welcomed anymore in Hargeon, even less in Fiore. No one wants their damn tea, it’s worthless, it’s considered a drug and they can’t sell any of their things here. If you do that and send them away they won’t have any other choice but to come to me if they want to make business. And I am going to give them an excellent deal. You are going to impersonate a Hargeon dock authority and I have all the things you need to do that. All I need you to do is to be convincing. But surely, the likes of you have no problem with that, right?” Seira said nothing for a moment. It was true that vampires were known for their mind control powers, especially back in the day. But he couldn’t possibly know that, could be? “Right. I need equipment and papers.” Reagan gave her both, a proper uniform as well as the papers she needed to to justify her position in case someone came along and asked. Reagan knew that the person who worked today was sick, so no one could really question Seira. She was going by the name of Mrs. Sarah Hunter now, and while that name couldn’t have been more generic, she was just fine with it. It would do the job. Seira walked out and greeted some of the other worked casually, and when they saw the uniform no one even bothered to ask question. She explained that she was the Hargeon Dock authority for the day and that she would welcome the new ships that were about to set in. As soon as said ships that carried the tea arrived, the captain's came out to meet Seira. She pretended to look through her fake papers, gave the captains and their ships a frown and then shook her head intensely. “Excuse me, but your arrival wasn’t planned. What exactly are you doing here in Hargeon? It seems to me that you brought wares along to sell, but I have no information or application from you in my papers - I hope you are aware that trying to sell goods without getting the proper approval first will lead to consequences such as a permanent ban from the Hargeon harbour.” They became pale and immediately got worried, but explained that their arrival was verified, so Seira decided to ask them to verify the goods they carried on their ships instead.

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As soon as they presented her the tea and Seira was able to touch it and even smell it (it smelled like excellent tea and she felt really bad for having to do this), the woman started throwing a fit, throwing one of the crates overboard, explaining how she wasn’t going to allow them to smuggle drugs like that into the country, that it was absolutely forbidden and all that good stuff. Seira then continued to assault them with various questions regarding their credibility, whether or not what they were doing was even legal and if their true plan was to smuggle people into the country. She demanded to see all sorts of paperworks, making those poor people who were just trying to sell some goddamn tea feel extremely uncomfortable. She moved on by saying that she had been warned to accept tea from this country and this people in particular, as they have tried to sell their “drugs” through Galuna island before and were basically on the black list in regards to selling their goods to Fiore and that she was not, under any circumstances, going to accept something like that in her port. She also made sure to mention that she was going to inform the authorities and that it was best for them to be on their way and return to wherever they had come from, in case they didn’t want any more of their goods destroyed or thrown overboard. Seira made it perfectly clear that she was fine with taking care of removing the “drugs” herself by destroying them here and now and the captains were visibly frightened, worried and extremely disappointed, ready to turn around and leave. Seira then turned on her heel and left the ship, ready to depart from them. After about ten minutes, from afar, however she noticed that Reagan had already approached the people and was apparently working something out with them. It seemed that his plan had worked just fine and she saw relief on the merchants faces when they realized that there was still a chance for them to sell their tea after all. She waited for a while before she took off all her clothes and left the scene while no one was looking, so they couldn’t follow her. Eventually, Reagan was back by himself and Seira approached him to retrieve her reward. “It seems like you got what you wanted?” She asked and he turned towards her and handed her a bag that included her reward. “Yes, very much so. You did well. They had a change of perspective and couldn’t really deny the offer I made them. We are now working together and soon I will be smuggling some excellent tea into Fiore. You should have some when you see it somewhere, it’s really good.” At this point, Seira was barely listening to him as he swooned over his new deals and whatnot and started counting the money instead. He had been very generous with her and she thanked him quietly before departing.

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