Once Ben started his job, Vance really got to work. He played the role of the interested friend, asking Ben lots of questions about how his work went, what he did, and similar trivia. Jez meanwhile was confident that Vance had done something to get Ben the job - it simply wasn’t possible in her mind that it just so happened to come together after they talked, it was so improbable - but Vance had been with her the evening that Vance got the job, out in one of her favorite spots to just sit and relax or do their schoolwork, so he had a great alibi. Vance was aware of the suspicion, and spent time repeatedly going over how hard it was to believe that after he had given up hope, it had all just happened; eventually, the repetition, and the knowledge that it was incredibly good fortune however it had happened, quieted Jez’s suspicions in the same way it had Ben’s. As a result, she was happier than ever, and at least subconsciously even more devoted to Vance when she saw how happy Ben was in the job that Vance had originally suggested.
Before too long, Vance was getting details about the ingredients and the suppliers, the recipes and the processes, all from his casual conversations with Ben. One day Vance posed the question to Ben, as if it had just come to his mind “Hey, do you think I should try to become a supplier of medical ingredients? It’s good honest work, and I’ll bet it would pay well. You’re doing so well, and if I could find some good sources of ingredients, I could sell to all sorts of chemists, in any town. After all, medicine is medicine, right?”
Ben agreed that it was a fine idea, and Vance simply requested Ben’s help to point him towards which ingredients were most-used, which were the most expensive, which were hardest to get, and so on. Ben was more than happy to help his friend, and it put neither him nor Chemist Levin in any sort of risk, so it was a no-lose proposition. With that information, Vance began to set up a network, searching for sources of some of the rarer or more expensive ingredients, in order to start his new operation.
Initially, Vance had to get the ingredients by hook or by crook - and almost always, it was by crook. Getting them off of supply carts, taking them out of other stores, whatever he needed his network to do, he started stockpiling the targeted ingredients. At the same time, Vance realized that he would have to have a sustainable supply if he really wanted to make it in this business, and so he began to get set up to garden in a protected, out-of-the-way location. When he felt he had enough to get started, Vance had Ben suggest to his boss that he could probably obtain one particular ingredient at a lower price point than he got now, with the same quality; the chemist agreed to a trial, congratulating his young eager apprentice on his initiative, and the ball began to roll.
Vance’s fledgling medical supply business took off, and soon he had a small contingent of regular customers. His garden was overgrowing the boundaries where it might not be noticed, so he rented a plot of land from a farmer outside of the city and moved his growing operation there. It was going well. Profits were high, and he could always find other ways to get supplies if he needed to undercut a competitor or land a particularly large sale that would stretch him too thin.
Once Vance had a steady stream of business going, the next idea was even simpler - he needed to know the recipes, the actual mixtures, that a medical chemist created. Vance knew he that if he asked Ben to supply this, he’d probably do it, but be suspicious; so instead, Vance arranged a night raid of one of his other customers, and got a copy of the man’s private recipes. After making a copy himself - this was no task for an underling - Vance had the book replaced. While he was no chemist himself, Vance figured it wouldn’t be too hard to scale the recipes up, since he had the supply, and make larger batches than a chemist could easily and readily prepare on demand.
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Choosing one to start with that contained only ingredients he already had handy (a simple concoction to settle an overactive digestive system), Vance tried his first mass production. He then pitched the idea to a few of the more crafty and financially-savvy chemists - they could buy it in bulk, ready-made, and simply dole it out in portions to their retail customers. It would save them time and money, allowing them to serve more people and be less sensitive to supply changes in their ingredients. Before he knew it, Vance had created for himself the burgeoning medical middleman market. He was on the path towards the future of his dreams; he just needed to control his customers a little tighter.
By undercutting the majority of his potential competitors on ingredients, Vance had already managed to build up a loyal customer base, but it was too risky, as his price point depended on continued illegal activity to maintain a steady flow of supplies. But Vance was also the first to market these ready-mixed drugs, and the chemists were flocking. Vance waited for their business and their prices to reflect a dependence on his offering, and then really began to turn up the pressure. He subtly reminded his customers that their reputation was on the line, as well as their business, if there was ever a quality problem, or a lack of availability. He used that fear to demand higher prices, and for those that couldn’t afford it, he offered to take a small piece of the profits that they made off selling the medicine.
This didn’t work for everyone, but it worked for enough people that even with a somewhat adversarial relationship with his customer base, Vance felt that they were beholden to him and he wasn’t going to go anywhere - they didn’t have to like it, but it was the best deal they were going to get. He made examples of some that didn’t play along, cutting their medicine’s potency or even letting some “problem” ingredients get into their batches, just once every sixth or seventh batch. With no regulation and no inspection possible, it was difficult to prove that there were problems from Vance’s supplies, and anyway, Vance would point out that he worked in large-scale, and none of his other customers had problems.
At the same time that he was working the system with his customers and building a new empire, Vance was realizing that many of the former tools in his toolbox - whether person, skill, or actual instrument - had begun to lose their usefulness. He consolidated his business, shut down (or turned over) many of his other operations that weren’t directly tied to medicine-making, and began to cut the majority of people he had dealt with before out of his life. However, he was unsure how to deal with his relationships with Ben and Jez. He didn’t particularly need Ben at this point, nor did Ben have any potential sway over him. Due to this, Vance didn’t really need Jez either. Vance saw little risk in cutting them both out, but for some reason, was hesitant to do so.
Perhaps it was because of how entrenched in his life that both had become - he and Jez had moved out of their respective houses after school was over and started living together, and Ben was nearly always around for some reason or another. Still, it seemed like a waste of his time and effort to maintain the relationships if they weren’t going to be used for anything. Vance ultimately decided that it was worth the cost of maintenance to keep a set of tools he’d honed so well handy; he’d find some use for the two of them, he was certain. Besides, he was at this point confident that in another year or two he’d be able to sell the business off and make his escape to wherever it was he decided to end up. If he felt like companionship, he could always decide to bring Jez then, and if he didn’t want it, he could leave her in Khartok. There wasn’t a rush, if he didn’t force it. But he would have to think of something to do with the two of them.