Setting up a Trade Loop

“Human,” called out an Asari who had stepped in front of you as you made your way into Eternity on Nos Astra. You’d come here with the specific purpose to sell human **** to various Asari pubs, clubs and bars.

“Asari,” You replied casually as the aforementioned blue woman before you checked you out from head to toe. She was wearing one of those gowns that were all too common in the games. Here, in person, you could much more easily see the intricate designs and patterns woven into the cloth-like material. It appeared to be denoting some sort of scene or something.

“How would you like a business opportunity of a lifetime?” She asked, eyes finally coming back to your own. You could practically smell the bullshit wafting off of her.

“What sort of business?” You ask casually, as if this was just a normal job offering you might get dime-a-dozen in human space.

“The kind of business that will make you filthy rich,” The Asari replied, folding her arms as she gave you a smirk.

“What sort of business?” you ask again in the same tone as before.

“The kind of business you will only get once in a lifetime, you humans live remarkably short lives after all,” The Asari replied, putting her hands on her hips and swaying them to accentuate them. Your eyes flicked to the mostly concealed hips for a brief moment before returning to the Asari’s eyes. “Do business with me and your grandchildren will still be reaping the rewards,” she said, a slight undertone of seduction creeping into her voice.

“Perhaps the translator isn’t working properly yet,” You mutter with a sigh. “WHAT. SORT. OF. BUSINESS?” You ask loudly and slowly as if you are speaking to a complete idiot. The Asari recoiled as if you had just slapped her and blinked at you.

“What? You thought we didn’t have scams on Earth? Bitch please we’ve been scamming each other out of stuff since we first figured out how to fire the neurons in our brain buckets!” You tell the Asari, tapping your head to emphasise the point. “At any point, I can pull up a board with at least fifty job offers on it,” You tell the woman who still has yet to recover. “You’re right, I don’t have much time, and so it is far too valuable to stand around wasting breath with a two-bit con artist who thinks ‘years of experience’ directly correlates to I.Q,” you say before folding your arms and glaring the Asari down. Giggles broke out from the surrounding Asari and the alien in front of you began glancing around as she realised the whole thing was witnessed. She then hiked up her long dress and hightailed it out of the club.

With that done, you pull up to the bar and park yourself on a stool while the Asari behind it saunters over.

“What can I getcha babe?” Asked the raspy voice of Matriarch Aethyta, not that you are supposed to know that detail. Looking at her in person and not in the game world, she was very different and a lot closer to what her personality would dictate.

For a start, she was a lot more muscular than you’d expect. She had her arms bare to the shoulder and was wearing an outfit that looked like the commando leathers from ME1 legendary edition but with fabrics instead of leather.

“Whatcha got on the menu?” you ask curiously. Aethyta twisted a nearby display kiosk towards you, hit some buttons on her omni-tool and a catalogue of beverages appeared holographically in front of the kiosk, pictures included. “Nothing human then?” you ask as you scroll through the menu.

“What? You come to an Asari world and expect human things to be on the menu?” the Matriarch asked, clearly miffed at your supposed arrogance.

“No actually, I didn’t,” you reply casually as you select some Asari wine made from a fruit grown on Illium. “But that brings me to a business arrangement,” comment as Aethyta’s omni-tool lit up, confirming your order. Without missing a beat, she reached down below the bar and grabbed a white, plastic-looking cylinder with a clear window on one side. She turned the top of the cylinder, displayed the window to you and then poured the beverage into a waiting cup before showing you the window again so you could see liquid had been poured from the cylinder. You don’t know why she did this but it was so automatic that you guessed it was common for bartenders to do this.

“What sort of business?” the Matriarch asked, sliding the glass along the table to you and giving you a smirk that told you she was parroting your own words back, albeit the Asari equivalent,

“Several cases of brandy from Earth itself,” you reply before taking a sip of the Asari wine. It definitely tasted like no grapes had been harmed in the making of it. “Made from a specific fruit, plucked by hand and distilled so that the **** tastes like the fruit and aged in a barrel made of wood from a very specific tree from a very specific part of Earth,” You explain as you sip some more of your Asari wine.

Your idle explanation of brandy had several nearby Asari, who had been not so subtly eavesdropping, now very excited.

“Oh? And you just happen to have a few cases of this very special drink?” Aethyta asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Not on me, that’s a good way to get mugged,” you reply, taking another sip of your wine.

“No idea what a cup has to do with this but come back with the drinks and then we’ll talk,” She told you. You managed to hold in a sigh at the translator failure but otherwise shrugged.

“Sure but if I’m doing that, I’m packing heat . . . just so you know,” You tell the Matriarch who gave you a confused expression. You then call out a Russian toast and throw back the Asari wine.

^_^

“So you are the one with the ‘special Earth beverage’?” Asked an Asari as you entered Eternity. You had a trolly with three cases of brandy on it that clinked as you came to a stop. You had bought the brandy from a retail shop before you left Earth. In order to get the money for the transaction, and the docking fees at Nos Astra, you had used your god powers to grab an equal amount of credits from every single bank account in the galaxy. The amount you ended up taking from the individual account was so small, not even modern Salarian supercomputers would have been able to spot it but you’d put a ‘notice-me-not’ spell on it anyway.

“Are you the owner of this establishment?” You ask the Asari casually, flicking your gaze to Aethyta at the bar who just folded her arms and smirked at you. The Asari in front of you didn’t answer and instead went to grab a bottle of the brandy to inspect so you grabbed out your pistol which had been holstered on the small of your back. “Not answering before grabbing at stuff that isn’t yours isn’t a bright idea Asari,” you comment as the woman steps back,

“Yes, I am the owner of Eternity,” She told you, her eyes running over the cases. You holster your weapon and fold your arms. “These haven't aged long,” she commented, making another grab for the brandy. This time you let her.

“We tend to want to drink them sometime in our lifetimes,” you reply with a shrug.

“I had a bottle of wine from the 18th century, it wasn’t even that good,” The Asari told you. You shrugged at that.

“Well yeah, it was bottled in the 18th century, it’s probably vinegar by now,” you reply. “Though there are several museums on Earth that would pay a decent finders fee, especially if it was French . . . lot of those bottles got drunk or destroyed in the early 20th century and they are cultural artefacts,” You explain. The Asari suddenly got an ‘oh shit’ look in her eyes as her face went blank.

“Wot?” she asked intelligently.

“Well yeah, we hadn’t even industrialised until the 19th century . . . or figured out how to electricity or any of that,” You explain, pretending to be oblivious as the Asari blanched harder and harder as you kept speaking. “And then there were the several disastrous wars,” you continue. “Groups that made a point of finding and hoarding, or drinking, the old wines for prestige or as petty displays of wealth,” you continue. “Honestly, how did you even get something like that in the first place? If it is french, there hasn’t been a bottle of 18th century french wine seen for at least a century, the Louvre is offering a large reward for wine bottles from certain years,” you finish.

The Asari was practically shaking by this point and had gone an interesting shade of sky blue.

“BUY WHATEVER HE’S SELLING!!!” The Asari screamed as she tossed the brandy bottle in your direction and then broke the land speed record in another.

You chuckle as you insert the brandy back into its case and wheel the trolly over to the bar. Aethyta was also chuckle and had her omni-tool out already.

“So how much of that was bullshit?” she asked, shaking her head.

“None of it . . . cultural artefacts are extraordinarily valuable,” You tell the woman.

“Well shit, serves her right for not checking first,” Aethyta told you. “So how much are you charging for the brandy?” she asked.

“30 creds a bottle,” you reply with a shrug. Aethyta stopped what she was doing and blinked at you for a moment before looking back at the brandy.

“60 creds a bottle? That’s pretty cheap,” she commented lightly. You didn’t argue with her self-inflated price tag since you were already going to make a bit over $80 in profit off of cheap $30 bottles of brandy. The current exchange rate for creds to the ‘Unified Dollar’ was $3.72 to the cred after all.