In the marketplace a second hand dealer gets a few new items to sell.  Several stasis pods sit open in front of his shop, a freshly printed sign declares [Just arrived!  Barely used!  State of the art stasis storage units 5000- Free delivery!].  A single stasis unit sits to the side, a much smaller sign advertises. [750-  Runs! As-Is. Make us a deal! Free delivery!]. The lone stasis tube hums quietly while it's monitor remains dark, the door stuck shut.  The shopkeeper wanders around having various high tech lab equipment loaded into his shop.

Nono can hardly contain his excitement!  This'll be his first up-close look at a real Barakian ship!  And a chance to upgrade it to boot!

"Kupopopo!!" he exclaims with an arial loop-the-loop.  He'd love to talk shop with Joe, now that his suspicions are confirmed that Joe is a mechanic, but he's too excited to speak.  Besides... Joe was just asked an important question.

  While some had a habit of overly dramatic introduction, Joe had the bad habit of constantly forgetting that whole ‘introduce yourself’ thing.
  “It’s Joe, and now that just leaves you on the nameless list.”  Of course, when people remind him of this then he doesn’t exactly see the issue in doing the same to them.

 “Although I’m sure you could fill us in on the way if you wanted.”

  OOC Style: I have got to stop waiting till I’m about to tilt over to post things.  I’m feeling I’m forgetting something here.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:45, Tue 29 July 2008.

T'shock is a little unhappy from the way Joe asked her name. She feels like somewhere in there was a hidden insult. But she decides she has no solid evidence to back her feelings and just says, "My name is T'shock." as she leads the way to her ship.

Jacqueline walks out of an establishment that is not-so-ambiguiously named N'glair's Pub about an hour after her initial entry.  Aside from sampling the bitter local brew, it'd been a complete bust for information or a good drink. The most she was able to gather was that people in the Rush Settlement generally didn't seem to feel like they had a lot to lose by staying in the new colony.

At least that meant that a casino may be a worthwhile investment after all.  It made her fur bristle with pride at having chosen such a place to start up business.

As she walked further down, she came across the ever-present marketplace that every new settlement never seemed to be without. More creatures than she cared to pay attention to were selling clothing, food, and even weapons in the hopes of starting a new small business, or perhaps just making some pocket change.  Some of the products interested her a little, but she didn't see much overall that she couldn't do without.

One shop, however, does catch enough of her interest to warrant her coming over: the high-tech seller with the various stasis pods and lab equipment.  It's not the equipment itself that interests her so much as one detail she notices...

"Stasis Units for 5000 credits each, except for one at 750?" She walks up to the shopkeeper as she speaks, nodding to his merchandise. "Is there something wrong with that one?"

The shopkeeper makes a beeline towards Jacqueline as if he's able to smell the money on her, "Oh!  This one.  I got a warehouse full of lightly used equipment.  Some biomed company liquidated thier labs so I got a deal on a huge lot of barely used equipment.  This one specifically still works, it's just locked, and I don't want to spend the time and money having a technician come in to fix the monitor, and get it unlocked.  It runs great, and it has it's own power supply.  It'd make a great parts machine if you buy the rest of the stasis pods." he explains giving the cheaper pod a firm slap.  "And quite frankly, I just want it off my lot.  If I can't sell it I'm sure I could get a good price from the scrap yard."  He makes a show of thinking, then declares "You know, if you bought it here for 750 I bet you could get eight or nine hundred from the junk shop.  Working power supplies fetch good prices." he says pouring on the used car salesman charm.

On the way to T'shock's ship, Nono's big ears catch wind of the words "working" and "junk" in the same sentence and his fur stands on end.  Nothing breaks his heart like a perfectly good machine being tossed into a junkyard to rust.


"Excuse me, my friends," he says to Joe and T'Shock in the most heroic voice he can muster, "But it sounds like there's some rescuing that needs done straightedge away!"

With that he makes a beeline through the crowd toward the stasis pod salesman.


This message was last edited by the player at 23:34, Thu 31 July 2008.

The shopkeeper isn't the only one who smells money.  Across the street, Lucky, one of Ollen's most recent "business partners," has also noticed Jacqueline's clearly refined taste in clothes.

"I'll take your offer into consideration," he answers the shady real-estate salesman he was speaking to, dismissing any "limited time" objections.  He then turns to watch how Jacqueline carries herself more closely.

"What do you think, Frank?" he asks his the guide he hired to show him around, "Could she be the one I've been looking for?"

"Oh please," answers the wolf, annoyed, "Not a chance.  No muscle following her around for starters.  You really from Tavern?  I'm starting to think you've been yanking my chain."

Lucky chuckles and rubs behind his head, but offers no explanation.

  Joe nodded in response to T’shock’s answer.  “Nice to have met yah... And would this be life in danger rescue, or more personal ideals course of action?...  I can take a lake of horrified screams that it’s the latter?”  The first bit having been directed at the winged lady, the rest of his commentary had an obvious direction.

  Joe shrugged.  “Well, considering he’s the one who’s gonna be working on your ship, I guess heading there without him wouldn’t turn out so well.”

T'shock gets a Jigglypuff style frown and marches after Nono, looking like she's gunna get in a fight. Well SHE thinks she is, anyway. She has no idea what Nono is "rescuing."

Of course, she isn't rude to Joe and responds, "Then let's follow him." she says, pretty well stating the obvious.

Jacqueline eyes the salesman carefully, "So you're willing to take a possible loss of 150 credits?  From the looks of it, I doubt it'd fetch half that much, though it's not totally unrepairable or unusable."

Her eyes glitter as she looks around the shop.  She senses a deal to be made, and Jacqueline Diamant was never one to walk away from a deal empty-handed. She points out one of the normal stasis pods, "I'll tell you what... I'm in need of one Stasis pod personally, but I could use a spare. I'll buy that standard pod for your asking price, but I'll be generous and also give you 500 credits to take that piece of junk off of your hands. For a damaged piece of equipment, that's more than fair." She wasn't entirely sure why she wanted to buy the cheaper pod, but it might have been either the alcohol starting to take effect, her own desire to make a deal, or a combination of both. Rationally, she knows that this shopkeeper is ripping her off just as much on the 5000 credit pods, if not more, but she presses on.

The shopkeeper already has a bill of sale displayed on his tablet computer, which he hands directly to Jaqueline.  "Sold!  Like I said, can't have busted old junk skanking up my good product.  And that pod isn't just your standard apple keeper.  These were sold from Genitech labs, you can bet they don't buy your run of the mill budget equipment.  That old busted up one will make a good parts machine.  So, the two most important questions: 1.  Hard currency or e-transfer, and 2. Where do you want me to drop these off?".  He asks while working his weasly smile.

"Busted old junk!" Nono echoes in an offended tone, examining the readings on his diagnostics device, "Why, this marvelous machine is in nearly new condition, kupo!  In fact, even though it was left turned on it's power supply is happily humming full bore.  The last owner merely neglected this sturdy stasis pod and a mere tune-up would likely have it in performing perfectly!"

With one hand, Nono brandishes his diploma like it's an FBI badge, and with the other he flips a screwdriver into the air and catches it.

"If I may?" he asks, his posture indicating he's ready to repair the machine on the word "go"

T'shock gets a priceless look of pure confusion, disgust and amusement all at once. She wants to stop this, but can't help thinking it's A) None of her business and B) Making her pretty curious. She is prepared to defend this "Moogle" if necessary since she realizes Nono is basically about to scare off a customer which will tick off both the customer AND the salesman. After all... with the thing repaired, it will be worth a lot more.

  Apathy is a healthy emotion (such as it id considering the definition).

  For example, you have someone running off on you in order to give enthusiastic, if questionably timed (not that Joe was much better in that regard a lot) exposition about what they intended to do.

  Now he could worry about this, or he could be amused by the situation at others expense.  The former wasn’t much fun, and the latter wasn’t very nice.

  Of course, the end result wasn’t much different from T’shock’s at the moment.  Stand on the proverbial sidelines and see what happens.

The merchant looks down at the little moogle, looking slightly annoyed, "Wait'cher turn, kiddo.  Me and the lady have some buisness to conclude here.  If yer looking for a job go inside and fill out a resume."  Apparently this merchant can also smell empty pockets as well.

Lucky was thinking of casually stepping forward and helping the pretty possum resist some impulse buying, though this would be the first he's seen anyone buy two stasis pods on an impulse, but he decides to stay put and continue to watch from a distance.  For one, there's the unusual timing of an offer to fix the broken machine.  That isn't how cons are supposed to work!  He's probably not an accomplice.  On top of that there's two rather large persons following said mechanic, one with the look like she's ready to pull someones head off as soon as look at 'em.

"I've seen a lot of interesting new things in my travels," Lucky muses half to himself, half to his guide, "but this takes the cake."

"This could get interesting!" answers the wolf excitedly, always ready to watch a good fight.

Jacqueline looks down at Nono with a bit of surprise, but also a smirk before she turns back to the shopkeeper, "We already have a deal of 5,500 credits for the pair of them, right? Then run that through with an e-transfer. Jacqueline Diamant." She indicates her name as she hands the shopkeeper a family credit card.  It's more in her father's name than her own, but she was free to make any purchases for the new prospective casino that she felt were necessary. Storage is always necessary.

"As for the moving part... why don't you hold that thought for now?" While watching to make sure the shopkeeper runs the card accurately, she turns an eye and her voice down to Nono, "So... You say that you can repair it?  How much are you willing to do it for?"

The shopkeeper nods, running her card through the reader, inspecting the data that pops up.  "Ahh, there we go Ms. Diamant, 5500 credits.  And I'll only hold onto these for a day so you two'd better figure out where you want it." he says.  He looks down at Nono, wondering what he thinks he can do that the techs at the auction house couldn't or didn't bother doing.  "Oh, and if you end up breaking them, there's no refunds." he cautions.

"Your promise that you'll not scrap this fine machine is payment enough," Nono answers Jacqueline, ignoring the salesman's comment though clearly offended, "It wrenches my heart when a perfectly good gizmo gets sent to the garbage, kupo.  Oh... and you'll recommend me to your friends, won't you?"

With that, Nono pops open the service panel and focuses in on what his diagnostics tool indicated might be the problem.

"Just as I thought!" he announces triumphantly while holding up a scorched component in front of his face, "The display power relay needs replaced.  I could probably craft one in my spacecraft and save the 'order the part and wait for it to arrive' hassle if you'll let me take this with me."


This message was last edited by the player at 23:29, Wed 20 Aug 2008.

In Nono's hands the damaged circut board looks neatly cooked just as he declares.  Even without the monitor's circut board the stasis unit keeps running smoothly.

T'shock is once again wondering what the gods are up to if they have someone like Nono running around finding how to fix something when it seems like such an easy problem and Nono seems so... unassuming. T'shock steps closer as if to indicate the moogle has her protection should anyone think of stirring much trouble. But she considers how Nono is already on one job only to grab another. How many fix-up jobs did this moogle have when he offered assistance to T'shock? She decides to speak her mind. "You know... before you got distracted with this, you offered to look at my ship. How many jobs do you take on in a given day at random and how long do your customers wind up waiting?"
This message was last edited by the player at 08:54, Tue 26 Aug 2008.

  It was to Joe’s mild embarrassment that T’shock’s good point had completely skipped over his train of thought.

  He had been considering both why they would need to bring the whole thing with him in order to find or make the replacement to the relay.  Well, that and what someone who had just paid for the thing would think of someone they had never met before  rushing up and asking to take the whole thing with them.

  “Multitasking seems to work best when you’re able to actually multitask.”

  Of course, there were also the implications of a stasis unit being sold when it was active.  Would you consider it normal if a washing machine was doing it’s job when you bought it?  Would you check to see if it came with free T-shirts if you still bought it despite that oddity?  You would kind of have to by default if you ever planned on using it yourself.

  “As a timesaver for all involved, you do remember where we are right?  They sell those things.  And as you casually demonstrated, anyone can safely take them out and put them in while a machine is still going.”
  In THE FUTURE!^TM (or whatever this counts as), such safety concerns were no longer an issue unless needed for dramatic tension.  Joe's life has often been made easier thanks to this.

  With all the many and various fancy displays on things to let people know it was actually fancy sci-fi technology instead of regular technology, it would be a surprise if nothing could be found off the shelf.

  Though admittedly, if Nono had one of his own or fixed one up, it would probably be a bit cheaper.

Jacqueline 'hrms' at the offer Nono gives her, rubbing the underside of her muzzle in thought. "So, you'll repair it, just like that, huh?  Even though I admit that 500 credits is pocket change... I still would like to keep track of my purchases.  How long will it take and where is this spacecraft of yours located?"

After asking her question, she motions for the Moogle to wait as she turns to the shopkeeper and gives him a business card, a simple vanilla coloured card with the address and insignia of the Diamant Casino on Tavern: a crimson diamond with an ornate 'J' in the center of it. One the back, there's a scrawl indicating the address of her family's current waiting ship in the colony. "The address on the back there is where I'd like the pods to be sent, thanks.  That'll be effective for a week, so if it can't be delivered in that time, then send it to the main address there. There's no extra cost for that, right?"
This message was last edited by the player at 14:53, Sat 30 Aug 2008.

The shopkeeper inspects the card, "Hmm, Gerard spaceport pad 3 mooring 12.  I have my boys heading in that area to pick up a load later tonight.  How's 16:00 hours today sound?  And yeah, as the sign says, free delivery." the shopkeeper says making a note on his tablet PC.