Metropolis - Goldilocks: Capsule Bay 423 - Unit 4

Wednesday, May 13th, 2089 | 12:03pm

[Status: In-Game]

“You going to sit there scrawling love-notes all day?” Xavier asked.

“Yep,” Aya responded lightly. “You gonna keep asking me about it all day?”

“If it gets in the way of my business… yes.”

“In the way of—” Aya sighed. “If anything, I’m making you - sorry, us - more business by being here… and offering another service. How many Contracts have we sold today?”

“Twenty-three,” came his prompt, albeit moody, answer.

“See?” Aya asked, smugly.

“And how many weapons, trinkets, pieces of armour and other items have I,” he elongated the last word, “sold today?”

“No clue,” she said simply, not even bothering to look at him as she completed yet another Contract. She wasn’t about to give the man the satisfaction.

Picking up her quill, Aya went back to creating one Intermediate Contract after another. Purposefully ignoring the large blacksmith hovering nearby and the flamboyant elf strutting his stuff across the room, Aya focused on the money she still needed to make. Over the span of the morning, the personal 10,000 gold debt had been reduced to 5,198 gold, most of it attributable to custom Forum Contracts. Instead of the usual 12 gold standard Intermediate Contracts, detailed personalized Forum Contracts could get her anywhere between 20 and 50 gold. The average range tended to be around 30 gold, but Aya had managed to get a quite profitable 84 gold from a single Contract that morning.

Other than the obvious money-making benefit, working on Contracts non-stop had kept Aya in the shop all morning, preventing any possible confrontation with Serving Time. In that time, her inbox had been spammed with many threat-messages of varying degrees of violence. Telling herself she wasn’t taking them seriously, but also using the justification that no one was, for obvious reasons, requesting her dungeon-crawling services that day, she decided to spend the remainder of the day in the shop working on the debt.

When lunchtime rolled around a few minutes later, Aya was faced with mixed emotions. On one hand, she couldn’t wait to get out and finally find out her rank; on the other, she didn’t want to risk running into Doris’ friend. She wasn’t naive enough to think the woman had her best interests at heart. Aya didn’t expect the woman to be able to hurt her during lunch, not with the guards present, but she wasn’t about to take unnecessary chances with her life.

Aya waited until the very last minute to sign out for lunch. If the woman was still there, it would be obvious that Doris had sent her and easy for Aya to get away quickly. If not, she’d still be able to do a quick check of her rank, down of a nutri-pack and make it back to the shop before a whole real-world minute had passed.

In the end, the seventy Era minutes she’d spent worrying about the possibilities were for naught. The time she spent in the real world was quick and uneventful. She grabbed a quick nutri-pack from a woman she’d never seen before and downed it while checking her rank.

[5508/5791]

No longer planning on relying just on her rank to make player status, Aya hadn’t worried as much as usual about the number, but seeing it made the worries come back in a tidal wave. Sid had given her hope that Aya’s rank wouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of her fate, but that had been mostly tied to the ‘Review Pending’ notice… which was now gone. Aya wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Secondly, she’d been expecting a higher number, at least and hopefully higher than 5469, to be precise. 5469 was the rank Aya knew Yaz had been at, at level 15. Aya was now at level 15 and her rank was almost forty ranks lower than the girl’s had been days before, a girl who hadn’t focused on her stats at all. Aya hadn’t necessarily expected her stats to be taken into consideration for the rank, but she’d presumed to at least match the girl in ranking.

Finally, Aya could have sworn that the previous rank had been out of 5792, not 5791. Did that mean that someone had left? Been transferred? Released? Or… worse?

Aya’s thoughts were reeling with the possibilities and how each of them could have an impact on her when the strong smell of aftershave knocked her back into the present. The white-haired elf had just walked by her on his way to the counter with two swords in his hands and two girls at his sides. Aya wrinkled her nose and wondered how the guy had been able to get such a modern smell into the medieval setting of Era.

Not having reason to give it much thought until just then, Aya hadn’t even noticed that Era was completely devoid of the ‘clean’ smells she was used to in modern society. Part of her subconscious mind had simply attributed it to the fact that the whole region was experiencing a water shortage, but if a wannabe-playboy-elf could smell ‘good’, it had to be more feasible than she thought. Needing a distraction from the monotonous task of Scroll making, Aya watched the elf for a bit longer while she allowed her thoughts to run free.

He deposited the two swords on the counter before leaning his elbow on the counter with forced casualness. Unfortunately, he was a bit too tall to make the move look casual or comfortable and ended up looking like he was just leaning over in cramped pain. Aya cringed at the sight and focused on Xavier ringing up the two swords with his usual efficiency. The girls tried bargaining the price down for a short moment before they came to the realization that the blacksmith in the frilly apron wasn’t going to budge.

Aya thought the Xavier could have done it with a bit more subtlety. She wasn’t a fan of cutting prices, either, but sometimes, it was good to give just a little to make the customer feel like he’d gotten a bargain. That feeling would go a long way in guaranteeing future customers and positive word of mouth. In the end, she needn’t have worried; Xavier discounted 2 gold off of one sword and 4 off the other in order to ‘round the prices down’, but it was obvious from where Aya was standing that he’d done it for the precise reasons she’d just considered herself.

The interaction came to an end and the two female customers walked away with wide smiles on their faces as they showed their weapons off to each other, taking the blades out of the sheaths and swinging them around the shop a tad too boisterously for Aya’s liking. The girls left the shop and the elf said something to Xavier, but Aya couldn’t hear what through the low bustle of sounds in the shop. Then Xavier turned away and started tending to the next guest while the elf surveyed the shop for his next ‘victim’. Aya had considered canceling the guy’s Contract various times that morning. It seemed like he was embarrassing himself and the shop at every turn, but he’d also turned out to have a surprising gift for sales. Even occupied as she was with her own work, Aya had noticed the elf take customers to the counter on various occasions, each time carrying one of the rarer, high-end items they had on display.

Thoughtful, Aya rearranged her things, quickly bundling them together before she approached the elf.

“Hey…” Aya said eloquently.

“Oh, hey!” the elf said, turning to her with a wide smile.

Aya found herself wanting to return the smile, even if his faltered when he looked her up and down, probably trying to determine her gender.

“Can I help you?” he asked. “What are you looking for? Wait… Let me guess…” he paused dramatically. “A weapon?”

“No. Actually, I…”

“Oh…” he said, his face turning suddenly sad, his rehearsed joke spiraling down the drain, unappreciated.

Aya half snorted, half chuckled. It had nothing to do with his sad joke, but the elf apparently didn’t see it that way and immediately lightened up again.

“Well, in that case we’ve got lots of trinkets for you. We even have Contracts that our…”

The elf turned to gesture to Aya’s spot at the table near the window, when he realized it was empty.

“Oh… Well, our resident Scribe must have stepped out. But I can guaran— Wait. You’re the Scribe, aren’t you!?” he asked with the excitement of someone who’d just discovered the answer to one of life’s mysteries.

“Yeah… I’m also the person you’re currently working for…”

“Oh!” the elf said, pensive but not at all ashamed. “I thought you looked familiar!”

Aya had no words.

“So, what’s up… boss?”

“That perf—” the words sounded weird once she started speaking them so she changed tracks. “I just wanted to say I thought you smelled nice.”

“Thank you!” the elf said, beaming at the compliment. “It’s a fragrance I created myself!”

“Wow, really?” Aya asked, encouraging him to answer the questions she wanted to ask without having to.

“Yes! When I first got here, the first thing I noticed was how disgusting everyone smelled. And the ladies, they like the smells… ya know?”

“Yeah, I know…” Aya said, trying not to snort at his know-it-all tone. In all her twenty-two years of life, she’d never come across anyone as ignorant about what attracted women.

“So, just add a little spice here a little magic there and the bitches come crawlin’.”

“I see…” Aya said, controlling herself to not point out the obvious lack of ‘crawlin’ bitches’.

“Yeah, it gets them all crazy and they be jumpin’ all over you.”

Aya nodded, realizing how susceptible the guy was to positive reinforcement. He must not be getting much of it for her barely-attentive remarks to embolden him so much.

“So, what’s your name again?” Aya asked, needing to dial him back a bit before she let him down the track she wanted.

“Elfyr, but my friends call me Fyr.”

Aya wondered how many people that meant.

“Ah, cool name,” she said noncommittally, hoping he didn’t invite her to start calling him that. “I’m Aya. I was actua—”

“Right!?” he said, as if she’d just agreed with him on politics. “I thought for sure the name would be gone by the time I signed on, but nope. I just said it and… voila. There it was.”

“I don’t think they mind double names in Era…”

“Oh…” he said, completely deflated. “I thought I was the only one…”

Seeing the perfect opportunity to strike, and get him excited about the right topic, Aya said.

“So, I was actually wondering about that sick perfume of yours. Could yo—”

“It’s not a perfume, it’s a fragrance.”

“Right. Well, this fragrance of yours…” she paused, realizing he needed some bolstering before she introduced him to her idea. “It’s really something, man. I was wondering if you could give me some and maybe… teach me some tricks?”

Getting the last bit out hurt, but she knew it would be necessary to get him in the right mindset.

“Tri— Ohhhh. I got’chu covered man. C’mere,” Elfyr motioned Aya closer as he strutted toward one of the shelves where four women were standing, browsing through some wares. Aya followed.

“Hey girls…” he said in a much lower and ‘sultrier’ voice than he’d used with her.

All four of the women looked up, but two of them immediately turned back to the goods they’d been looking at.

“Can I help you?” he asked, oblivious to the obvious lack of interest from all four women and downright rude dismissal from two of them. “What are you looking for? Wait… Let me guess…” he said, Aya took the liberty of cringing during his dramatic pause before he delivered his ‘punchline’. “A weapon?”

“Yeah!” one of the women said, a gnome only a head or so taller than Aya. “How’d you know?”

“Oh you know… I got my ways…” he said, suggestiveness soaked, deep fried and dripping from his voice.

The female gnome nodded excitedly and Aya wondered how long it would take the elf to notice she was making fun of him.

The answer: never.

In fact, what happened next had Aya’s jaw hanging wide open. She stood by in stunned stupefaction as the elf clowned his way into the good graces of all four women, reviewed their browsing choices and directed them toward another set of shelves with top-of-the-line items. She watched as he waxed poetics over each item, matching it to each woman’s eyes, hair or other feature and eventually had her falling in love with the weapon. Aya finally remembered how to close her mouth when all four women walked out, each wearing a happy grin on her face. Xavier had a similar grin of his own and Elfyr just smirked.

“So… you ready to learn?” the elf asked, full of cocky satisfaction.

“Y-yes.”

What followed were, in Aya’s opinion, twenty minutes of pure torture. When the elf spotted a new group of girls, he pushed Aya toward them and whispered very obviously in her ear, walking her through what he called ‘The Moves’. Aya cringed at nearly every single one of them, as they each reminded her of the most annoying things guys ever did.

Invade their personal space without permission.

‘To let them get a proper whiff of your pheromones,’ he said.

Touch.

‘Women love skin on skin contact,’ he said.

Throw compliments at them like confetti.

‘They like feeling special,’ he said. ‘Most of them have serious daddy issues and suck up compliments like a sponge. You need to be that approving male figure in their life.’

Pretend like you’re hot shit that knows everything.

‘Doesn’t matter if you know what she’s talking about,’ he said. ‘Women like feeling protected by men. Stronger, smarter men. And don’t worry about it either. They usually don’t know anything, anyway.’

She forced herself through his guidance and was disgusted to see some of the tactics actually work. After they got to the counter with their second batch of women, and Elfyr’s morale was once more flying, she took him aside.

“Dude,” Aya said. “I just don’t smell as good as you.”

“Yeah, you really don’t,” he said.

“You gotta show me how to make some of that sick… scent,” she said.

The elf smirked.

“Is that an order… boss?”

“I guess it can be; why?”

“’Cause it’ll take a while, and we’ll have to leave for a bit.”

“Far?”

“Hmmm,” he looked up in thought. “For the one I’m wearing today… a bit. But I can teach you one of the simpler ones.”

“You have more than one?”

“Of course,” he said with a smirk. “Different flowers for different bees.”

“… Right.”

Aya was a little worried about running into Serving Time, but the morning had been so monotonous and reminiscent of her library days that she just needed to get out and stretch her legs a bit. The justification for shirking on the debt payment was that all the profitable Custom Forum Contracts had been completed. Any further Contracts she made would have to be sold to the library and would be going for nearly half the price. Furthermore, she was exploring a possible investment opportunity.

An hour later, she was convinced of two things: the elf was going to make her a fortune, and he had just wasted two hours of her day.

It had taken longer than expected to find all the ingredients for Elfyr’s ‘fragrances’ and after Aya bolstered his ego a tad too much, he ended up showing her the recipe to not one, but seven different fragrances. Unfortunately, he only decided to reveal that every recipe depended on the Apothecary Skill after all ingredients had been found, harvested, sorted, culled and selectively pressed.

“Wait,” Aya said incredulously. “You’re saying I won’t be able to actually make any of these myself?”

“Well that depends,” he said.

“On?”

“On whether or not you already have the Skill.”

“… I don’t,” she said, starting to feel the conversation shift into an oddly familiar path.

“Well then you’ll need to learn it.”

“And where do I do that?”

“The right question would be with whom.”

“I see,” Aya said, refusing to go down the path. One Donovan was enough for a lifetime.

“You could learn it with the official NPC Apothecary of Durrenheim,” he said. “Or you could ask any player that has his or her Apothecary Skill at Expert or above to teach you.”

“Is your—”

“Not high enough, I only learned it at level 43. It’s been a slow grind.”

“Lev— What level are you?”

“Fifty-eight.”

“Wh— Why are you even here then? I’m pretty sure the Basic Contract pays… Well, not enough for a level fifty-eight player, that’s for sure.”

“I only came to buy a dagger,” Elfyr said, patting a jeweled dagger at his waist. “But it turned out to be a good place to meet girls,” he said with a smirk.

“… How old are you?”

“Old enough,” he said, smirk turning lecherous. “If you know what I mean…”

“Huh…” Aya said non-committally, not wanting to have ‘pedophile’ mistakenly added to her Era file. She would have to meet her Goldilocks psychologist that week and Aya didn’t want to explain why she was having inappropriate conversations with someone she was sure was a minor. Definitely NOT old enough.

“So,” Aya said, finally switching the topic back to what she wanted. She’d done enough ego-boosting for a lifetime. “How do you feel about producing these… wholesale?”

“You mean… to sell at the shop?” he nodded his head in the direction of the shop, which they’d finally managed to circle back to.

“Exactly,” Aya said. “After watching the shop today, I’ve come to the conclusion that we could benefit a lot from greater product variation.”

“And by product variation you mean…”

“Your fragrances.”

“Ohhhhhh….”

There was a drawn out, uninterpretable moment.

“So…” she said when it was becoming obvious he wouldn’t take the conversational initiative himself.

“Well…. I dunno man. I mean, I kinda like being the only one that smells good. Gives me a boost with the ladies, ya know?”

“Do you really need it, though?” Aya said, smiling with a touch of challenge. “You forget I’ve seen you with the ladies. I don’t think you need much of an advantage at all.”

“I don’t…” he started, but Aya saw her words hit home and the gears of his head start clicking in. “You know… I think you’re right,” he amended. “I’m doing all men of the world a service. It’d be unfair if I didn’t level the playing ground for them at least a little bit.”

“… Exactly,” Aya said, not even questioning how the guy jumped from one extreme to the other.

After that, the negotiation of terms went by in a heartbeat. Aya was expecting Elfyr to play hardball and pitched her offer extremely low. She suggested a low one-time fee for the recipes and the rights to use them for sale. He countered unexpectedly.

“I’ll want double that, and I want branding rights.”

“Branding rights?”

“Yeah, Like New Spice or Xae in real life, I want to have a brand here.”

“Done,” Aya said before Elfyr realized he’d been played.

The most sensible way for him to sell his fragrances would probably have been a fixed cut of the profits or royalty per bottle sold, something that would keep him earning money for as long as the product was being made. Aya’s suspicions that the guy was a young teenager in real life were almost confirmed, but she decided not to go there yet, at least not when she had something to feel guilty about.

Manipulation Successful!

Your tree flourishes.

Stage III: 97%

Aya hadn’t seen such a big jump in her Education Tree since Stage I. It had been slowly growing with every single Contract that she made, so much so that she’d eventually just turned off the notifications entirely. She usually checked her notifications in clumps, she only did so now to check on her finances. Not much had changed since the last time she checked; the debt was down to 5,022 gold.

“With one condition of my own,” Aya added as if she’d planned on continuing the sentence from the beginning.

“Shoot.”

“If you get to decide on the name of the brand, then I will make the down payment in… ten days.”

“Ten days?” Elfyr asked, brows wrinkled in confused suspicion.

“Yea, just to be sure the product isn’t a total flunk. Don’t worry, it’s how we do things in the real world, too.”

“Oh…” Elfyr said uncertainly before adding, “Yeah, yeah. Of course! Ten days!”

“Alright, great. It’s a done deal, then. Let’s sign a Contract and make everything official.”

“A Contract, sweet.”

All doubt about Elfyr’s age went out the window. The moment a Contract was mentioned excitement bubbled up in his eyes and Aya could see a kid in her mind’s eye, jumping at the chance at doing something adult. She went from feeling bad to feeling downright guilty and decided to make an Intermediate Contract with all the bells and whistles she could think of, to maybe soothe her conscience a bit.

It didn’t; Elfyr’s excitement only made her feel worse.

After a long afternoon of arrangements for yet another production line, Aya’s penultimate Trial Era day came to a close. She managed to pay off the entire 10,000 gold debt with her share of the store’s daily profits, start a new line of products with a new bundle of Contracts using Xavier as a middleman and recruit a new high-level player into her guild by simply asking, even if it was just a pre-pubescent wannabe-lover-boy-elf.

The only drawback was that she would have a product line by the name of “Loving like Elfyr” lining her shelves starting the next day.

Goldilocks Penitentiary System Message:

You have 10 minutes to log out.

If you do not do so within the allotted time,

the system will forcefully do it for you.

Meal Serving is due.