They were going to fill Tunie with refugees.

They were going to strap the both of them down in contracts so that they could not afford to let a single one leave.

There would be such a load that Tunie’s entire store of grist will be all but exhausted!

She was going to have to flee Redweed and all of the reef, she was going to have to coast out into the outermost void where horrors unknown dwelt.

She was going to have to wait out the lives of stars and even then traders would pass the infamy of her and Tunie’s sins to newly seeded civilizations on and on into eternity until-

“Hai There!”

Pylo found herself smirking like a terran at the thing’s goofy floppy body. She had no idea what thought was going to come dredging up from its obscene archive till it had already arrived. No hint of any activity or thoughts at all prior.

“You should start talking! You are a good Girl!”

Pylo noticed what was going on around her. She was pulled out of her horrified funk by the absurdity of this perplexing ‘trade representative’.

One that seemed like it was halfway to transitioning from a terran to a spherimorph.

It had pushed against her face with one of its squishy stubby distals and fixed her with a flat eye disk.

Apparently done and with just as empty a mind as it seemed to always have It shoved off her face with another limb.

All of this had transpired without anyone else having noticed her sinking into an utter panic.

Not even the trade representative that had instigated it out of some sadistic and weird spite had apparently realized how close she had come to completely shutting down over it.

Wierdo.

That was something vicious going on there.

What did Pylo and Tunie even do to her or her crew?!

Whatever.

Pylo rallied herself, she had talked to her passengers about what had happened. And although she had decided to let quite a lot slide and just pay whatever fine the tribunal concluded. She was not going to let Tunie get starved to death by overloading.

So she was now shouting over the muttering and murmuring offers and discussion of multiple Traders trying to negotiate proper terms of how much they could ‘graciously take on’ to lighten their ‘fellow trader’s’ ‘burden of obligations’

“EXCUSE ME!”

She shouted across their various language centers, strumming on various little idiosyncrasies of social strata and status sub modules as existed in each individually and yet synchronized just right for them all to jolt and turn exactly in synchronous unity with each other.

Placing each trader and the Redweed minister in a unified social position with her. With a slight lilting flutter in each’s receptive ganglion, protocol interface and the strangely isolated speech centers of the ohma Pylo reinforced that shared position as momentarily inferior/servile to her in social strata.

It was a bit of a dirty trick and any Siren would have noticed it immediately. As it was most of them would catch her on it if she left them to wonder on why she suddenly had their rapt attention for much longer.

“I have my own grievances with the Ministries of Redweed and they are directly relevant to their current self inflicted disaster. Which I think should be fully voiced and evaluated before we go bandying about charity cases to this group of incompetents”

The minister was shocked from Pylo’s previous spell with a righteous fluttering long light of heated indignation.

“Self INFLICTED?! We already established that this was some-”

“Yes, although it is traditional to properly test and encourage pruning in ports I will fully admit the events of Petalweft Salts were unintentional and a party was at fault.”

The other traders fell silent and still for a moment before Onduilin jerkily sweeped two limbs towards Pylo.

“Are you accepting responsibility for losing control of your cargo? If such then you should certainly take on a fairer portion of the-”

Pylo cut the vile stone fucker off with a shrill snarl.

“I said no such thing! Yes there was a party who completely lost control of my charges and passengers! But it was not me! I had in the transaction of my trade and grist haul secured a promised escort of oversight for my charges from the port authority of Redweed.”

The other traders immediately turned as one with all of their attention to the minister.

“Is this true Minister Tea-of-Galena?”

Oh yeah, they DID have a name! Pylo was glad someone remembered!

The display membrane flickered with more gibberish and a few patterns that vaguely resembled depictions of the ‘vandalism’ chaos she had seen. Pylo was amazed any of the other traders could make sense of them, she had been there during her investigation and could barely recognize them.

“It is true the ministry of external affairs deployed a specialist and significant resources to confirm and then reconfirm the language profiles of the charges yes as part of our dealings with the Trade partnership of Tunie and Pylo Courtesan. The minister did proceed to guide the visitors to Petalweft Salts, then requested that a new representative take up their assignment. Before the replacement could arrive there were numerous acts of vandalism and then a total infosphere collapse across Petalweft salts due to the clerk stack overloading all messaging networks.”

Pylo joined the other traders in fixing Tea-of-Galena with numerous expressions of scorn.

Although she noticed sour timbres to Onduilin. Thwarted trickery she suspected.

“We had it on authority and confirmation from the visitors that the separation was by mutual agreement between all parties! We were told they were passengers and respectable guests from afar! We extended them the same courtesies we give all citizens of the Redweed Polity!”

Pylo extended her two distals in a wide symbol of embrace and inclusion to the other traders, gaping her jaws in a slightly flirtatious manner to the ohma.

“So as my fellow traders see this entire situation with Petalweft Salts came about after the Port Authority of Redweed reneged on their agreement with me. My TRADE agreement with them. Without telling me by the way... I had to piece together that bit afterwards when I was talking with my PASSENGERS and honestly I was going to let it slide out of cordial good will. But if we are going to try and fill Tunie’s Holds with refugees and say we deserve it I’m more than happy to bring that grievance before the tribunal!”

She looked at the other traders, they all seemed mollified, or at least their open hunger for good trades had been redirected to a cold fury at minister Tea-Of-Galena.

Pylo cooed softly, soothingly, gentling the hate with just the right brushes to her words.

“Or instead of trying to discuss carving up this port and burning out a future trade site rich in grist we could come to REASONABLE resolutions and negotiate a fair-”

“Hey Everyone!”

The Tribunal was utterly distracted by the weird little floppy representative that so far had barely been involved.

They waited and just before Pylo felt like she could finish her speech it chirped happily.

“I’m Still Here!”