One of the good things about a booming economy was the exciting unpredictability of it.
There was an originality to the experience that could not be replicated even after repeating the process thousands of times through.
Compared to the beginning where he was plagued with confounding boredom, Isaac was now inflicted with a mild case of the giddy anytime someone came through those doors, old or new.
Again, the upward trend of a Merchant's market was not a uniform climb. It was both steady and explosive— and with the way things were progressing, Isaac could already tell that the explosive phase was just around the corner.
Sure, most of the faces were old, but all that meant was that the influences they impacted were just as great. And that there, was what his job was all about.
They were Merchants—or, as members of The Guild and The Company called them, "cosmic enablers". Chaos, innovation, uplifting, grand colonization—they were open to all avenues that would accept their trade.
This was also the reason why they were forced to remain strictly neutral.
The fact that they sold to both The Company and The Guild also reinforced this rule. This was not for any convoluted reason like 'fairness', but instead for the practical logic that selling to both would yield the best profits, thanks to the silent 'competition' between both omni-hegemon corporations.
In Isaac's opinion, sure they were enablers, yes, in the most technically neutral definition of the word, but they were tame when compared to the literal chaos agents these corporations bred.
So yes, that was what he was doing these days; waiting behind his desk with an expecting patience, and maybe checking his ledger once or twice for a new report.
He looked towards where Jessica was sleeping and shook his head with a rueful smile. He was being a bit polite earlier with his comment about her appearance. It wasn't about how she looked, but more about how she felt when she arrived.
Stressed was a decent term for it – decently lacking, that is.
'Bogged down, more likely'. The shop automatically activated its rejuvenating perks the moment she walked through its doors. He had been surprised why it did and it wasn't until he saw(appraised) her that he understood why it did.
That she also took his coffee helped immensely.
The least he could do as a friend was let her sleep it off. The amount of frustration, resentment, and the little bits of fear bleeding off of her painted a telling picture. Looks like the arguments with Trish got to her more than she allowed her sister to see.
He ordered some wraiths to tweak some of the shop settings around the lounge and manually activated some perks to go along with it. What she needed right now was a soothing sleep and he already did what he could to make sure she got it.
A lot of things could be fixed with the snap of a finger, or in this case a small purchase, but sometimes a good sleep was its own remedy. A great sleep—now that was the healing stuff.
The sun was almost down so with relatively nothing to do, Isaac grabbed a duster cleaner and started wiping off dusts from the surfaces; first with his counter before moving on to his shelves.
He was in the midst of this when his doors opened rather forcefully, causing him to stop his cleaning and focus on his fervently eager customer.
Correction: customers.
"Oh?" He looked at them through the piers of shelves. A young boy and a girl that looked outright frantic as they barreled through his shop at almost a running pace.
"Well, where is he?!" The boy asked impatiently, but more out of fright than anything.
"I–I don't know. Caliban told Henri and the others to come here in case anything went wrong on the surface, that's all I know!" His partner in crime, a girl, cried out just as hysterically.
"They're going to be here any moment, Sally!" The boy said between frantic looks to the door before he started banging hard on the counter. "Anyone in here. Caliban sent—"
"Mind letting the table off, kid? I don't know what it did but I can assure you that it is innocent."
They flinched hard, startled by his voice behind them, and collided against the counter in their attempt to distance themselves from him. Fire wrapped fractionally around the boy's limbs while a translucent glow surrounded the girl.
He held his duster cleaner against his shoulder with one hand in his pockets and a raised brow at the display as he was hit with a sense of déjà vu.
"Quite jumpy, aren't we?" He brought out his other hand from his pockets and tilted his head, confused, at the threatening posture they adopted in response. "Can I help you with something?"
"Who are you? Are you with them?" the boy instantly confronted Isaac, once again rendering him confused.
"I am the owner of this shop you just barged into. As for who 'them' are, well I have no idea since you haven't told me." Isaac gave the boy a look as he lowered the duster from his shoulder, before glancing at his partner.
The girl saw him looking at her and looked downright hopeful. "Are you Isaac, The Broker?"
Isaac was taken aback at the last part of the question. "I'm Isaac, yes, but I'm a Merchant, NOT a broker. I don't know if I'm who you're looking for but the distinction should remain distinct. Again, Merchant, not Broker."
Before her partner could say anything, probably in another confrontation, the girl luckily beat him to the utterance.
"Caliban sent us!"
"Caliban?"
"He said if we were stranded we should come here and settle it on Mikhail's tab!" She rushed out her words until her breath was strained enough for her to realize that she needed to breathe.
"My name is Sally,… or Skids. Um, just call me Sally." She said awkwardly after getting herself some good breaths. "This is, uh.."
"Rus." Her friend supplied.
"Rus and Sally, Sally and Rus." Isaac nodded. "Sorry, I missed Caliban's name for a second there but Mikhail I know very well."
Their expressions brightened and Isaac hated to do this but he had to. The shop didn't register it with them when they came in so he already knew how this was about to play out.
"As for accessing Mikhail's tab, it's not an open tab, so only the people with a key or some kind of verifiable identification can access it." Yup. And there go the hopeful lights. Mikhail was smart enough to give access to his tab to those who had a key to his dimension, but this current situation made that unfortunate.
"Wait what?" She blurted out in shock.
"The key, or any kind of verification from Mikhail or anyone with access, or else I'm afraid I can't grant you access."
"Really man?!" Isaac's words seemed to have a stronger impact on Rus more than it did Sally give how the former's hands flared. "You're really gonna do us like that? We have a group of lunatics after us hunting us down to kill us and you won't help us because we didn't bring some fucking password?"
Yikes. It wasn't as if he was wrong, but that was the frustrating thing about rules and agreements.
"Is there a way we can do that? It is really urgent." Sally asked desperately as she held Rus by his arm, making him put out his flames.
Though Rus' anger was understandable, Sally vividly remembered the one rule Mikhail, and even Callisto, had given the runners: under no condition should they anger Isaac, or worse, use violence in his shop.
'Oh, I almost wish one of them would. Saves us one less idiot.' Callisto had chuckled darkly when she said that. Sally had no idea who Isaac was, or how strong he was, but she did not want to find out by getting on his bad side. Especially not when they were already being chased down by a group of extremists that really really wanted them dead.
"Unless you have something valuable to barter with, I really can't do anything about the tab, I'm sorry."
"Wait, what do you mean by barter?"
"I sell things," Isaac gestured openly at the shop around them, "so as long you have money or something valuable to exchange, you can purchase anything in my shop."
Apparently that was when it clicked for Sally as her eyes opened wide in realization.
'The camp, the food, the beds, even the houses, the weapons and the dimension Mikhail bought—no wonder. Broker, Merchant, whatever. They all got it here.'
She knew some of the kids and the old gran-grans who sold their disadvantageous mutations to finance the camp. This was how they did it.
"I-I don't think I h-have any-anything valuable." She stuttered out nervously at her wits end. She couldn't call any of them at camp because they were in a dimension where reception services did not exist.
Sally had dragged herself into this mess by begging the others to take her to the surface. She has been begging for weeks now at this point and when they finally relented and let her tag along, she couldn't help but steal that rare moment to sightsee the city she hardly remembered.
To cut the frustrating story short, while sightseeing, she had run into Rus who was running from a group of mutant-hating extremists trying to kill him. She had thought rescuing him would be easy only for her to be proven wrong in the worst way possible.
The both of them had been rushing to one of the exit/entrance points of the Morlocks safehaven with the hopes that someone would be there to meet them. Unfortunately however, their desperate sprint to safety was not to be as their pursuers had cut them off their path, which made a panicking Sally decide to run to Junk 'N Stuff, a shop she knew nothing about, as a last attempt at safety.
"Hmm, that might be a problem." He said as he walked around them to get to his post behind the counter. Rus was about to say something only for him and Sally to freeze still as they heard the bell's tiny jingle.
"We have to get out of here!" Rus whispered sharply with a frenzied light in his eyes.
"Rus wai—"
"Sal, we have to move! Now!" He stood defensively in front of her as sounds of footsteps hurried towards them.
'Looks like I'm about to have some interesting sales,' Isaac thought, only to shake his head mentally when he saw the expressions on the two teens' faces, 'or maybe not.'
Six men came out around the corner with tactical vests, masks and guns, and spread open in an arc as they leveled their guns at Isaac, Rus and Sally.
"What do we have here? A mutant sympathizer?" Their apparent leader said as he took a step forward with his gun leveled directly on Isaac. "Or simply another mutant freak?"
"Gentlemen, welcome to Junk 'N Stuff. Your last bus stop for the truly exotic and extraordinary finds. What can I help you with today?" Isaac raised a brow as the gun in his face was cocked. "Sir, I would like to ask you and your colleagues to holster your weapons. It's an open violation of the shop's rule, and also it's clearly making other customers uncomfortable."
"Rounds ready." The man called out and in response his comrades cocked their guns to a whirring sound. Clearly, their weapons were in no way standard issue. "You'll be coming with us. Resist… well, just try me. Cuff them."
Isaac sighed. And the day had been going wonderfully.
"This is your last warning, sir. Your open display of violence will not be tolerated or pardoned." Isaac warned one last time.
Despite wearing a full face coverage, the man's surprise and incredulity was plain to see as he stared blankly at Isaac in disbelief at the words he just uttered. Not only him and his men, but also Rus and Sally.
Sally looked downright hopeful while Rus looked like he was down to burn the whole place to create a smoke screen for them to make a covered exit.
"Filthy mutant fuck." The man spat out hatefully and pulled the trigger—
"Holy shit!"
"What the?!"
Sally and Rus screamed in horror as the man who pulled the trigger unraveled like strings; he was like a knitted doll that had its yarn pulled loose.
It even made the sound of fabric being ripped apart.
"Hostile! Hostile! Open fire!" The remaining five men set off chaos as they screamed in alarm to each other and into their comms that had long stopped working.
Rus grabbed a frozen Sally and dove to the ground behind a shelf, and rolled over to his feet to bolt out of the store when his arm was suddenly grabbed tightly.
"Don't." Sally warned severely.
By then they had both noticed the strange quietness of the shop that lacked even a single gunshot.
They waited a few seconds just to be sure, or unsure, of what was happening.
"Kids, are you still there?" They peeked from the cover of the shelf and their eyebrows rose tall as they took in the clear lacking presence of the members of the Friends of Humanity, the mutant extremist group that they were grossly unfortunate to run into.
"What the hell happened to them?" Rus asked with disbelief, as well as budding glee.
"I put a stop to it all before it could escalate. Wouldn't want it disturbing others now, would I?"
"Wh— How?" Rus asked, but then paused for a second, before looking sheepish. "I'm such an idiot. Of course, you're a mutant."
"Well, I—"
"Isaac, did something happen?" A groggy voice suddenly spoke up from within the shop.
"It's nothing, Jessica. Just a minor nuisance. You can go back to sleep, or not if you want to get home before nightfall."
The voice groaned heavily and fell silent soon after.
Isaac turned back his focus to his two new customers, idly hoping that the earlier display did not interrupt the potential sale he could get out of them.
"So Mikhail…" he looked between them as he laid down his pitch to sink his commercial claws into the two of them. "This is a pawnshop, so anything you sell me can be acquired back. Your purchase doesn't need to be expensive, just tell me what you want now, and we'll look through options that would accommodate your budget."
He saw the two of them look at each other and he knew that they were trying to find some solid footing in the other, so he wiggled his line in the middle of their flapping.
He smirked at them. "You can't truly know the true value of some of the things you carry around. All you need is a dollar, and the potential makes all the difference, you'll see."
He knew he had gotten them when he saw that familiar spark of interest in their eyes.
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