Fandom Island and Town

"I've made up my mind!" Quark declared. "Don't try to talk me out of it!"

No one was trying to talk him out of anything. His staff stood in the door to the bar looking at best faintly amused by his antics, which currently involved trying to get an alot of stuff to go all the way into his small, already very tightly packed shuttle.

"I mean it," Quark said. "I'm leaving. I'm done with this island. We had record business last weekend and I still didn't make a profit! Who doesn't even carry around valuable jewels?! This whole island is a money-pit, you hear me? A money-pit!"

"What are you doing to that alot?" Raven asked, walking up. Quark spun and gave her a broad grin.

"My best customer! How'd you like one last drink? 20% off, just for you."

"You're leaving?" Raven frowned, looking at the bar. "But -- the holosuites --"

"Are flushing money down the drain. Do you know how much they charge for electricity on this planet? That's what happens when you're so primitive everything's still based on decaying orga --"

"I'll take them!" Raven cut him off mid-rant, pulling out her wallet. She hardly had any money, but she needed her outlet. "I'll buy the whole thing off you. Just let me -- let me see what I've got. . . ."

Quark sighed. "Your paper won't be any good where I'm going."

"Yeah, well!" Raven thought fast. "That alot's going to be an alot of sadness if it gets lonely. You should get a young breeding pair."

Quark smiled slowly. "You know, I could ask a whole lot more for two of the things."

"They'd be alots of money," Raven promised.

"And you can really get them for me?"

"Ones that are small enough to fit in that shuttle. I bet you can get new holosuites easy, but alots?"

"They're unique," Quark said in a faintly breathless tone. "It's a deal! You get me those alots and you can have this whole bar."

Raven beamed. "I'll be right back!"

Quark leaned against the alot's back-end and watched her go. "I'm going to miss that little blue weirdo." He looked at his staff. "The rest of you are crap."

[open! This is Quark's last post, but his legacy -- or at least his holosuites -- will carry on. No alots were harmed in the making of this post.]

Quark's had been taken over.

Mona had immediately replaced the bouncers Quark had on guard with appropriately cocktail-laden NPC dabo girls, after checking to make sure they could both reasonably control their new powers. The banner and sign out front had been removed, and the sign above the bar now had accurate information, or as close as Mona could get to accurate, considering how often Quark liked to replace real liquor with the synthesized stuff.

Quark was busy pouting behind the bar, when he wasn't being interrogated by his new self-appointed manager.

"Now," Mona said. "What exactly was in the cocktail that opened that portal?"

"That's a proprietary recipe," Quark said. "I couldn't possibly reveal it to anyone but a trusted friend."

"I will rip your ears off. Slowly."

"It had bloodwine in it, I can tell you that!" Quark gave her a nervous smile, even as he covered his ears protectively. "I don't really remember all the rest. It got very distracting in here very quickly!"

Mona stared at him, clearly unimpressed. "Get out this 'bloodwine', then," she said. "We'll simply have to experiment until we get something right."

[open!]

( It was a quiet night at Quark's, but when wasn't it? )

In the silence that followed, Quark slowly peeked up over the edge of the bar. The portal remained open and quiet. The bouncer sat up, clinging to a bar stool for support.

"Man," he said. "Portalocity really fucked the dog on this one."

[AND THE SPRING BDE BEGINS. Tremens will trickle slowly through the portal this evening, roaming over the island and attacking anyone who's been drinking/smells enough like tasty, tasty magic.

Also the post is open for post-portal opening interaction!]

"Finally," Quark said, watching the once-more numerous passersby through his bar window. "I haven't seen a place so quiet since the Dominion forced the evacuation of Deep Space Nine. And at least then there were thirsty soldiers to sell to."

"Who are you talking to?" the bouncer asked. Quark sighed.

"No one. Anyone. I never thought I'd miss Morn."

[open and ocd free!]

Say what you would about this backwater little ancient Earth island, the latinum exchange rate was superb. Not as good as it would be if Quark had been the one to set it -- ah, the dream! -- but the metal was rare enough in this era that he could almost name his own price for it. Apparently the bank here did a modest amount of business with other advanced interstellar species for there to be a demand despite the fact that the local economy was still mostly gold-based. Gold and paper, anyway. Like little governmentally controlled IOUs, those little paper slips were. They weren't even shiny! But as ridiculous as they were, they could be exchanged locally for goods and services, and when it came right down to it, what was really important was that Quark collected as much of them as possible.

Which made pay day here just as agonizing as it ever was on the station.

"Five hundred seventy-eight, five hundred seventy-nine . . . five hundred eighty." Quark heaved a deep sigh as he handed his head dabo girl her final little green slip of paper. "And not a penny more. That's right, you can't fool me. I know what all those little fussy coins are worth now. Though why the nickel is worth less than the dime. . . . It's bigger! That means there's more of it!"

"We agreed on six hundred a week," the dabo girl said. She'd pocketed the other bills he'd given her, and held her hand out for more. "Before tips. You still owe me fifteen dollars."

"Six hundred?" Quark pressed a hand to his chest. "That doesn't sound like me at all. You're trying to pull one over on your old pal Quark, aren't you. I tell you, this is -- this is employer abuse, that's what this is. We can hardly keep the roof over our heads and the dabo tables spinning, but you're trying to milk me out of my very last . . . loonie!"

The dabo girl sighed and snapped her fingers. Quark glared at her. The dabo girl looked over her shoulder at the bouncer, who was built like a Klingon's larger, angrier ancestor. Quark groaned dramatically and pulled out his stack of bills again.

"You know, you should feel lucky to be making this much. Your government only requires I pay you $9.25 an hour. I checked. It's only out of the goodness of my heart --" The bouncer growled. "-- the goodness of my heart that I'm paying you this much." He heaved a sigh. "And that stupid, idiot, lobeless brother of mine, Grand Nagus Rom for ever convincing me to let my employees organize. Five hundred eighty-one, five hundred eighty-two. . . ."

Quark's was open.

It'd been a long week. First of his employees continuing to milk Quark's evil-sickness induced suggestibility for all it was worth, then of trying to clean leftover webbing out of his suit. (He'd eventually just had to replicate himself a new one, which -- really, people. Did you think anit-matter-based powercells grew on trees?) Now, he was finally getting a chance to sit down and see just how much profit the island's little adventure had ultimately cost him.

"BETRAYED!" he howled. "How could something that cute have been a denizen of evil?!"

Look, some humanoids were into tribbles. Others preferred slugs.

"Maybe I can sell pieces of that stupid web stuff. . . ."

Welcome to Quark's!
Food! Drinks! Games! Holosuites!
still hiring

Quark's was open. Don'd mind the occasional bellows of grief from behind the bar.

There were several dozen santa hats already covering the ground as Quark flung down another one.

Ineffectively, of course. Another immediately appeared on his head.

"AAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHH!" he shrieked, jumping around in a circle and flailing his arms in the general vicinity of his head. "Get it off get it off get it off!"

"That's forty-nine," one of the dabo girls said. "Pay up."

The bouncer sighed and handed her a wad of cash. "I thought for sure he'd pass out by hat number 48."

"C'mon, fifty-two!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

Welcome to Quarks!
Food! Drinks! Games! Holosuites!
NOW HIRING
The boss doesn't always scream
This is a special occasion

[open!]

This island was almost deadly boring. Sure, there was the whole thing a couple weeks back where apparently something turned the humans into not-quite-humans, but Quark didn't know enough about these people yet to even notice, and that was only one thing! Out of more than a month living here! Back on Deep Space Nine something would have tried to kill them all at least four times by now! And that was even before the Dominion War!

Of course, Quark would never admit to missing the excitement. Sure, when things went weird, people tended to want friendly places to drink and relax more, so weekly threats to life and limb were good for profit, but they were also, you know, threats to life and limb. Ferengi weren't known for their sense of adventure. Quark didn't even like to play murder mystery holonovels.

He was half hoping for a holosuite disaster to shake things up, though. Not that he would ever deliberately sacrifice his own equipment, not without Rom around to fix them back up again. So for now, he had to settle for learning how to make margaritas and tequila sunrises, and trying to keep the squirrels from passing out drunk on his bar.

[OH MY GOD I'M FINALLY GETTING AROUND TO POSTING AGAIN. Open!]

One of the advantages of having a business on a space station was a large amount of foot traffic. Even when he first opened Quark's on Deep Space Nine (then Terok Nor, say what you like about Cardassians, they knew how to name things), Quark had barely had to advertise it. It was right there on the promenade! You couldn't miss it!

Quark's new location had a lot going for it, including a complete lack of view of anything resesmbling every day life that might remind his customers that they had other things to spend their money on. It did not, however, seem to get a lot of foot traffic. And as far as he could tell, there was only the most basic of computerized databases available to potential customers on the island. You could barely even ask computers here to do things for you! There was a rudimentary sort of PA system that seemed to be entirely used to play disgusting Earthen music and report some seriously boring gossip, but otherwise, it seemed like Quark was going to have to resort to some extremely primitive methods of communication to get word out about his new business.

Paper. Ugh. He might as well be carving these things into stone tablets. (Or, you know, replicating them onto stone tablets. He definitely wasn't writing this stuff himself. What was he, a sucker?) Unfortunately, he couldn't replicate himself an idiot brother to order around (yet), so he still had to go out and hang the fliers up around town all by himself.

Drinks! Food!
Games! Girls!
QUARKS!
Your one stop shop for all your leisure time needs!
Grand opening! Friday, October 27th!
Socialize with friends or relax in peace and privacy in one of our exclusive
HOLOSUITES!
First hour is free* so come on down!
* applicable to select holonovels only, with purchase of two or more drinks or spins on a dabo table
Children under 12 prohibited. Older than that and you've got to learn to manage them yourselves
Proprietor is not liable to any loss of valuables or personal injury sustained on premises

There. That ought to do it.

[open!]