[Citadel] An Offer You Can Refuse

“That thing between Hadas and me, was just that between him and me. You were not part of the equation, and your presence or absence would, by your own admission, not have changed a thing. As long as nobody crosses me intentionally, they have little to fear of me. Itzen seems smart enough to not to do so.” He leaned back.

“Besides, now that we are laying our cards on the table, don't you think Hadas at least shares some of the responsibility? After all, he did try to blackmail me using you and the relationship we had developed.” He took a long sip from his drink.

“That 'doofus woman' is called Sarah and Albert is a perfectly fine name.”

"Whatever. It's not okay, Albert. He's mine." She took a gulp of her drink. "And hell, maybe I wanted to matter enough to be considered in the equation. I mean so little to Albert Lowell that he didn't even tip me off first."

The rest of the drink quickly vanished. "If you were really going to hurt-no. Would you kill him without telling me?"

She shook her head, looking down. "You think I didn't scream at him over it? I warned him."

"That's what I'm going to do with the money. Have my own kids."

“Well...” he glanced at her, “he's alive because of you, didn't want to give a real reason to be sad or angry. So, I guess you mattered in the end, and that's when it counts.” He drank his drink.

“He should have listened to you. May you have many kids.”

"That...might actually be honest." She shook her head, shoulders jerking like she was either laughing or crying. "Might still be flattery. I wish I could keep up with you."

Things might have been very different if she had. Or if she'd deluded herself into thinking she could. Not the same thing. They would have ended very differently. The later probably in complete failure.

"Everyone should listen to me." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, putting her empty glass to the side. "Not many people do. Hopefully the kids will."

“Someone told me it isn't flattery if it's the truth.” Albert offered with a worn smile.

“Wouldn't you be a bit disappointed if they did just listen to you instead of making up their own mind? Want another drink, something non-alcoholic maybe?”

"A coke please." She stretched out, her body calming itself in the wake of all those strong emotions. Gods-damned Albert.

"Have you seen the men I'm sleeping with? I'm going to have stubborn, pretty kids. I anticipate many expensive disasters. At least I'm sure my tendency to problem solving through violence isn't genetic."

Soon enough a coke was before her.

“How many are you thinking of having? The way you talk I get the impression you will have a whole bunch.”

"I'm not going to have kids I can't look after." She was momentarily defensive. "But the galaxy could use more drell."

"Four or five?" She blushed a little. "I was the only sister in a big family. I've actually taken care of babies before."

“I think four or five qualifies as a bunch.” Albert added with a chuckle, “I'm sure you'll be a fine mother. I always thought that you could be what you wanted if you applied yourself. Thought so from the day I first saw you.”

"I think that line works better on nondrell. I remember. The day you first saw me, I was completely shell-shocked and had been in immigration lines for twenty hours." She smirked.

"The thing is, though, I can't be everything. I can't be surrounded by people I love and live a life of ultraviolence. I can't be making this bid for respectability when I broke some thugs' arm for shaking down drell duct rats. Gods know how you do it. ...How do you do it? Is it really just don't get caught?"

“That's true, but you still had a... je ne sais quoi, when I saw you, when you started to post, and express yourself. Even shell-shocked and in an immigration line.”

Albert rubbed his chin for a second, with a coy smile on his face, “Not getting caught is easy when you generally don't do anything wrong. But yes a family life and an active lifestyle can be hard to combine. Better, I think, is to redirect your energies to work behind the scene not on the frontline and as always maintain and expand your network, it is the most powerful tool. Having the right contact at the right time can be worth millions of credits. And not knowing the right person can make millions of credits worthless since you can use them.”

"When people are being nice, they call that thing a 'strong personality'." She laughed. "I try you know...I think I've tried to introduce myself to every drell on the damn station."

"A lot of people find me annoying and the hanar blacklisted me when I walked off."

“I've seen you do that, your main problem is that... Okay, each person has a bag of shit. In that bag of shit they carry the shit they get from home, from work and from life in general. Imagine that, imagine every person having a literal bag of shit they have to carry with them stinking up the place.”

He stood up and held his hand up as if he was carrying a bag. “Now you come along and start to advocate drell rights. Do you know what you're doing to me and my bag? You're adding more shit! Not only have I to worry about the shit I already have but now I have to worry a little bit about drell thing. More Shit! Of course I'm not going to like you. If you want to get on people's good side you give them solutions, not suggestions but actual solutions so that it takes some of that shit away. Now I like you, now you're taking shit away from me, this is good. Please come back and take more shit away from me.”

Albert sat back down, “Now obviously, sometimes you need to give people bad news, or ask stuff from them, you can't help but add shit to their bag. But even then you must be prepared to take some shit out of that bag. Look at me; I put some shit in your bag by having you protect me. But did I focus on that, hell no, I want to make sure you understand that while I add a bit of shit in that bags of yours, I take a lot out of it, I pay you royally, I give you the opportunity to meet Rachni, to represent your race, and when you showed that that wasn't enough. That you still had a lot of shit in that bag, I agreed, I didn't try to stop it, I took that shit out of your bag and hired more drell.”

“That's how you do it, make people like it when you coming by, make people want to do stuff for you because whatever you ask from them you will take some shit away from them away. But here's the cool part; you know all that prep work you need to do before you can start asking stuff? It hardly takes any effort. For example, listen to politicians talk and pick the one the one that has the most drell friendly agenda or tone, and it doesn't have to be much just a little better than the other candidates. Try to get to meet them, semi-privately, for example in an elevator and say something like; 'You're X right? I'm Kay from the Krios foundation, I think you're the best thing for drell rights around, thank you, I'll try to make sure to tell my friends about you.' Use those words, and step out, don't ask them to do more, or focus on it, just thank them and get out. You just took a little bit of shit out of their bag. It won't get you any favors, but its what you use to build up to it. Work on it and sooner rather than later they will invite you over, because as far as they are concerned you are good news.”

Albert smiles, “you'll have them in your pocket. Just remember always take shit away from them. Want them to help you get planning permission? Don't ask that just like that, ask them for a bigger temple so more drell could come live in the neighborhood who will of course vote for the drell friendly politician. More voters for him, less shit in his bag, there's now more than enough room for that little planning request. And all you have to do in return is just talk about him to any drell you meet.”

“Hanar blacklisted you, make yourself so valuable they are hurting themselves by doing it, and you'll quickly notice how quick that disappears. And that, being invaluable, is one way to get away with it when you do get caught.” He flashed a quick grin.

"Yeah, yeah yeah." She leaned back, chewing on her lip as she listened. "I volunteer at Temple, I take on the scutwork at Memorial. But: this is how it goes:

"That giant pile of shit is going to fall over. You're going to get hit if it does. I'm usually right about this sort of thing. I'm moving away from the shit now. Are you sure? You should move. You should move. Oh look it fell. And you are...mad at me?" She rolled her eyes, throwing up her hands.

"I am smart enough to realize that showing them up like this will make the hanar like me less. I suppose my only hope is to become such a fucking loudmouth that backlisting me so obviously plays badly."

“You're not listening,” Albert said shaking his head, “If you point at the shit you're adding shit. Only take away shit. Especially early in the relationship. That's all, let themselves look at the shit but don't point it out, just take it away; you want them not to associate you with shit giving, shit showing only shit removing.”

“And being a loudmouth will get you generally ignored, or killed. Only few loudmouths ever changed the world by being loud. Look at your heroine, Shepard didn't save the galaxy by being loud, they ignored her being loud, she did do it by doing stuff, and taking shit away. Want help from turians, take shit away by sending the krogan to help. Want help from the krogan, take their shit away by curing the genophage. She wants help from the geth and quarians, take their shit away so there's peace.”

"But it is going to fall on them?" She really was trying to get it. She furrowed her brows in exactly the same way as when she was trying to figure out how someone threw her. "I will give you the Turians and the Krogan. But she did, actually, shout down the quarians."

She lifted her fist into the air, miming all the gravitas of an important speech. "Please don't push try and your pile of shit over on the Geth. This will not end well for you."

“True but if you don't really offer anything more than just pointing at it they will associate it with you on a subconscious emotional level. People are weird like that, and salarians, elcor and geth probably aren't that susceptible to it. Others however are. I'm not one to follow the rules but that is one rule you can't easily break, not without some serious conditioning.”

Albert shakes his head. “She might have shouted but it was her track record with the quarians that made them listen to her. I know drell look down on the other species memory but we do have some, she solved problems for the quarians first, so when she shouted they listen to her, not because she shouted but because she had a track record worthy of being heard.”

"A fair number of people are dumb." She sighed. "You're right, I'll try...don't know if I have any talent for schmoozing."

"Oh, and talking about being unlikeable and pushy and a know it all, when do I get a copy of a contract to look at?"

“Let me just send you a copy,” he brought his omnitool up and soon enough a copy of the contract was sent to Kay.

“In fact...” he continued to type on his omnitool, and second file was sent to Kay. “You got a choice, either you work for me directly, that's the 16 page one, and I just write the hiring off as expense on my account or you can go with direct employment by the Alliance, that’s the 73 page thing.”

“Both are basically the same, except that the Alliance one has a lot more rules associated with it, for example no visible tats, can't drink while on the job or when on-call, no fraternization or relationship, that kind of thing. I assume people know what they are doing so don't bother putting that in. The real difference is who you write down as your employer in the work history section of your resume.”

The Alliance one was a maze of legalize especially compared to the one Albert sent, of course there was still enough fluff to it. But both spelled out the same compensation, danger pay, bonus structure and both included insurance coverage including a life insurance. “Anyway, look them over, sign one of them and send it back.”

Kayana opened the two files and started reading them over, mumbling herself. "This one of your tests. Does loudmouth girl know which one is better?"

"I think I liked it better when you were coming at me with lipstick." She squinted at the two contracts. "I need to get drell on my side. And the Alliance is still an alien power. Maybe that means I should work for you? It's not like I wanna be a merc."

"Plus I don't want to wear gloves the whole time." She held up her scarred-and-tattooed hand.