"Wow!" Ashtoreth said as a street filled with people bustled around her. "That was amazing!"

She'd taken payment in chitt, as the chitt offered had been more valuable than the cores in Ashtoreth's estimation. Mostly, though, her payment had come in the form of a rendezvous that he'd arranged for later in the day, with the payment of her last roll of plastic wrap pending.

"Look how much that was worth!" she said, hefting two handfuls of the finely-shaped shells, each suffused with whorls of marbled color, that she'd been given. "We were definitely right about the plastics!"

"Great!" said Sadie. "So this means we'll have more money than we need, right? You guys will have some leftover to buy gear?"

"It should," said Kylie. "If we stick around and sell it all. Even if we take low offers."

"Even the low offers are high, though!" Ashtoreth said, positively beaming. "I mean… all this! For plastic wrap!"

"That was the plan, right?" Sadie said.

"I just didn't know it would feel so good," Ashtoreth said. She drew in a deep breath, then let out a pleasant sigh as she looked around them at the multihued bustle. "No wonder so many people spend so much time on this trading thing. I almost feel like I just won a fight, or something! I mean, we've definitely got to sell all our stuff before we leave, just to be thorough."

"No we don't," said Kylie. "And I'm not just trying to be a buzzkill, Ashtoreth. The priority is the soulmap, and everything else is unnecessary."

"Okay, sure," she said. "We won't change the plans just because I'm having fun. It's just that… we gave that guy something completely worthless to us." She raised her handfuls of money once more. "And look at what we got in exchange!"

"Sure," said Kylie. "It was a good trade. But we've only got so much to gain from good trades. Dazel's soulmap, then a shopping spree if we've got the time. We don't need to optimize, here."

"Doesn't it feel like a bit of a waste, though?" Ashtoreth said. "It's like… it's like I just created free… free… I don't know…" she gesticulated. "Free value, or something! Not money, really, because he mostly didn't pay us in money. It's like all we did was trade, but now we can spend these chitt to get people to do things for us even though we never did anything for them!"

"Uh-huh," said Kylie.

"It feels… it feels like we beat him," Ashtoreth said, feeling a devious, incredibly gratified smile spread across her face. "Like we won and he lost, you know? He got the plastic wrap but we got the real haul."

"I guess," said Sadie. "Isn't the plastic wrap actually really useful, though?"

"Yeah, but not to us!" Ashtoreth said. She shook her head, still smiling to herself. "And here I was thinking that paying for things would feel bad. I just traded with a demon! I gave him things in exchange for the things I wanted!" She let out a laugh that was practically a giggle. "Do you know how silly that sounds?"

"Not really," said Sadie. "Why is that silly?"

"Because normally, if a demon had things she wanted, they'd just become Ashtoreth's things by virtue of her wanting them," said Kylie.

"Exactly," said Ashtoreth. "And I mean, it's pretty hard to fault that system, you know? But now that I'm basically a merchant, I'm really starting to think. About Earth, I mean."

Kylie shot her a suspicious glance. "What about Earth?"

"If your synthetic polymers can be this valuable everywhere, just think of how much stuff you can get from everyone else," Ashtoreth said. "You guys could be rich! And trust me, you'd rather be rich than not-rich."

"I don't need to trust you about that."

Sadie laughed. "I think we probably know that better than you, Ashtoreth. I think the not-rich side of things probably, like, feels the difference a bit more."

Ashtoreth shrugged. "Eh, I'll take your word for it."

"Great," said Kylie.

"But listen," said Ashtoreth. "If you're just one merchant, you trade according to the value of things, right?"

"...Yes?" Sadie asked. "I think that's how it is for any number of merchants?"

"That's what I was thinking," said Ashtoreth. "At first. But listen: Earth is a whole realm, right? And you've got the Alliance on your side!"

Kylie laughed. "I think I love where this is going. Please, continue."

"Well, it's not like the circumstances that make plastics valuable are completely unknown," said Ashtoreth. "If you've got enough weight in the cosmos, you can put your fingers on the scale, so to speak. One guy selling some plastics is one thing, but imagine if Earth collectively decided to only sell plastics to one side of a given conflict and made sure that everyone could see how advantageous that was!"

"That's it," said Kylie, cracking a smile. "That's exactly where I thought this was going."

"Hey—what's the big idea?" Ashtoreth asked, peering at her. "Am I being laughed at?"

"Well, I dunno, Ashtoreth," said Sadie. "It kind of sounds like you want to… be an arms dealer? You want our species to be a cosmic plastic arm dealer because you traded one thing one time?"

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"Shh," said Kylie. "Let her cook. This is hilarious."

"Look, maybe you misunderstood me," Ashtoreth said. "Just imagine the power to be had from controlling one highly valuable military good—not just money, but influence!" She crossed her arms. "I'm not wrong here even if you think it's silly."

"Oh, it's not silly," said Kylie. "It definitely works, even if you probably don't have all the details right. But like… you sold a guy three rolls of plastic wrap, Ashtoreth. Relax. The bossmen back home are definitely going to exploit this advantage a lot better than you will. Doing that is probably why some of them are bossmen in the first place."

"So you're saying that my intuition here was excellent?" she said.

"Sure," said Kylie. "Right down to the part where getting a good deal feels almost as good as beating the shit out of somebody. Now, I'm guessing we didn't get enough chitt for the soulmap?"

"Probably not," Ashtoreth said. "Ready to keep going?"

They resumed the process of asking street vendors to meet with their suppliers, it was something of a slow process. Most of them were unhelpful, and several of them actually tried to arrange a meeting with Master Guthuk.

"You think he's got the textile level cornered?" Ashtoreth asked as they came out onto the street after another unsuccessful attempt. "We could try someplace else."

Her companions didn't get a chance to answer. As if in response some cue that Ashtoreth couldn't see or understand, all of the various panes and projections around them were changed to display a close-up of what looked like a set of blue-gray lips. They were unattached to any face. They simply floated against a field of darkness.

The lips spoke.

"Abide this: the most illustrious Kreeoxan master of advertising, Kaleka Leka Leka, has composed, for your experiencing, an advertisement of great salience."

Beside her, Sadie breathed a sigh of relief. "I was kind of worried that was about us, for a second."

The lips continued to speak.

"The advertisement combines the dynamic, pugnacious visual style of the demonic arts of the late middle period with the confrontational ostentation of the psychic songs of the shattered frost-fire mode. It has visuals."

"Do you know what any of that means?" Sadie asked her.

Ashtoreth shrugged. "The last bit."

"Many bribes were given to have the advertisement certified in multiple cultural locales where it otherwise would not have been, and many more were given so that Master Kaleka Leka Leka's eclectic crew of creative and commercial geniuses could abide their callings and work while free from that most heinous shackle of the soul, occupational licensing."

The lips began to recede, shrinking in size.

"Such is our confidence in the advertisement's potency."

The voice grew louder.

"The advertisement has been titled: Scomb, Scomb Scomb."

The voice paused, and the various screens and illusory holograms around them went dark.

"Experience it now."

Suddenly, the world around them was flooded with an irregular, kaleidoscopic array of color, as if everything they could see had fallen under the light of a stained-glass window. These began to shift and move in disorienting, hypnotic patterns.

A voice that was different from the first began to half-speak, half-sing in tones that felt far to aggressive for a human ad.

"Scomb!" it barked. "Yes yes; double Scomb. Scomb Scomb generational, rich Scomb alliance…"

In the midst of the chinks and shards of light and color, the image of a creature that seemed like a cross between a snake and a slug appeared. They reared up and began to undulate.

Ashtoreth watched this, and for a moment she was completely unable to process it. Then Sadie, standing next to her, let out a laugh of pure, confused joy.

Soon the three of them were laughing almost uncontrollably at the undulating snake-creature as it danced across a rainbow background. Nothing about the advertisement indicated to Ashtoreth what Scomb was, or even if it was the product being sold.

"I think I love everything, you guys," she said as they looked up at the nearest projection and rainbow light played across their faces. She sighed. "This just makes me want to go everywhere and see it all. I don't even need to know why this is like this; I just love it."

"You really don't know anything about alien ads?" Kylie asked.

She shrugged. "We never really learned all that much about the rest of the cosmos," said Ashtoreth. "At least, not anyone who wasn't Hell's enemies."

"That's really sad," Sadie said. "But thanks for bringing me. This is so weird. I can't really wrap my head around it… but I'm sort of as far from home as almost anyone ever has been, aren't I?"

"We're basically just like astronauts," said Kylie. She made a sound of displeasure. "I wish I could enjoy this as much as you two seem to."

"What's wrong?" Ashtoreth asked.

"Nothing," Kylie said. "I just don't like the unfamiliar or something, I guess. I don't know." She worked her mouth for a moment, then finally said, "You're really not angry with me? About earlier?"

"Nah," she said. "We're good. Like I said, you were right about the fact that they're yours, not mine." She cast Kylie a sidelong glance. "I just don't want you to think that I'm a bad guy."

"I don't," said Kylie. "Not really." She hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know. I have a low opinion of peoples' morals generally."

"Okay."

"You're no saint, but you're better than most."

She smiled. "If that's the best I can get, I'll take it."

"Honestly," Kylie said. "I really don't like worrying about whether you like me or not. It makes me not like you."

Ashtoreth blinked in confusion. It was a bizarre pair of sentences, in her mind: the first one was essentially Kylie saying she didn't want to care about Ashtoreth. The second one was asserting that this was, in fact, because she cared about Ashtoreth.

Humans, she thought to herself, were just so weird sometimes. Maybe Kylie most of all.

"Really, I don't even know what I'm trying to say," Kylie said. "This whole conversation never needed to happen. Let's just keep looking for places we can sell our cheap crap at."

"You don't want to let the ad finish?" Sadie asked, nodding her head up at the kaleidoscopic projection. "Maybe once it's done we could take a break, too. And I don't know, pick up some Scomb, or something?"

Boss.

Ashtoreth frowned. From the look of her companions, Dazel had only spoken to her.

What's up? she asked.

You need to get over here, he said. There's something you should to see.

She frowned. Is it about the humans? she asked. But that didn't make any sense to her: it was too soon for them to have learned anything. Your soulmap?

No, Dazel said. Er… look, we're going to need to handle this properly. Nothing to make it obvious who you are.

Dazel, just tell me what's going on.

Sure thing, boss: your sister's here.

What?!

Actually… I think they both may be.

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