Chapter 13 - Hired!
The Adventurer's Guild was empty with the exception of the Flim Flam brothers when Lyra and Bon Bon arrived. Flim ceased polishing the counter and glanced their way with an upraised eyebrow when they walked in.
"You've retrieved the hammer already?" he asked. He bent back down to polish a rogue spot on the counter. "You two are suited for this! I knew you'd do well." He straightened back up and levitated the rag into the back room with a burst of magic, then nodded at the two friends. "Just give me a moment and we can work out our share of the reward."
Lyra sat down at one of the tables and offered him a sheepish grin. "We don't have the hammer," she announced as Bon Bon slid into the chair beside her. "We've just come back to see about maybe taking on one of the other contracts."
"Preferably one that involves less slime," Bon Bon muttered.
Flim's grin melted away into a pool of disappointment. He cleared his throat, adjusted his bowtie, and levelled his gaze at the would-be adventurers. "My dear, young entrepreneurs. You took on a contract. Specifically, a contract stating that you were to retrieve that hammer. To back out now just wouldn't be–" he shrugged "–profitable!" Bon Bon's ears laid back, and she looked ready to retort when a newcomer spoke.
"Did somepony say 'profit'?" The speaker, a sky-blue pegasus with a shock of rainbow colored mane, swooped in through the entrance and made a landing near Lyra and Bon Bon's table, where she craned her neck back to withdraw a large sack from her saddlebags and heft it up onto the table. She then hopped onto a chair and leaned back, propping her hind hooves up onto the table's edge.
Flim's grin returned as wide as ever, and Flam called out from the back room. "Is that our star adventurer Rainbow Dash I hear?"
"The one and only," Rainbow replied with a crooked smile. She made a show of stretching and yawning. "So I took care of those contracts for you. Piece of cake, really, though I do have to wonder when you're going to let me in on the good contracts. You know, the ones that aren't such a bore?"
Flim had already trotted over to the sack and was counting bits. "My dear Rainbow Dash," he said, offhandedly polishing a bit. "Nopony here can doubt your considerable talent, but there is just one little problem. Miniscule, really."
Rainbow sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard it all before." Her voiced changed from a bored drawl to sarcasm. "I can't be given the big jobs because at any given moment I might be called upon by the royal princesses to help save Equestria, and there's no guarantee that I won't drop out in the middle of a contract to do just that."
"Excuse me," Bon Bon chimed in, looking at Rainbow Dash. "Not that it's any of my business, but didn't the Flim Flam brothers nearly bankrupt your friend Applejack last year? Why in all of Equestria would you want to work for them?"
"Oh yeah!" Lyra's ears perked up. "I still remember the song." She bobbed her head back and forth. "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy Six Thousaaand!"
Rainbow ignored Lyra's outburst and crossed her front hooves over her chest. "Hey, I'm not the only one those two hucksters fooled!" Flim and Flam, who had just emerged from the back room, raised their eyebrows in unison. "I seem to remember you two–" she pointed a hoof at Lyra and Bon Bon, "–right near the front of the line to get your hooves on my cider." Bon Bon's cheeks reddened, but Rainbow continued. "The Adventurer's Guild gives me a chance to actually, you know, earn something for doing what I already do anyway." She leaned back in her chair and tossed a bit into the air before catching it in her hoof. "Why else would I be here?"
The room grew silent, save for the occasional clink of a bit as Flim counted them out. Lyra was silently counting them too, for a plan was beginning to form in her head.
"Excuse me, Rainbow," Lyra said. "Have you ever had to get an item back from a magic slime?"
Rainbow shrugged. "Yeah, those things are always making off with some kind of valuable object. Kinda makes you wonder just how many magical mishaps happen around here what with all the slimes oozing all over the place." She lowered her eyelids. "They're easy pickings and boring."
Lyra's eyes grew focused as she silently made adjustments to her plan. Flim had finished counting the bits and had given the bag to Flam, who had taken it into the back room. Everything was quiet for a moment before Lyra suddenly pushed her chair back and jumped onto the table.
"Whoah!" Bon Bon said. "What's gotten into you?"
Lyra ignored this and focused her attention on Rainbow Dash, pointing at her with an extended hoof. "You want the good jobs, you say?" She didn't wait for Rainbow to answer. "Well Bon Bon and I can get you the good jobs!" Flim's ears perked up at this, but Lyra continued. "You can't go on the big adventures because you might have to bail, right? But what if you could come and go at any time without actually having to abandon a contract?"
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "And how, exactly, does that work?"
"You join our team!" Lyra exclaimed. "We'll take the good contracts together. Then, if you need to leave to go vanquish a dragon or whatever it is you and your friends do, there will still be two of us on the job. The contract isn't abandoned!"
"Yes," Flim chipped in, "but you and your friend couldn't handle a single slime. How do you expect to complete a large contract if you can't even deal with the most basic ones?" Despite his misgivings, Flim seemed genuinely interested in what Lyra might have to say.
"Because," Lyra said, turning to face Flim. "Rainbow won't be the only one joining our team. We'll take everypony."
"Everypony?" the others, including Bon Bon, asked.
"Everypony. Every member of the guild. We'll hire the entire lot of them."
"With what money?" Bon Bon asked, aghast. She was used to Lyra's crazy schemes, but this was going a bit far.
"With the reward money," Lyra explained. "Whichever members of the guild accompany us on a contract will receive the entire reward to split, minus the Flim Flam brothers' share." She had the attention of everyone in the room, and even Flam had emerged from the back to see what was going on. The looks on their faces ranged from awe to horror as she continued. "Bon Bon and I won't take any of the reward money for ourselves. It all goes to the guild."
"Whoah whoah whoah," Rainbow interrupted. "You're going to take on contracts for free? That doesn't make any sense!"
Lyra shook her head. "Not for free. We'll take the items." She looked at the blank stares the others were giving her and nodded to herself. "Yes, items. If what Rainbow says is true, then there's no shortage of slimes oozing around with pony's valuables inside them."
Rainbow chuckled. "You've got that right."
The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. Lyra grinned. "I'm willing to bet that there are some ponies who don't even want whatever it is that was taken from them once we retrieve it. Who wants to clean burning slime off of something, anyway?" The others nodded slowly as the realization of her plan sunk in. "And that's just the most basic contracts! I bet there are even better things to discover on the big ones. Bon Bon and I will take any unwanted items we find and the guild gets the reward money. To make it even better, guild members will get a discount at my shop. So what do you say, do we have a deal?"
There are times, on occasion, when something incredible happens that nopony could have ever seen coming. Things that require just the right amount of logic and madness to pull off, things that could just as easily have gone horribly wrong if everything hadn't come together in just the right way. This was one of those occasions.
Flim looked at his brother. "Well, brother of mine, it looks as if this here young pony would like to hire the entire guild."
"Without any actual exchange of currency!" Flam agreed. He tilted his head and thought a moment. "But it looks as if it will bring us in more bits in the long run..."
"Indeed it does," Flim said. "With this young filly's enthusiasm and business skills, it looks to bring us in a great many more. Do we dare?"
After a moment, Flam shrugged. "Indeed we do," he said.
"Deal!" Flim shouted, bumping hooves with Lyra.
"Deal!" Lyra squealed. "You're all hired!" She turned to Rainbow Dash and smirked. "Come on, Rainbow Dash. I know of a certain slime who's going to wish it had never burnt this pony!"
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Lyra, you brilliant mad mare.
Ahh yes, the ever lasting loot drops from dungeon monsters... And those unwitting treasure chests.
The voices in my lid said you'd be back
Poor Bon Bon though, she's probably going to have to haul most of the loot... Because I don't think Lyra is fit enough to carry a... Well... I actually have no idea.
Wouldnt AJ be best at this sort of thing?
You know, because of the,
Farming?
5497600
Thumbed up, regardless.
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw1174_S3rlk.gif
Is that hammer really that valuable?
Someone has been playing Recettear I see.
5498058 Capitalism, ho!
5498007 In actual monetary value? Probably not.
Sentimentally? It's likely to be the first item Lyra retrieves that isn't garbage (not counting the flowers Iron Will bought her).
Lyra! Your a GENIUS!!!
reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/FattyGenius.gif
Omg, the amount of cleverness Lyra has is off the charts. While others may see her as a raving lunatic, which she kind of is, she can really pull through when the situation calls! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!
Lyra's idea is stupid. It is so stupid that it swung all the way around the dial and ended up back in "Brilliant" territory.
This could work. This could really work!
i was right, Lyra got hurt.
It took me a moment to work out the profit angle. Presumably any nonspecified items that adventurers run across in the course of a contract count as loot, not as something Flim & Flam would automatically take for themselves, so there's no loss there. The brothers gain in profit because they can now pull in more business by advertising that the one, the only, the world-saving and very famous Rainbow Dash is now available (to a degree) for high-level, long-term contracts.
And to be fair, if they do run across an item that another member of the guild wants, Lyra and Bon Bon are technically only taking the items so they can sell them later, so if they sell them to a guild member first that's a bonus.
5497600
5498179 Why no sell the slime? It sounds like it would make a good pet
5497702
That would require slimes to have genitals.
Lyra, you magnificent mare! I read your book!
This is a delightful turn that I did not see coming.
5499394
You seem to forget whom we're talking about. The greatest trolls to ever grace the Multiverse. The Flim Flam Brothers.
5499707
fc00.deviantart.net/fs10/f/2006/327/b/7/Slime_Sprite_by_jaymonius.png
SFW pic. There's your slime genitals. It's wierd thouh how they use them as an attack like a Sea Cucumber shoots out it's intestines for defense ... weirder how they fly by in.
Haha, of course Dash is an adventurer, and apparently a good one, too.
Well alright, if adventuring doesn't work to support your capitalism to support paying off your debts, might as well go with capitalism in support of adventuring to support your capitalism to support paying off your debts. There's no way it won't work, and it has the added benefit of an unlimited pool of main, side and background characters for use as adventuring companions since who knows who might be in the guild.
The line between genius and madness is separated only by degrees of success. This is going to be awesome.
Yay!
Ya know, if Lyra and Bon Bon really need money that badly, they could always collapse the entire nation's economy and then tell the government they need a bailout because they're too big to fail.
Worked for BoA!
Eeeeeeeeeeee
Lyra is awesome.
I can't wait to see what
catastrophespredicamentsfun, happy situations she and Bon Bon get into.Now, what's going on with Trixie and Iron Will...
Lyra, you little genius, you!
Looks like Lyra may have a better head for business than anypony thought.
And so, Lyra had an idea, a brilliant idea, a mad idea, Lyra had a mad, brilliant idea...
It's pretty excellent as a matter of fact, and I like how Rainbow isn't Rainbow Grudge in this series, usually the only example of loyalty she displays is 'be hostile to people who did your friends wrong', not saying it's admirable, but confrontational Dash is not my favorite.
Hey, connections~ Let's build them~
ah the best ideas are the mad ones.
I honestly cannot tell if this idea is brilliant or brain dead. Bit of both, I suspect, not unlike Lyra.
5497600
Dang Lyra you smart girl