Rylia hadn’t needed to go far to begin testing out the Omniversal Marketplace. It had been a bit disappointing to discover that you couldn’t transfer regular currency directly into the system. Yet, despite that, the work around was fairly simple. Despite expensive tastes, Rylia was thankfully pretty well off, savings wise. Which meant that simply visiting a pair of pawnshops and haggling lightly for used items that the Omniversal Marketplace overlay showed had a decent value had provided a quick-and-dirty set of items to sell to the Market. Not exactly trusting Illium’s cameras not to catch something weird happening and report it to people, she hauled everything she’d purchased from the shops back to her apartment.
There, she’d started feeding the various omni-tools, guns, and bits of tech junk into the System. It was a bit weird to watch it just sort of distort and vanish into space as she sold things, but it was pleasing to see the basic currency counter tick upward with each item she sold to the Marketplace. Finally, when she’d sold the last item, she had just over 9,000 System Credits to play with. She’d spent close to 12,000 at the pawnshops, so she hadn’t exactly managed a one-to-one conversion, but she could afford the loss for now. She’d need a better method in the long run, but this would do for basic experimenting.
Of course, even with the minimal planning she’d been half-assing in the back of her brain, she already had a shopping list of things she wanted. Unfortunately, most of the ‘critical’ stuff was way out of her price-range just from her little bit of pawn shopping. Still, there were a couple of things on the list that were well within her new budget. First was correcting a minor bit of arrogance from Rylia’s original self. The girl had been confident enough in her biotics that she hadn’t bothered with any sort of weapons or defenses. She actually did have basic, if rusty, self-defense training. Something virtually all maidens got as a matter of course. But she hadn’t kept a personal weapon or continued the exercises.
In truth, as evidenced by the fact she was still alive, that wasn’t as stupid as it might sound. Rylia had stuck to the rich parts of Illium, and Asari weren’t the favored target for the likes of minor criminals specifically because you could never be sure which ones might blow you into tiny chunks of meat with their mind. Pickpockets and the like tended to avoid Asari as a result, even if darker elements sometimes specifically targeted them for other reasons. Still, with a new and more jaded mind running the show, she wasn’t nearly so blasé even in the safer sections of the city.
Which made her first purchase a completely in-universe kinetic barrier generator. The sort that could be worn under clothes, but a high-end model that might be worn by a well-to-do businesswoman. Even without any sort of markup, it drained three thousand System Credits. On the flip side, it would eat multiple shots from anything short of a military-grade sniper rifle. Rylia’s tentative plans did not involve going out and punching Reapers, thanks. But not having at least basic protection was stupid.
Which, of course, is why her first out of universe purchase was a gun. Specifically, a hold-out blaster from Star Wars. Small, compact, on the cheaper side. But it came with both a handy stun function and the plasma shots if fired in lethal mode would be only minimally impeded by kinetic barriers. It cost nearly as much as the kinetic barrier had, sadly, due to there being nothing like it in the Mass Effect universe. Thankfully, the markup for that wasn’t too steep in this case, as there were somewhat similar technologies. Geth weapons used plasma, for example. Though the stun function…there was no equivalent. Which is probably where most of the price hike had come from.
Rylia instantly felt better with both of the new purchases on hand. Sure, actually having to USE the weapon would be a Bad Thing, since its unusual nature would draw attention she didn’t want. But better to have it and not need it than to die early, when she was vulnerable, because she hadn’t taken basic precautions. Hmmm…actually. Yep! A quick look through the universal options produced the Men in Black setting and the Neuralyzer. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that expensive. Possibly because Reaper tech in-universe could most likely do the same thing? Whatever the reason, it only ate up another thousand credits and would help prevent secrets getting out if she got surprised.
Having also confirmed she wasn’t crazy and the System worked with those purchases, Rylia set all three purchases on her desk and sat at the sinfully comfortable chair she’d acquired several worlds ago and insisted on dragging along. Rightfully, the Hazel part of her now insisted. The thing was amazingly comfortable without making you want to fall asleep. A neat balancing act and she wished she’d had something like it in her old life…
Right.
On to practical planning.
With a bit of immediate security, it was time to think longer-term so she could create short and medium-term goals to get herself there. Sure, teenage humans and Asari Maidens alike mocked their own equivalents of the high-school counselors and motivational speakers infamous ‘5-year-plan.’ Or, well, 50-year plan in the Asari case. The older you got, though, the more you realized they really had been trying to impart an important lesson. Not necessarily in the need for a specific plan, but in the methods that worked to work towards one in a practical fashion.
Picture the end result, then break it down into chunks. Both because it helped order things, and because some of the ideas would fall flat. Bad luck, poor timing, insufficient knowledge, inadequate planning steps, something would go wrong with at least a few steps of any long-term plan. Murphy could be counted on to see to that. Yet, if the big goal was chunked up into smaller ones, any one piece of the plan going pear shaped was less likely to sink the whole ship, as it were.
Slowly, feeling her way through her situation, she began trying to pull the partial ideas floating around in her head into an actual plan, or at least the start of one.
First thing was first, discard the game bullshit as much as possible without losing the advantages limited foreknowledge could bring. The likelihood of a single ground-pounder somehow shifting the fate of the galaxy by shooting things in the face was so laughable as to not be worth considering. At best, Shepard might become an influential focal point, but counting on him or her to be a full solution was insane. Doubly so since there was zero way to confirm that the McGuffin that was the ‘Crucible’ was a thing, or that it would work if it was. The Reapers had known the thing existed, after all. She was also pretty sure she remembered hearing that it had been a last-minute rewrite anyway, due to spite about leaks? She had no idea if that was true but, either way, it was better to assume the McGuffin was a dead end.
That left just two real options, and sanity said pursuing both was the right choice.
Option 1 was to find a more traditional path to victory. She was not the right person to run up and punch a Rogue Spectre or Reaper in the face. But, thankfully, her System wasn’t geared for that anyway. Only the most utterly unimaginative would use the Omniversal Marketplace in that fashion. No, it was geared towards upgrading a tech base into something that could fight back.
The Reapers had intentionally guided the tech development of every race for eons, so using the Market to break that part of the cycle was an obvious piece of the larger solution. Energy weapons that could bypass kinetic barriers, better FTL technologies to reduce reliance on the Relays, better ground weapons to deal with the hordes…and something that could block, or at least detect, indoctrination. All of those would help bring the puny mortals up to snuff, capable of properly fighting back.
Put in simpler words, don’t play with the enemy’s deck.
That was just common sense, as you could always count on any competent enemy to cheat. No, take apart the deck entirely and restack it in the defenders’ favor, to help make up for the numbers disadvantage. Better yet, find a way to start an arms race to force all the species out there to start building like mad, too. That way the numbers weren’t as lopsided when the fecal matter hit the rotary air impeller.
Option 2, of course, was the backup plan. Survive. Hide well enough and in sufficient numbers that the Reapers can’t complete the Cycle properly and never even realize they failed. Don’t come back for a couple of thousand years, then build up over a complete 50,000 year Cycle to bitch slap them in Dark Space before they wake up. Less resource intensive, more plausible to pull off in a decade to decade and a half. But trillions die. Not ideal, but stupid not to make sure it’s taken care of in case Plan A doesn’t work. If the DLC was accurate, the Protheans almost made it work even after being put on the defensive for centuries. Forewarned and with non-Relay FTL available, it shouldn’t be too hard to set a viable Plan B like that up.
Right. Now, how did she get from current assets to either of those options.
Drumming her fingers on her chair arms, Rylia sank deeper into its comfy embraced as she pondered the issue. Money was obviously the first hurdle, no matter how you looked at it. No, not money. Resources. Money would help with the buildup, but raw material resources could be fed into the Market to help the process along, to speed things up and buy advantages. Rylia had money, but she wasn’t filthy rich. Frowning, she opened her banking and investment apps on her omni and assessed what was available.
She had the better part of a million credits in liquid assets. Not nearly as much as she would have had if her previous self hadn’t been nearly as good at wasting money as making it. Still, it was a solid amount, particularly as there was nearly twenty million more tied up in investments. Rylia hadn’t been stupid, and she had made sure to set her future self up for success when she got bored of the stripping thing. Of course, she’d take some level of losses if she withdrew some of those investments early, but it was there to use if she needed it.
She also had an engineering degree, a proven level of genius, and a job that had such flexible hours that no one would look too hard if she produced a few designs that she’d been ‘working on as a hobby.’ Biting her lip, she forced herself to wrench her mind away from military development. That would need to happen. The moment she got into that game she’d be a massive target, though. She needed security and influence before reaching that point. Preferably complete with some ‘Help’ acquired from the Market and thus outside the existing galactic systems of loyalty.
She needed civilian products with a huge market potential. She could find things like that in the Marketplace easily enough, though. So that would be the tentative ‘Phase 1.’ Get rich, buy, barter, or steal the assets to feed into the Market so she could get what she needed out of it. Acquire experts and personal security to keep the sharks at bay. Then…what? Sell military hardware?
The Humans were frantically trying to catch up to the other militaries and would jump at some of the things she was thinking of. Given that part of her had been human, she was still a little fond of the pyscho space-orcs anyway. So giving them a bit of an edge would make her feel better. Not to mention possibly position her to do something about Cerberus early on…but…no. It would almost certainly be too slow, too likely to end up with her dead at the hands of a Spectre for disrupting the status quo. Not to mention that the humans just didn’t have enough modern manufacturing capacity yet to make the difference. In another ten years, after a massive and concentrated effort, they’d be a semi-major player. Fast enough to startle the hell out of the existing players on the galactic stage, yes. But right now, they weren’t there yet.
Staring at a map of the galaxy, considering her options, her eyes drifted to the Terminus that was so nearby to Illium. A slow smile spread on her face, just a little evil looking if someone had been there to see it. Perhaps, what the doctor ordered, was a little bit of competition. After all, nothing could inspire hidebound institutions to build up faster than to suddenly discover someone else had better guns. Why, they’d even pay massive bribes to whoever could get them copies of those better guns to make for themselves! Yes, it was time to trick, scam, and manipulate the entire galaxy in order to save it! Skills she’d had in both lives!
It sounded to her like a much more reliable method than trying to punch a Reaper in the face. Of course, first she needed to practice her strip routine and make an appearance for her adoring streamer fans. No reason she shouldn’t try to wring more money out of her adoring simps, and finishing her current stripper job out through the end of the month would look less suspicious than suddenly dropping everything.
That, plus the human part of her thought it sounded sort of fun, even if the original Rylia had been getting bored of the repetition…