People discover, quite by accident, that aliens and spicy food don't mix, and that capsaicin is considered a deadly toxin by most species. -- YizukiKhons
[AN: Yeah sorry I'm late. I had to mind Miss Chaos through an exploration of QUT and some of the courses available there.]
Lynn had been trading with the Hyracont for some time. After years of setting up blind trading arrangements, she got to know a brave few. In their own livesuits, of course. There was never any telling which diseases from which species would become the next Black Plague. Or Influenza Pandemic. Or Mauve Blight.
They were cute little cogniscents, and Lynn insisted on calling them 'Fuzzies' only in the privacy of her personal journals.
And then the Py'than arrived. They threatened the Hyracont both directly and indirectly, and the only vessel standing in their way was Lynn's ship, The Unseen Adventure.
So Lynn attempted to negotiate. They could plausibly trade. There had to be things that both parties wanted that the other had in abundance. And the best way to make all parties happy was a banquet.
Nothing drew people together like food.
She converted one of her smaller cargo holds for the banquet. With airlocks for the lazy susan so that all three sides could exchange and sample dishes in their own atmosphere.
It was how she found out that the Hyracont used her tubes of Wasabi as poison for their pest animals. But the Py'than, following her lead, dipped their samples of Sushi onto the small green blob of spicy paste. And ate it before she could stop them.
She killed their leader by accident. And gained their eternal respect by showing them that it was relatively harmless for her kind. By eating her standard amount of Wasabi on a slice of salmon.
Even wasabi aficionados boggled at the copious serving she enjoyed.
The Py'than, suitably impressed, agreed to whatever terms the Hyracont dictated. Any species with that kind of cogniscent on their side, they reasoned, had to be left alone.
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