Redwall Abbey

For questions/comments, consult the commentary (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=7725.0).

Quote
The Rules
We will have an overlord (or overlady), who will be all powerful and control the game.
Everyone else will be a servant of theirs to do his or her bidding, which will be a new assignment at the beginning of each phase.
The game begins by the Overlord issuing a task, sending out their servants, and then summoning everyone before them and questioning them about whether they got the thing they wanted.
Any given round may have anywhere from a developing storyline and plot to pure and simple tasking. At times, the gamemaster (Overlord) may deviate from the general pattern and do something different at the end than just another task.

Game terminology:
"Game" or "round" refers to each individual, distinct game (OO I, OO II, etc.).
"Phase" refers to an individual segment of the game.
So: Each round consists of several phases, with a diminishing count of player from phase to phase.

Example Phase:
Let's say the Overlord might have wanted a jeep to use.
Stage 1: Introduction
The Overlord sends out their servants on a task and they return, and the Overlord will question their servants and ask them why they failed to bring them the thing they wanted (which will happen; no one succeeds).
Stage 2: Defenses
Players can then blame their failure on some random thing (like maybe an elephant destroying the jeep) or someone else in the game; anything to shrug themselves off from fault.
Everyone can then blame someone, themselves, keep silent, or introduce some sort of new feature that happened while acquiring the item (in this case, a jeep). Eventually, the Overlord will process the information and decide who failed.
Stage 3: Punishment
The person chosen to have failed by the Overlord is then thrown out, vaporized, or something creative, by the Overlord's orders. The idea is to not be this person, and to survive as long as possible.

Don't overflow the phase. Player defenses will be judged on quality, not length or frequency.

Inter-game rules: The winner of any round is given host-ship of the next game. This can tie in with them going from servant to overlord, or it can be original.

General Guidelines:
Free roleplaying, or game spam, is fine. This means having yourself eat a banana, talk about the weather or river dance.

Whenever someone says something about an event, it becomes fact. It is what happened. If someone says an elephant destroyed a jeep, then anyone calling that person a liar is for certain lying; the jeep was destroyed by an elephant. What's up for telling by someone else is, for example, who set the elephant on the jeep. Also, a character doesn't know what someone else's motives were in doing or saying something -- they can speculate on those motives, but saying about someone, for instance, that "they meant to kill the Overlord" is not automatically factual.

Godmoding pertaining to persons should be restricted to some extent, just try to keep things with at least a hand in plausibility. Powerplaying is allowed. However, it cannot affect players between tasks. For instance, you cannot have a servants contract a disease and be unable to speak, or even die. You can have them be sick during the task, but you cannot impede them during the Sessions before the Overlord.
Normally, the Gamemaster will have technology restricting servants to a base during the game to prevent physically roleplaying and keep the game focused on its purpose. Overlords can power play.
The servants are not aware of the Overlord's personal name, or of events that took place in previous rounds, unless the Overlord states otherwise.
You cannot use an excuse like being brainwashed or cloned during the task. You are you - and you are responsible for what you did wrong.
All posts after the game begins should contain IC text; there should be no posts that are only OOC chatter.
No "backseat moderating". You may ask the Overlord whether someone else's post violates the rules, but do not tell that person, whether by making an OOC comment or PMing them, that they are in the wrong. The Overlord is responsible for managing the game.
Remember to keep things civil, stay inside the board rules, keep all hands and legs inside the game until it comes to a complete stop.

Also: I've noticed that a lot of people have turned to trying to make other players disloyal, rather than inept or insane. There's only so many times I can hear "He tried to kill you, master" before it gets old, and it isn't a very good attack to begin with. For this round only: All players should be assumed to be basically loyal to the Overlord.

Past Overlords:
Overlord's Orders I (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=722.0) - Taggerung_of_Redwall
Overlord's Orders II (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=888.0) - James Gryphon
Overlord's Orders III (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=948.0) - DanielofRedwall
Overlord's Orders IV (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=1088.0) - Matthias720
Overlord's Orders V (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=1246.0) - Redwall Musician
Overlord's Orders VI (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=1549.0) - Tiria Wildlough
Special Holiday Round 2012 (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=3022.0) - Taggerung_of_Redwall
Overlord's Orders VII (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=3361.0) - Matthias720
Overlord's Orders VIII (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=4241.0) - Romsca
Overlord's Orders IX (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=6441.0) - rusvulthesaber, James Gryphon/Tiria Wildlough
Overlord's Orders X (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=6679.0) - Taggerung_of_Redwall
Overlord's Orders XI (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=7007.0) - James Gryphon
Overlord's Orders XII (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=7133.0) - Jasper
Overlord's Orders XIII (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=7350.0) - LT Sandpaw
Overlord's Orders XIV (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=7604.0) -  Delthion
Overlord's Orders XV (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=7707.0) - Soren the Warrior
Overlord's Orders XVI (http://redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=8110.0) - Mhera, James Gryphon
Overlord's Orders XVII (http://www.redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=8475) - Izeroth
Overlord's Orders Special Round II (http://www.redwallabbey.com/forum/index.php?topic=9438.0) - James Gryphon

Sign-ups:
1. Grododile (Defending 'finalist') Knocked down a bottomless pit
2. Jasper (The one and only)
3. Fatch of Southsward (Striking back) Scrambled eggs
4. Matthias720 (Gunning for a third) Counting change
5. Jukka the Sling (Concerned citizen) Rocked out
6. Hickory (The Ent) Went out with a BANG
7. a crumb (Of bread)
8.
9.
10.

Seeing as how the last round ended just before I won ;), I better join up.

Behold the Overlord! May I serve him forever and on.

Hehehe...  >:D

Sure. Why not.

I'm here, but with Matthias and Jasper present we'll see just how long I can hold out...

Thank goodness. I wondered if we'd ever get enough signups.

Six is slim, but I'm willing to go with it. Game'll start tomorrow (Friday, June 30) night.

Hmm, I'll play. Should be fun.

Fatch and I are on vacation until next weekend, internet will be shady, and we didn't bring our laptops. Could we possibly wait until we get back? Bad timing, we've been available the rest of the summer, just not this week. Will post here the day we get back. (7 or 8 days from now, so sorry!)

What I'll probably do, without postponing OO, is have a warmup phase, to introduce the Overlord and the setting and get people into the swing of the game. If anyone else wants to join during this time, until after the warmup is complete, they're able to do so. I was thinking of doing this anyway, to allow people to have an extra phase to make up for the smaller number of players, so perhaps it works out.

Warmup phase underway. If you want to join, feel free to post about it here and you'll get into the game as soon as the warmup's over.

---

Unbeknownst to the world at large, in a sprawling underground complex right below one of the world's largest cities, a certain fellow lived, most usually thinking up new things to do with his money.

He already had more of it than he knew what to do with. But he wanted more. While rich, he was not yet the richest, and there's no title that grates on the great more than being the second best at something. He was always on the lookout for new means, no matter how absurd, to deepen the pile of gratuitous wealth that he had inexplicably acquired over the years.

This man of mystery had many names and titles, but vain as he was, he preferred the majestic. He was currently styling himself as "Overlord", and as the well-drilled underlings of his labyrinthine ACME Corporation knew, it was best that anyone seeking to curry his favor use his preferred title, or such like unto it, quickly and frequently.

Right now, the self-titled tyrant sat in an ornate chair a little too big for him on cushions filled with hundred-dollar bills, and reviewed his most recent batch of loyal minions. He nodded with approval. This was the finest crop that he had seen in a while, if he didn't say so himself. He had no doubt they would be an interesting group to work with.

Seeing the looks of confusion on their faces, he thought it was high time to shed some light on the situation. "You've all been brought here because starting now, you're going to start working on the special, secret assignments in our company. I've been assured you have a lot of creativity and a wide range of capabilities, so you'll most likely be doing all kinds of different things. Wherever I want something new, you'll be at point making it happen. I look forward to seeing what all you can come up with."

"Today, you'll be opening up and running our newest proxy business, MacDougal's Faster Food. It's in a convenient part of town in a great test market. If things go well we might launch a chain nationwide, not to mention you'll be looking at a big bonus in your next check. All of the stocking and cooking work is done by robots, so you just need to work the registers, deliver the food, and keep things clean and maintained. Don't let ACME down!"

~ Some time later... ~

"All of the food and drink stock, gone. The whole dining area, filthy. And not a single sale!"

The Overlord shook his head with disbelief. "We haven't gotten the surveillance cameras hooked up yet, so I just have hearsay to go on. Is it true that you really put out signs inviting the whole town for 'Free Food on MacDougal's'? And what's this I heard about a food fight, and you refusing to take money from customers?"

He sighed. "All that potential down the drain... one of you had better speak up."

"Really," a crumb began speaking, "this whole mess began because Matthias decided to rig up one of the robots to serve as a cleaning robot. He said something about less of a workload for himself. He just beat one of the cookers over the head with a banana until it was nonfunctional, and began reprogramming it. The rest of us were just cleaning, and everything was going fine. It was a surprise when it happened, but the robot was actually successfully reprogrammed. It roared back to life, screaming like mad, clearly very angry. Matthias had written some sort of emotion into its programming, making it enraged at the sight of any mess. So naturally it began trying to clean Matthias himself, since he was the closest thing to it. Next thing I know, Matthias is hurling banana after banana at the thing. The whole kitchen just shut down, as food went everywhere, just making the cleaning bot ever more angry. Matthias was hitting the rest of us to, given the panic he was in. So Grododile and Hickory starting throwing food back at Matthias, and then at everyone else. The cleaning robot exploded in the end, of course, right in the pantries. That was the end of the whole actually having any food and drink in the whole place, besides what was already out in the main kitchens.

"Now, as far as the free food thing goes, that sort of flowed from there. Once the cleaning robot blew up, the rest of the robots stopped working. They formed a solid group, and then one stepped forward. It gave a long speech, protesting the working environment, delineating all the concerns he now had that a colleague of his was manipulated, overworked, assaulted, and died in a ridiculously inconvenient explosion. Jukka then had the brilliant idea that all food should be free. I'm not sure how that was supposed to help the situation, but Jukka was sure it would clam the nascent worker rebellion."

My leige, I must protest that I am innocent! I would not expect the simple crumb to know the brilliance of my actions, nor to own up to sabotaging my efforts to improve the restaurant. It is true I reprogrammed a robot to perform cleaning duties for me, but that is not the whole story. I am familiar enough with programming that I was able to make the necessary adjustments, but the robot had a bad servo in its head, and a some gentle percussive maintenance was needed to reboot it. A banana was the closest thing on hand, so I improvised. Unfortunately, there must have been a loose wire connection in the robot's head, because when the emotion subroutine kicked in, the joy the robot should have felt went all wrong, and it acted out in rage. I tried to reset it again with another banana, but my aim is poor and it was difficult to hit a moving target. Each time I tried, I missed. The others were no help, and indeed after some prompting from crumb, they started throwing other food back at me. It wasn't until Jasper then grabbed a nearby wrench and proceeded to hit the robot with it again and again, until it finally broke. Fatch, who was trying to boss everyone around, yelled at me to stop throwing food, even though he had clearly seen the malfunctioning robot.

After that, Jukka declared that the best way to get people to come in was through clever advertising. She then proceeded to make the 'free food' signs. She ignored my pleas to reason, and offered any and all food she could to whomever walked in.

My lord, as anyone who has done some research can attest, the part of town the restaurant was in is home to a large immigrant population from the nation of Arintalia.  Arintalia is a country with a vibrant and very traditional culture.  Part of their tradition is that the first time they go to a new restaurant, the food is free.  It's a custom hundreds of years old, but hardly anyone over here respects that.  There was already a growing worker rebellion among the Arintalian immigrant population as a result.  I knew we had to win their favor if we were to succeed as a business, so that's why I gave out free food.  I tried to explain my actions to Matthias and Crumb, but Matthias ignored me, and Crumb said, "Who cares about the Arintalian immigrants' feelings?"

Jasper knelt before the ornate pillows of the overlord, resisting the urge to grab at the bills peeking out of the cushions.

"As anyone could see, oh great, noble and wealthy overlord, I merely did what I could to preserve our investments in the face of horrific servant-ship! After Matthias succeeded in creating a robot capable of destroying the entire restaurant, it was fairly obvious that we could not allow that to happen. Therefore, it is with the utmost pride that I confirm what Matthias has said of me: I stopped a the robot from destroying the store by using a wrench."

"After I heroically deposed of the robot, the other robots quickly rallied to form a worker's union of sorts, complete with a speech. I wanted to crush their dreams and lower their pay until they did their job (as is standard overlord policy) but Jukka insisted that they have their rights. She proceeded to spend the remaining money we were granted on picket signs and torches, and even organized a rally for oppressed robot workers. When very few people turned up, she decided that the best way to attract protesters would be to feed them for free, playing on cultural traditions to attract immigrant groups. Now, up to this point, we had lost our robot workers. This left Matthias (who had cleaned himself up a bit following the food fight, which I naturally had no part in) and I to work nonstop cooking and cleaning, while the crumb, Hickory and Groddil debated on the life span of the fries. (Which they tested by sitting in a circle, watching them decompose.)"

"By the time Matthias and I finished all the orders and exited the kitchen, the protest was in full swing, and we discovered that Jukka was handing out all the food we had prepared to the protesters for free. It was a scene of pandemonium. Groddil was wearing a suit on stage and was waving his fist saying "It's gonna be HUUUUGGGEEE. This restaurant is a disgrace! Help us to make MacDougal's great again!" Meanwhile, Fatch and Jukka were arm and arm in front of the restaurant's air conditioning unit, their hair blowing in the wind, while Hickory sang enthusiastically:

"NEAAAAARRR FARRRRRR, WHEREEEEVEER YOU ARE I BELIEVE THAT THE HEART DOES GO ONNNNN"

"The crowd (who were of very bad taste) seemed to be enjoying the performance, and offered to pay me for it. I quickly moved to accept, hoping to squeeze some sort of profit out of the catastrophe. Naturally, crumb showed up, and insisted that the money was no good to him because he only liked american money, not Arintalian immigrant money. I tried to resist, but the chance was gone."

a crumb dusted off her shoulders. "I, with my enduring knowledge of so many places and peoples, actually know a very interesting fact about these Errand-tellers or however they pronounce their endonym. Their currency is produced in two kinds, one red and the other blue. I tried explaining this to Jasper, but do you expect that he could hear with all the racket? Jukka was at this point howling in addition to singing, since a decapitated robot head had bounced itself up behind her and bit her ankles. Matthias was having a grand old laugh at that gag. Said it made him feel proud again. Anyway, the blue kind is perfectly reasonable and would have done wonders for our situation. But no one present had the blue currency, in all its shiny papery goodness. They had the red currency, which, it should really be noted, is sourced from the island Vulcangelatinberry from among the scorpion population. Their rhombus-shaped, sparkling red bodies make a wonderful little currency. That is also fatal to most living things, known to aggravate robots, and also banned in most jurisdictions. Imagine what would have happened if we accepted those little things?"

Humph, at least we would have gained something out of this mess. The others have it all wrong, great Overlord. The real servant at fault is obviously Hickory. The protest situation could have been remedied easily, if we simply sold the food to the protesters. However, Hickory took Jukka's boyfriend Tim hostage, and told her that she "Must embarrass Fatch or your boyfriend gets it!" She obeyed by handing out food, forcing me to chase her around in a mad attempt to stop her. She eventually told me the only way I was going to get her to stop, was if I reenacted that scene out of the titanic. Hickory, being behind all of this, was only too eager to help out. So he provided the music.

Jasper claims that he tried to stop the robot from doing damage with a wrench, but as any good mechanic will tell you, the best way to fix a machine, is to hit it with a wrench. I, and some others besides, believe he may have been attempting to repair the damage done by the bananas, in some attempt to ruin your schemes for profit.

I did indeed yell at them to stop throwing food, because at the time, I did not know of it's qualities in concern to robots, and in my eyes they were merely helping the robot to trash the place. Please have mercy upon me Overlord, I am but a simple servant, attempting to help.

The Overlord shook his head. "I'm not impressed, I have to tell you that now. There were a lot of bad decisions made by a lot of you over the course of this business day."

He smiled wanly. "We found out recently that some of the particular models of robots that were used in your store today had manufacturing defects that led to unpredictable and unprofitable behavior. Supposedly one in every ten computer chips had a misplaced thingamajig where they should've had a thingamabob, or some such. I don't have time to worry about those details; that's what I pay people not so unlike you to keep track of. The point is that I can't know that your trouble today wasn't caused in large part due to factory error."

"Your behavior was not very professional. But I have an extensive background in marketing, and I understand that sometimes our workers have ... unconventional means of promoting the business. I'm a fair man and like to give my employees the benefit of the doubt. So I think we will give you another chance before I order more pink paper."

"There's a theatre production one of our company's clients are putting on at Broadway that's in need of help. They need a few extras and stage hands. The owner is apparently in financial trouble and can't take on new contracts. More style than sense, I guess. Fortunately for them, they did have enough sense to have signed a large, very broad agreement with ACME a while back. This gives him an opening to borrow some of you. Their stage staff are supposed to be pretty good. Do what they tell you to do and the show will be a hit, they'll make a profit, we'll get a cut, and you'll make me a much happier man."

---

"Well, I guess this tells us what we need to know about all of your odds of making it to the spotlight any time soon," the Overlord commented, grinning rather spitefully. "The climax of the play interrupted by an impromptu sword-fight! A laugh track played when there should have been a somber musical score! Lighting that practically blinded both the audience and the actors! And even if your debut had gone smoothly, shouting "Best of luck!" before the curtain rose and chanting "Macbeth" the whole time you were backstage were no way to endear yourselves to the cast. Many of them are so certain the company is bewitched that they quit, some even before the show was done! Our clients would certainly be forced to close their doors if it wasn't for the substantial public contributions that ACME has generously made to "promote the arts".

"Yes, how touching. We in ACME look out for our friends. But they say to keep your enemies closer than your friends, and that certainly seems to be what we're doing here! You employees have cost me quite a lot of money! You all might've gotten off last time, but I can't see how you can justify this disaster..."

"Really, I think the whole thing started going wrong when Jukka abducted and disappeared the entire existing set of stage hands. She managed to do this within five minutes of us even arriving. Matthias was very angry over that. He said he had the same idea, but hadn't gotten to begin executing it yet. Hickory and I decided we would just get over that horrible incident and go work on the lighting. But the controls were covered in a weird paste, and we asked Matthias to try and clean it up, since he has so much experience dealing with messes. He protested at first, then got to work. He cleared most of it up, and then announced that he had to go and talk to an actor about something very important. I asked why as he walked away. I was very confused as to the abrupt and inconvenient exit. He stopped walking away, and turned around slowly, all solemn like, looked me in the eye, and said I wouldn't want to know. He walked away, shoulders slouched. From then on, I did the best I could cleaning up the paste, but the paste had sunken in, in some places, and it had a tendency to make the controls do odd things every once and awhile. It was after the lighting was reasonably functional, that I went to find the cast and talk to them. I had planned to get right back to lighting work, but needed to get a couple things straight about the play first. When I found the cast, it then became apparent how terrible a situation had developed, and apparently none of the rest of these people were dealing with it. You see, half the cast were incompetent wannabees with no prior experience. The other half were nihilists who had apparently given up on life six months before we got there. Fatch and Jasper decided they would try and and 'complement' the acting work. I saw the two of them practicing with swords."

"My dear colleague crumb speaks the truth, great Overlord," said Jasper. "Just wait until you hear this woeful tale."

"We had only just arrived when Jukka took the stage hands. My sources tell me that they are in the process of being shipped to Antarctica even now. I cannot say with any certainty what caused her to do this, but her purse did seem much bulkier as of late. Now, we get into the suspicious part. You see, Hickory informed us, (while on one of his many water breaks) that two of the stage hands were going to perform Shakespeare's famous sword fight between MacBeth and MacDuff before they were abducted. With no one to replace them, it was up to us to learn the entire routine in only a week. Fatch and I were more than willing to take up the task, in an effort to save the worsening situation. The sword fight was nearly the greatest success of the play, as you may have guessed. Fatch was a bit of a slow learner, but I made up for it with my own quick wits. It was only after performing the swordfight on stage, that we realized Hickory had been playing us all along. As he very well knew, the play was entitled "The Dance of Summer" and was centered around a young girl attending a ball with a young man. The point of the story was that she became closer to her father as he taught her to dance, and finally grew up. As you can imagine, there is little room for swordplay in such a production. The scoundrel teamed up with Matthias and Groddil to chant "MacBeth" at the beginning to ensure that we wouldn't suspect the ruse. We were backstage most of the time, and didn't realize anything was off except that the music seemed a little flowery for MacBeth. Even after the swordfight, we had been so intent on the display it was only once we saw the three 'servants' laughing at us, that we recognized what had happened.

This is not the worst of the betrayals your servants committed though, great Overlord!" Continued Jasper. "I had to spend the rest of the play backstage, desperately trying to stop Fatch from burning the stage. Perhaps it was anger at his humiliation in the sword fight, but he spent the rest of the play with flint and stone, attempting to set flame to the ornate curtains and wooden props. Several times he was successful, but I managed to stomp out the flames. I was in the middle of putting out one such fire, when Matthias, who was supposed to be backstage acting as a stagehand drove straight off the highway and into the park where the play was being performed, with a big truck full of live alligators in cages. There were a dozen safari vehicles behind him, (belonging to multiple local zoo's) in hot pursuit. Matthias was wearing a straw hat, and was chewing on a strand of barley. He was even wearing a bright colorful vest, not unlike to the one often sported by Crocodile Dundee, and was yelling and whooping like a maniac. I could only watch in astonishment as he drove the truck into the pond, before attempting to engage the entire task force the zoo's had sent after him with nothing but his bare fists. It was all I could do to get him out of there alive without harming the humans too significantly. While we battled, the entire crowd stopped watching the play, and began watching us instead. The actors continued at first, but eventually got fed up and quit, declaring that the company was bewitched.

I cannot explain the actions of the others, but can only assure your lordship that I acted with the best of intentions, and only to serve your wishes." Jasper shook his head at Matthias and Hickory in particular. These others have lots of explaining to do.

"Oh great Overlord," a girl began, "allow me to explain my actions.  Although they may seem highly questionable at first glance, you will soon see that I was only acting in the best interests of the mission you assigned us.

"As Crumb said, half the cast were nihilists who had given up on life.  What she didn't know was that all the stagehands were nihilists too, only more far gone.  As soon as I walked into the theater, I overheard all twenty of the stagehands whispering about how they didn't want to live anymore and were planning to blow up the theater in a few days.  I had seen cases like this before since my uncle was a well-respected psychiatrist, and I knew I had to do something.  However, I didn't want to cause panic among my colleagues, so I decided to take care of it all myself.

"I immediately ran outside and backed a high-tech box truck I owned up to the back of the theater.  I then went up to all the stagehands and said, "Hey, guys, there's a really heavy piano out back.  Could all twenty of you help me carry it in?"  They all followed me outside, and I lured them into the back of the truck, then slammed the overhead door, locking them in.  I then set the box truck on autopilot, entering in coordinates for a top-secret Antarctic base where my uncle now studies experimental psychiatry techniques with the Russians.  I knew he could help the nihilists.

"After this, I went back inside.  I helped out everywhere for the next few days, doing my best to remove more paste from the controls after Crumb had done her "utmost" to clean them, painting backdrops beautifully, helping some cast members practice their lines, and generally behaving like a model servant, Your Overlordship.  However, I once caught Fatch and @Hickory defacing one of my backdrops by spraypainting "THIS THEATER IS FLIPPING AWFUL AND NEEDS TO BE BURNT TO THE GROUND" in black and hot pink across the scenery.  There was no reason for this, and it happened just five minutes before the show started, so we were forced to use it nonetheless, bringing disgrace to your good name.

"Also, I heard Crumb giggling crazily halfway through the play about how she had switched the somber musical score with a laugh track.  I immediately ran to the sound booth, hoping to warn the sound guys, but it was too late - the laugh track started playing just as I reached the booth.

"By the way, Jasper's suggestion that I received monetary compensation for shipping the stagehands to Antarctica is entirely false.  My purse was full lately because I was carrying around lots of granola bars and trail mix so I wouldn't have to take time out from my work for meals, Overlord."

After the last servant had finished speaking, the room fell silent. It remained that way for several minutes, during which the Overlord shifted in his chair and stared at his minions, waiting for more details that seemed never to come.

This awkward interlude was interrupted when suddenly, without warning, a large horned mammal came running into the room! Bellowing a challenge it charged towards Groddil, butted him into the bottomless pit that conveniently happened to be lying nearby, and trotted off onto a dumbwaiter, exiting the room with no further sound.

The Overlord lifted an eyebrow. "That was unexpected." Whether it actually was or not, his otherwise impassive face did not reveal.

"Six of you's a reasonable number for your next assignment, though. One of our nationwide clients needs a placeholder radio show to fill in a time slot while they look for a new permanent resident. We want to keep this production low budget, and that being the case I figured that you are the perfect people for this job. You'll be on every evening from 9 PM to 1 AM until further notice. Who knows, maybe if you do a good job you'll boost ratings and bring in some advertising revenue. After some training on the first day you'll have full run of the studio, so don't feel constrained in your show's format."

---

The Overlord welcomed his servants back two days later with a rather sour expression on his face, and big bags over his eyes. He had been up all night, and his mood was not improved for it.

"That could have gone better."

He picked a receipt listing off the damages up off of an armrest. The printer had apparently saved time and money by printing the list very fine, requiring a magnifying glass to read it properly. After attempting and failing to make out what was written on the paper, the Overlord growled, tossed the sheet to the side, and stood up, towering over his servants. "In one night you managed to get the station's broadcasting license revoked, get rid of ten thousand dollars' worth of sound equipment, and get slapped with about a million copyright lawsuits. Also, the "Hour of Static" did nothing to improve listener interest. Our clients are furious, the world at large is perplexed, and the FBI and local police have both opened investigations related to the goings-on last night. Perhaps most importantly, though, I'm not happy. Tell me what could have possibly compelled you to do this, and maybe if it's good you'll stick around long enough here to worry about how you'll deal with the rest of your problems..."

"There was a short bungalow outside the studio. We arrived there first on our first night in full control. Matthias stood there completely filthy, covered head to toe. After a short rest observing the unique architecture of the bungalow, we moved on to the studio for our first night in control. Jasper immediately began playing some blues, but Jukka complained that wasn't good enough caliber. She sent Jasper off on some wild good chase. Apparently a wild goose had stolen the studio's doughnuts. Jukka declared to the audience that an hour of experimental music was about to begin, something of her own creation. This was of course the Hour of Static. I decided that I should tacitly dissuade her, but Hickory had another idea. He brandished a giant inflatable doughnut and was preparing to try and trap Jukka in it. As he swung it downwards over her unsuspecting head, a giant wild goose charged through the wall and crushed him to the ground, before the goose turned and sped off. At that, Jukka accused me of trying to assassinate her with an old-school, famous joint doughtnut-goose assassination attempt, as first demonstrated by the great duo Lawrence of Strattonhampton-upon-Vale of Clywd and his short, singing brother Swatton Switters in the great failed assassination of the Grand Cloned Emperors in 1989. After she declared that, Fatch said he had been there in 1989, and this was just pathetic.
"The radio controls had become stuck at this point, so we just had to let the hour of static finish itself out, and were powerless once very expensively copywritten music continued to play afterwards for the rest of the evening. You see, that goose was covered in goo and had cemented the whole operating apparatus beyond repair. I couldn't figure out where the goo came from. Jasper and Fatch suggested the goose produced it naturally, Hickory thought it was from a bad prank played earlier on the goose, Jukka thought it might be a result of a bad re-hatching of the famous ill-attempted Great Lathered Whale assassination attempt devised by the Mugged Maverick in 1776 when he tried to kill the Golem barons. Matthias just stood there being completely filthy and sticky."

((After a lengthy absence, I return...))

Overlord, I hope you aren't listening to the ramblings of this worthless crumb. You'll find that my actual intention by putting the inflatable doughnut over Jukka was actually a safety mechanism, designed to keep her safe should a catastrophic event happen. I'd like to point out that I had stopped said catastrophic event from happening. Matthias's tattered and dirty appearance was a result of his climbing down into the lowers levels of a nearby fault line (which was full of clay, mud, and other unwanted materials) to plant a large bomb, which was SUPPOSED to trigger a massive earthquake upon detonation. I managed to deactivate the bomb myself after he left it down there, averting another bit of chaos.

When the rumble of the giant goose's footsteps were felt, I had assumed that my sabotage of the bomb had failed and that it was the earthquake (when in reality it was the goose running) upon which I employed my safety mechanism (the inflatable doughnut) and saved Jukka's life.

I make no comment on the actions of the others, although I'm sure they have their reasons.

Jasper stepped forward, brushing the sand from his recent vacation to the beach off of his shoulder.

"Great Overlord, as usual this trip turned out to be yet another rendition of your other servants going mad while I desperately attempted to salvage the situation. As the humble crumb mentioned, I played some classic blues at the beginning. The songs were all well within copyright jurisdiction, and one such piece was recorded by myself back in my younger days when I was known as 'The Blues-berry'. Naturally, while things were in my hands the ratings reached the highest ever recorded by the station. In the space of a single night,  I was contacted by OverMart, Pitch-Forks-R-Us and 'dhwdjkdasjdkajsd' incorporated, all of whom were willing to make advertising arrangements worth millions."

"Naturally, good things cannot last. Or at least, they cannot last when Jukka is around. She criticized my music choice, and when I attempted to show her the charts showing record gains, she simply laughed them off, mentioning that Rebecca Black's 'Friday' was the sort of thing audiences wanted to hear. I was in the middle of explaining music tastes and classics to her, when the goose stole the studio donuts. The Studio owners had provided them free of charge, but no one had eaten any except Jukka. No one was worried at first, but Jukka began wailing in despair at the loss of her precious donuts. This would have been no big deal, but Fatch turned the broadcast microphone on, so the wails began to be sent to every corner of the world. After Hickory and I tried to quiet her and to get Fatch to turn the microphone off (without any success) I finally bit the bullet, and consoled her by taking off after the goose in a valiant quest to retrieve the stolen donuts. "

"The donuts retrieval quest was, as all of my endeavors are, a great success. I captured the goose within the hour, as I had much previous experience with chasing wild geese. (Back in the '70s I was known as 'The Goose Stomper'). I had the beast on a leash, and the donuts in hand when suddenly Matthias showed up. He zapped the goose with a weapon stolen from your own personal armory: The Goose Grower 2050. Immediately the goose expanded to twelve times its former size. Unfortunately, as we all know, when the Goose Grower is used on a Goose, it naturally develops a gooey paste on its skin. I tried to explain this to crumb later, but he seemed more interested in some Whale assassination Jukka was talking about with admiration. "

"Anyway, back to the story. After Matthias grew the goose, he pushed me to the ground, and said he had planted a bomb to take down the whole operation. Nothing could stop him, and the goose would take out my 'meddlesome accomplices.' I asked him why he would betray our Overlord, and he replied, saying: 'It's all part of the plan. Crumb was secretly placed in charge of this mission, and he's telling me to do these things. It's for the greater good, you just don't see the big picture.' Naturally, I hope Crumb has a good explanation for this. Goodness knows Matthias gets into enough trouble on his own without encouragement."

"Shortly after, Matthias rode off on the goose in the direction of the studio. By the time I got back, the damage was done (and far beyond a thought of repair.) I only hope the great overlord recognizes the one truly responsible for this catastrophe." Finished Jasper solemnly.

As the other servants have so correctly described, it is quite clear that I had little to do with what transpired.

The one mistake I did make was mentioned by Jasper, and I turned on the microphone so that Jukka's wails of despair would be broadcasted throughout the world. It was a simple mistake overlord, I merely believed that the microphone was on, so I meant to turn it off and mistakenly did just the opposite. Oddly enough, the lever was incorrectly labeled, so that when it was in the "off" position, it was on, and when it was in the "on" position it was off, so it's fairly understandable to make such an error. I have made several inquiries with my fellow servants, and the broadcasting company, and the only lead I could find was that someone spotted Matthias playing with the "on" and "off" labels. I thought he must have been trying to fix them at first, but now that I am hearing the full testimony of my companions, it seems quite clear this was not the case.

To conclude my testimony, I would like to state that Jukka has a very bad taste in static. She chose the high frequency buzzy kind. I myself, much prefer the low frequency droll that helps one sleep at night. Her static played a big part in the downfall of this honorable company.

"I've heard enough."

The Overlord glanced over his employees again and did a double take on seeing Matthias. "Why, you're filthy now! I might have been inclined to forgive ruining my carpet if it was for a good cause, but to hear all of these claims against you and not so much as a word in your defense leaves me to conclude that you're just incompetent. That and a ghastly mess. So, I find my decision very clear."

Suddenly the capsule the servant in began to shake violently! Metal straps clamped onto his body, and a set of hoses appeared and blasted him with high-pressure water, while the capsule tossed and turned, spinning its occupant around like a dervish. Copious amounts of soap and something that looked suspiciously like bleach inundated the inside turning it a brilliant blue. After several intense seconds, a giant vacuum sucked all of the water, cleaning agents and debris into a container, leaving Matthias both sterile and shaky.

"Now that that necessary task is done, I have a perfect new special assignment for someone with your expertise. You cost me a lot of money, two million dollars. But I'm pretty sure I have a few pennies stashed in my vault somewhere that will take care of that. Dig them out, count them up and stack them on the delivery platform, and ring the buzzer at the vault door when you're done. Oh, and you'll have access to a coin collector guide. Check each coin to make sure that none of them are more valuable than a penny and that they can't be sold for a greater profit to collectors. Don't worry about going home. You'll have a bathroom, meals and a cot set up for you on the room at the top of the ladder. Have fun!" The new assignment made, the Overlord pulled a lever, and the hapless employee dropped through the floor to begin his new career.

"We should see him or his kids in about fifty years. Maybe by then you'll have achieved something to make up for the damages that have been done, by you and your coworker. No, you're not off the hook! I have high expectations and I take it personally when they're not met."

"That's why you'll be visiting our quality control site. I think that giving you a chance to learn to identify problems and fix them prior to release could be just the thing to remedying your own lack of success so far. Anyway, everyone who is regularly employed there is going on holiday, so it's either you or nobody. Do a satisfactory job making up for the otherwise lost business day and we'll see about getting you into more interesting work."

---

The former owner and outgoing president of the ACME Corporation paced back and forth in front of his minions, possessed with a manic energy. "The greatest corporate empire on the face of the earth has been brought to ruin. Stock prices have plummeted and the brand is America's biggest laughingstock. We're being bought out, for crying out loud." He stopped to glare at his servants. "I hold you personally responsible for this."

"Your services contract ensures that you will remain my responsibility even after I cease to be involved with the company. So, you will answer to me for your criminal negligence. No thanks to your oversight, our biggest client in the Four Corners region received over a hundred defective products. Our time-traveling delivery service is worthless if we don't deliver quality merchandise! Far from helping him, your standards of craftsmanship resulted in Mr. Coyote being repeatedly injured and set further back in his line of work. That's about to not be my problem anymore, but your inability to do your job correctly certainly is."

"I don't have a full tape of what you did in the factory, thanks to somebody playing with the building disintegrator. But there's enough recorded footage from the last few decades of Wile attempting to use our goods to give me a pretty good idea of how things malfunctioned, even if I don't know why. If you can explain even part of that it'll go a long way towards convincing me that you're not completely useless."

OOC : Best. Punishment. Ever.

BIC :

Jasper stepped forward, shaking in terror at the wrath of the almighty Overlord.

"Oh great Overlord, I.... I tried... It is simply impossible to work alongside these degenerate excuses for servitude."

"It all started when we first arrived. The quality control center had been left in a clean, orderly manner. So much of the system is automated that honestly all that was required of us was to press a few buttons. We were at 98% efficiency when we arrived, and after some adjustments, I had the plant running at a stunning 99%. (Wile had left his notes on his desk, and I took several pointers.) Everything was running smoothly and we were about to relax when we heard ear-bursting squeals and thumps. We hurried into the interior of the plant, to discover that Jukka had somehow managed to get herself stuck inside the  Durabilo-Matic 6320, which as we all know, is a machine designed to test the strength of our Tank-Phones. It swings around wildly, throwing the phones around, and varies the temperature inside from 28 to 130 degrees. The squeals were her yelling for help, while the thumps were her being thrown around the machine."

"The rescue operation began as you might expect. Crumb and I began to remove the cover to the maintenance entrance to let her out, while Fatch played with the temperature control, alternating Jukka between climates fit for Alaska, and climates fit for Venus. When we finally got her out, we realized that Hickory had been missing the entire time. It was with a heavy heart that I returned to the control room, to see the surprisingly high numbers of 22% efficiency. The controls looked as though someone had covered them with peanut butter and jelly, before trying to chew them off. We set off into the interior to see what other mischief he was up to."

"We found him, waving to our delivery saucers, as they departed with thousands of flying cars. These cars were meant to await my approval before being sent off, but Hickory always seems to find a way to get past even the most well thought out deterrents. It was only later that we learned that he had hired a goat to reprogram the machines manufacturing these cars. Thus the reason they were defective."

"It was about this time that I realized there was no hope of succeeding without at least one person in their right mind. I tied Hickory, Fatch and Jukka to a post, and gave them generous portions of food and water to last a few days, and called up Wile to help get things back on track. He was reluctant to leave his vacation, but when he heard what had happened he came quickly enough. When he arrived he immediately set about repairing the controls. After some time, he told crumb and I that there was an alert on the butchery floor. We departed together immediately for the butchery floor, and the problem was fairly clear. The assembly line of cows being turned into steaks was nearly buried in potatoes, and the cows were cheerfully grazing in the waiting area. Wile recognized several problems caused by one of the three hooligans I had tied to a post, but as he set about correcting them, crumb, who had been reasonable thus far, decided to push him into the butchery machines. No one is quite sure how he made it out alive, but legend has it that Wile fought his way through the entire machine with a spatula he found in the first level. He will never be quite the same, and we can only hope for a speedy recovery."

With that, Jasper bowed, and fell silent.

"Greatest Overlord, I can fill in a lot of details as to our recent excursion. Much of the real story was sadly neglected by my dear colleague here. It begins when Jukka and I first arrived and stood outside the factory, surveying its exterior while the other three played around in a playground located down the road. The factory, however, wasn't the interesting feature to Jukka. Nearby stood a warning poster. It was a big, beautiful sign that said 'Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again. Those yet still surviving will be shot thrice. If you're still alive after that, you will be presumed immortal. We'll find you a nice, big inhabited planet where you can be their deity for however long you want.' I looked at Jukka and I knew right then that she wanted to become a god.

"She spun around and declared that she must try and incite a "counter-criminal procedure" so we could all come under fire. I figured she had decided to just become preemptively mad with power, because who calls police coming to a crime scene a "counter-criminal procedure"? Nevertheless, she shortly made the place a crime scene. She started setting fires to the factory, stuffing expensive and dangerous gadgets into her many pockets, and even jaywalked across a prominent road in the complex. The Durabilo-Matic 6320 was the real problem for her. Or, more precisely, falling into the Durabilo-Matic 6320 while chasing a time-traveling bunny was the real problem for her. I figured we ought to get the newly godhood-oriented Jukka out, so me and Jasper got to that. I told Jasper about her criminal procedures at this point. After Jukka was rescued, I advised Jasper to tie her up. Jasper later added Fatch and Hickory to the pole. This was a fairly decent partnership. Unfortunately it would not last.

"Jasper didn't know what a time-traveling bunny is, so I explained that they are a type of bunny that can transport a human through time if caught. He became distracted at this point in his work. Meanwhile, Wile arrived just as the factory had literally started crumbling. The butchery machines were a priority, so we focused on solving that. What Jasper neglected to mention is that at this point Wile was wearing Fatch's make-every-explosion-causing-button-look-like-the-one-you-actually-most-want-to-push goggles. I managed to prevent the button pushing just in time. I did throw a spatula in after him as I knew that would help. Meanwhile, Jukka had abandoned her earlier notions, and I untied her. We managed to make progress repairing a few key functions, while Jasper started chasing bunnies that were running around. Things were going very well. Of course, it was at this point that Fatch escaped the pole and reclaimed his goggles. Those would rather unfortunately end up in the possession of Jasper, who decided to steal them. He then decided to use the computer systems to try and locate bunnies. I think the consequences of that are clear."

"Great Overlord, I can explain my actions.

"Three hours before arriving at the factory, I was met by my future self, clutching a time-traveling bunny in her arms.  My future self was wearing a glistening tiara and dressed in a Wonder Woman-esque outfit.  She told me that the future had become a nuclear wasteland because of what Hickory was going to do at the factory later that day, but that she had attained some godlike abilities and was currently the ruler of a Norse-inspired planet.  My future self had managed to catch a time-traveling bunny and go back in time to prevent Hickory's catastrophe from occurring, but in order to do this, she had been forced to leave the throne to her evil and conniving stepbrother.  I was very moved by her bravery and sacrifice.

"She informed me that she would be doing her best to prevent the nuclear wasteland.  In the meantime, she said, she would replace me for several hours as she fixed things.  My job was to achieve godlike status so my future self could actually do all these things.  She told me how to do it, and I, trusting my godlike future self completely, agreed.

"Three hours later, at the appointed time, I showed up at the factory gates.  I read the sign and knew from what my future self had told me that I had to do assorted criminal things to activate a latent spell on the factory that would give a person godlike powers.  As crumb said, I proceeded to do this, in the process ending up in the Durabilo-Matic 6320 while chasing my future self's time-traveling bunny, which had escaped her.  However, I wouldn't have fallen in if it weren't for the malicious actions of crumb.  For reasons unknown to me, as I climbed on top of the machine in pursuit of the bunny, she shoved me into it, cackling in an evil manner.  What followed was a terrible experience that I do not wish to think about.

"Finally, I was dragged only half-conscious from the machine and tied to a pole.  I revived and finally convinced crumb that I no longer wished to commit criminal acts.  By this time I knew that what I'd done was not in vain, as I could feel a new power coursing through me.  Thankfully, crumb let me go and, with nuclear disaster hopefully averted, I immediately proceeded to help clean off the peanut butter and jelly Hickory had put all over the controls.  With my new godlike powers, this was done quickly.

"My future self then came to tell me that she had succeeded in thwarting Hickory's evil plans to overload the nuclear reactor at the plant.  With disaster averted, she traveled back to her own time with the bunny.  I then proceeded to help here and there in every way I could.  I was the one who found Mr. Coyote and drove him to the hospital after he got caught in the butchery machine, and he expressed his undying gratitude to me."

As the great Overlord knows, I am fully devoted to his servitude, and these heinous actions could not have been committed without a purpose. Indeed, there was such a purpose. Let me start from the beginning.

First off, Jukka got herself stuck in the dangerous phone durability testing machine, and I'm afraid Jasper was slightly mistaken. The machine does indeed vary the temperature greatly, but not between 28 and 130, but rather, between -280 and 1300 degrees (they are called tankphones for a reason). So as you can clearly see, when I varied the temperatures between an Alaskan level and a Venus level, I was trying to keep the temp at a level moderate enough that she could survive. Otherwise she would be a puddle of muck by now. As I can see now, that was probably a mistake. If the Overlord lets me survive, I will be sure to make the temperatures much worse next time, rather than better.

Unfortunately, Jasper took my actions as some sort of mischievous plan, and tied me to a pole as punishment. I decided to go along with the it, mainly because it kept me within arms reach of the real troublemakers, and I could make sure they stayed under wraps. Unfortunately, things became a bit strange at that point.

I'm not positive if Jukka truly attained powers, but I can attest to her belief that she attained them. The three of us were sitting quietly at our posts, when Jukka suddenly stood, and began flexing and doing push ups. I asked her what was up, and she stated that she "Had da powa."

It was at this point that crumb came back in, and when he came close to refill the water supplies, Jukka grabbed him around the neck. After she had "convinced" crumb she was free of dubious schemes, crumb (gasping for air), untied her.

On her way out, she stole my standard issue pair of goggles, normally intended for deceptive purposes, and I knew what sort of devastation that could cause. I escaped the pole as quickly as I could, and chased after her.

I found her in the control room. She was licking the peanut butter and jelly off the controls. I stared at her for several moments, dumbfounded by astonishment, before she noticed me watching. I asked her just what she thought she was doing, but she insisted that her new godlike powers had enabled her to clean the controls. I could clearly see they were still broken, so I decided I would leave her to it, and asked where my goggles were.

She told me she had stolen Wile's safety goggles and replaced them with mine, directly leading to the damage caused to Wile's person. I ran off to retrieve them, and to save the hapless Wile, but it was too late. They had fallen off when Crumb pushed him, so I angrily picked them up, hung them on a hook and began working on saving Wile. I was nearly butchered myself, but after much effort, I managed to pull him out through an air duct several layers into the machine. Lord only knows how he made it that far in one piece. I was exhausted for a minute, and it was at that point that I realized the goggles were gone. Panting, I got back up to retrieve them, but I thought it was Hickory who had taken them, when it was actually Jasper. When I came back, I found that someone had stolen Wile. I saw a news report the next day about a high speed chase and a shootout between police and a young servant trying to use a wounded coyote as a meat shield. I'm not sure if she ever brought him to the hospital willingly, but at least he's alive. As for the undying gratitude he expressed, the fellow may have been talking to a giant lobster for all he knew. You've seen the state he's in.

I simply cannot believe the nerve of you all, leveling these accusations against me.

It's clear that my so-called goal was to smear peanut butter and jelly over the controls, triggering a nuclear meltdown and sending the world into a nuclear holocaust. That is how it appeared, but rest assured, it is not the real case. In reality, I had sniffed a plot - a plot by none other than Fatch. Yes, HE was the one who revealed to ME his plot to alter the settings of the reactor before ripping off the controls to prevent resetting them. He was surprisingly thorough, which turned out to be his downfall. Leaving him to help deal with the chaos building in the rest of the factory, I arrived at the control room, intending to use my All Purpose Screwdriver™ to remove the control panel, directly access the wires, and bypass the destruction Fatch had wreaked.

It was at this moment that the recently released Jukka interrupted my procedure, apparently obsessed with obtaining a godlike status. Immediately seeing what were clearly delusions in the poor woman, I convinced her that such a status would be given upon eating peanut butter and jelly off of the control panel. Knowing that I did not have time to conceal the edits Fatch and I made and that I would be seen as the enemy rather than Fatch, I merely decided to replace the damaged control panel and smear the peanut butter and jelly over it and left Jukka to complete her "godlike status" as I moved to dispose of the second parts of Fatch's plan - the bombs he placed to blow up the plant as a backup if the meltdown idea failed.

Gathering the bombs, I arrived at the delivery location, stashing the materials in one of the flying cars and delivery saucers. Obviously I could not do the standard time travel service and send them to one of our clients, so I recalibrated the portal to directly after the Big Bang, so the bombs would explode harmlessly. Directly after my intervention in the evil plans of Fatch - who was really the potential cause of future nuclear destruction, contrary to what Jukka believes - Jasper tied me to a pole, whereupon I found myself too exhausted to continue the mission.

I beg your forgiveness, Overlord - I merely took the actions necessary.

A plot to cause a nuclear holocaust? I suppose such accusations should be expected from a servant of this quality.

As Hickory has kindly pointed out, I did indeed alter the settings. You see, I had a strong feeling things would go wrong, so I put into place many preventative measures to ensure nothing did go wrong. Essentially, I shut down any combustion and nuclear detonation settings. As Hickory said, I informed him of my "plot" to remove these dangerous things from the access of Hickory himself. He didn't seem happy about the idea, so I locked down the control panel.

The plant produced poison gas for the military, which could cause devastation on humanity if released, and a countermeasure to any possible leak was a lever that blew up bombs planted throughout the plant, total meltdown. Hickory made a lunge for this lever, so I ripped it off the control panel. This was the only thing I ripped off, so you can see the exaggeration involved in saying I ripped them all off to prevent him from resetting them. He must have meant to prevent him from resetting the entire plant to a pile of ash.

Unfortunately things became dire in the situation with Jukka, so I ran off to help, confident in my countermeasures to any damage done by Hickory. He used a powerful magic screwdriver of some sort to bypass my lockout, and thus managed to drop the plant efficiency even so.

I must have said too much, because Hickory then began to search through the entire plant, collecting the bombs.

Unfortunately we could not stop him, and his plans to wipe out the beginning of humanity by sending bombs to the post - creation succeeded. Only Jukka managed to salvage humanity from Hickory's efforts.

Jasper, feeling slightly uneasy, spoke up again.

"As crumb mentioned. Much of the devastation was caused by me operating the main controls wearing those abominable goggles. It was an unfortunate mistake, I hardly stole them, I thought they were just the standard safety goggles found anywhere throughout the plant. I took them without permission, but I see that as acceptable, seeing that there were dozens of identical pairs in the lockers only 10 feet away that happened to be normal goggles. I had no idea what I had put on, seeing that NO one bothered explaining to me that we had a pair of goggles on site that cause... well you can see the results for yourself."

"As dear crumb mentioned, my intent was not to cause destruction, but rather to catch the time travelling bunnies. You see, they enjoy chewing on bare wire, and the devastation they were causing was incalculable. I figured a simple roundup using the computer surveillance would be a standard procedure."

"As far as pushing Jukka into the Durabilo-Matic 6320 goes, I did so for the very simple reason that a whale-bunny was about to tackle her. As I'm sure we're all aware, whale-bunnies are the bigger cousins of the time-traveling bunnies we've all now come to know and love. This particular whale-bunny was the new best friend of Fatch. He had been raving, when tied up, all about his new best friend and now exceptionally dangerous the whale-bunny was to anyone who didn't follow the correct etiquette. I had earlier overheard him after he left the playground and joined Jukka and I, talking about this etiquette. You see, you are to do two things to dissuade a fully grown whale-bunny from mauling you. First, dance an appropriate jig, and cackle madly with laughter. I of course did both."

"I can see that the regular workers forgot to leave on the sanity gas when they left the plant."

"I hate you all and you're all going to die. But before that happens, it's time for a reckoning. I couldn't make out anything of what any of you said. However, I'm pretty sure that it's either Hickory or Fatch's fault. That goes along well with the message I just received about who needs to go, so."

Fatch of Southsward was removed from his capsule and shot into another dimension by a supersubatomic exercise bike. Upon arrival there he found that he was now serving the role of the Easter Bunny, and expected to deliver eggs to every child in the nation. Unfortunately he wasn't very good at this job, and accidentally gave someone a peanut butter egg even though they were allergic. They got sick and had to live in the hospital for the rest of their life. Without that child to one day run for political office, someone else became President. They allowed an open border policy that allowed for Canadian singers to freely travel into the United States. The beavers migrated, forming the world's second rodent supergroup, and became world-famous for their shrill singing, and when everyone was brainwashed into playing their music, the combined vibrations hit just the right frequency, cracking open the Earth's crust, AND THE WHOLE WORLD EXPLODED.

The Overlord stretched. "Well, now that I'm gone from ACME, it's time to try to figure out how to get some more cash flowing in. Go down to the park and set up a lemonade stand or something. Everybody does it so it must work. Bring me back a few billion dollars and we'll call your last misadventures good."

---

As the sun set at the end of a hot summer day, Overlord arrived and looked over the four servants and their stand in a sort of awed disgust. "So this is what you have to show for yourselves. No money, no lemonade, a giant duck suit, and a gallon of grape juice. I can tell that this story is going to be interesting. Well, have at it. Maybe if it's good I can write a song about it."

"Jasper led us to a costume store, and proceeded to buy some things. He wouldn't tell us or show us what it all was, at least not at first. I was appalled at the delay, but he was insistent. The costume store then blew up. Once we arrived in the park, we set up the stands. Hickory and Jukka bought a lot of start-up material, like cups and such, while I saw to the advertising material we were going to utilize. Jasper was missing during this phase. We managed to get everything set up, besides not having any lemons. There is a lemon famine, ongoing, as it happens. I had a plan to travel to a nearby city to get some, when Jasper reappeared.

"Jasper was wearing mage robes. The robes were a bright yellowy color, and he was very happy. He wielded a wand, spoke with a booming voice, and charmed everyone he met. He wore a long white beard, too. Also, at this point, lemons were pouring out of the sky. Jasper took credit for that, naturally, but it appeared to just be an act of nature. As I figure, a lemon famine should naturally be followed by a downpour of lemons. That's life. As we collected lemons, an army of mallard ducks marched out of the rivers. Jasper had negotiated some contracts, possibly under some magical charms, so that we could have mallard ducks crew the stands. He also had a lemon statue created in the center of the park, drawing in even more business. This was all very well, I thought. I thought everything was absolutely marvelous and sure right up until the mallards became cyborgs.

"You see, Jasper had decided he wanted more, and upgraded his mallards. Efficiency would boom, he claimed. And it did. For about four minutes. Then the mallards began demanding shorter hours. More pay. Umbrellas to shield them from the sun. Modifying the contracts so that all their eggs wouldn't be the sole property of the Sky Wizard Jasper for all eternity, harvested in soul form for the creation of lemon statues. Jasper wouldn't listen, Jukka thought it was funny, and I tried to negotiate a compromise so we could salvage our progress. Hickory had the novel approach. He dressed up as a duck, and proceeded to ingratiate himself with the mallards. Two hours later, he was Duck King, and demanding the destruction of all lemonade stands as the first act of the duck revolution. I decided we had to do something, or the whole thriving, gigantic operation was doomed. Jasper agreed, and promptly brandished his wand, readied his voice, and disappeared into thin air. Nonetheless, I made some progress. I salvaged some lemons and had one operational stand still making money. However, Jasper's magical schemes were causing sporadic transmogrifications, and it affected the lemons. Thus, our last stand made money right up until its sweet, lemony juice started magically turning into grape juice. Life gave us lemons. And our magical cyborg mallards made grape juice with them.

"Well, within thirty minutes of the Duck King's reign, all lemonade production was over. An hour later, all that remained of the park was the central lemon statue that Jasper had created. Nothing else remained besides it. The decay of the park was boundless, and the whole place bare. Lone and level sands stretch far away. I don't think any mallards even remember Jasper at this point."

It's sad, really. A minuscule piece of bread is unable to recognize what might have manifested as the greatest financial comeback in business history.

It's a little known fact that mallards and other members of the Anas platyrhynchos (common duck) species have a soft spot for grape juice - proper grapes are too dangerous as they may choke on them (which, incidentally, lead to the Great Duck Famine of 1876), so many ducks have taken to the underground practice of creating grape juice. The issue here, of course, is that us dexterous humans are required to perform the delicate procedure. Which leads into my point: Sensing a much great profit from the large crowd of grape-craving ducks, I realized that the existing lemonade stands would detract from the profit of the future grape juice stands, and set my army (gathered by my rather ingenious costume) to disable all stands. They may have been a bit overzealous in that regard.

After disposing of the majority of the lemonade stands, I attempted to harness my newfound army (as well as get the magic powers of Jasper to assist me in this endeavor) only to find that he had instead turned the mallards into cyborgs - removing the grape-loving part of their brains. I asked Jasper to transform the last lemonade stand into grape juice in hopes of attracting an unmodified duck consumer population - but to no avail, for Crumb had lured all ducks away from the park with - ironically - drugged breadcrumbs, destroying the plan for profits I had put into action.

Jasper Potter stepped forward, wiping the bangs from his eyes, straightening his glasses, and blinking away the sleep from his eyes. It had been a rough night in the closet under the stairs, and they were full of spiders.

"As my colleagues have so eloquently described : the entire situation was a rags to riches story gone south. As the most intelligent member of the party, I figured it would be best if I led the operations at the beginning, so I decided our first order of business would be worldwide advertising and exponential growth. Billions don't make themselves, after all. I told Jukka to drive us to to the nearest costume store, and while she did so, I picked up the phone and called Wile Coyote. I told him I would release Jukka and Hickory if he refused to produce all the necessary components of a lemonade enterprise for us, and he assured me it would be done at all costs. I then called up the radio studio, and told them Jukka and Hickory would be released if they did not advertise the lemonade empire free of charge. They too assured me it would be done at all costs. It was a slight hand of manipulation, but since we don't officially work for ACME anymore, it was the only way to get them on board."

"At this point, we arrived at the costume store. I wanted to get us off on a new foot, so I decided I would surprise my fellow servants with brilliant lemon costumes to bring the customers in. I figured it would be a nice surprise, but while I was waiting to purchase the costumes Hickory decided to sneak behind the counter to put several grenades into the cash register. I barely escaped with my life, and the only part of the store that survived was a duck costume Hickory nicked on his way out. I didn't want to create any animosity so early in the mission, so I made a mental note to tie Hickory to the first post we saw, and continued with the task at hand."

"Wile called me up then, and told me there was a lemon famine. Feeling a growing sense of despair, I sent Hickory and Jukka to pick up Wile's shipment of supplies (which they would later claim they had bought so that they could collect compensation for the "expenses".) and set about to solving the lemon problem. I had received a letter from Hogwarts when I was a boy, and I decided the only thing to be done would be to accept the invitation. I've always been a great student, and I managed to pass 7 years of magical education in an hour and a half. When I returned, summoning lemons to rain down from the sky, I brought an army of servant ducks with me. The rest of the servants had succeeded in setting up the stand, so all the components were in place."

"I set my servant ducks about the necessary tasks, I even had them build a statue and business was booming. We made over a million dollars in only an hour. That was when Hickory and his Union Worker friends began to mutter and whisper with the ducks. I became concerned, especially when many began asking for raises and shorter hours. I managed to magically transform them into cyborgs, so that such democratic ideals were meaningless. It was a success, and for four minutes, business was booming again, I even wrote up unfair contracts favorable to the Overlordship. Then Hickory had a success of his own. He managed to reprogram a duck, and said duck began to reprogram the other ducks. He managed to turn the whole lot of them against me."

"Hickory, as crumb mentioned earlier, then proclaimed himself king of the ducks, and declared war on all things lemonade. Crumb and I agreed something needed to be done, so I teleported myself using floo powder to the nearest animal control center. Unfortunately, the ducks saw the action, and began trying magic of their own. They love grapejuice, so they changed all the lemons to grapes, and more importantly, all the lemonade to grapejuice."

"The ducks do love grapejuice, as Hickory mentioned, but they don't believe in currency, so his schemes for profit were hopeless. Despite my pleadings, he seemed to be flushed with his "success" and began talking about spreading his work to every corner of the earth. Jukka heard that too, and decided the only way to contain Hickory's army would be nuclear detonation. Unfortunately, Hickory survived the blast, but fortunately, the ducks did not. Only my great craftsmanship of the lemon statue remained of the land."

"It may have been a total loss, but I convinced the Russian State to purchase it as nuclear testing grounds. For this reason, we actually ended the mission with more money then we started with. On the way back, Crumb didn't tie the crate full of money down, and it fell off somewhere in rural Arizona. I hear "Steve the Rich" (as they are now calling him) suddenly acquired the funds to open up an oil empire in the same region. I have no doubt he found the lost money. I have Wile in contact with him in hopes of getting us a slice of the pie, but who knows if that will be successful. Still, it's more than can be said for these others."

"Overlord, everything I have done was to help your cause.  As the others have stated, I attempted to save our profits by blowing up Hickory.  It was a desperate act, but one that I was driven to.  I also assisted in running the stand while chaos ensued all around me due to us at first becoming rich, then the ducks refusing to buy.

"Anyway, after we left the lemonade/grape juice setup and were in our way back, Crumb was tying down the money crate with extra ropes.  The back of our plane had a hole in it due to a misfired spell from Jasper just a few minutes before, and Jasper had ordered Crumb to double-secure the crate in case it got sucked out, and then walked away.  I have really good hearing, augmented by the best doctors, so from a hundred feet away, over the rushing wind created by the plane hole, I heard Crumb smiling delightedly and saying to herself as she messed with the rope holding the money crate in place, "Haha!  If I let this crate of all our profits fall out of the plane over Arizona, it will ruin our Overlord James's plans!  Overlord James stinks!"  I immediately ran at her, but the plane sped up (Hickory was flying), the wind/suction increased, and Crumb stepped back with the extra rope in her hands.  Without that extra rope, the remaining ropes (made from the finest fluffberry stalks, the world's strongest fiber) broke and the crate full of precious money plummeted to its doom in the wilds of Arizona.  Crumb and I both had magnetic boots on, so we weren't sucked out along with it.  Crumb then realized I had seen what she had done, and she proceeded to knock me out with a broom handle."

EDIT:  Crumb reminded me that all the servants are basically loyal to the Overlord, so I removed the truth spell.

"It is worth dwelling on, in order to truly appreciate the contours of the situation, the allegations of supposedly good schemes put forward by the Duck King. In the first place, our dear royal specimen of waterfowl suggests that he wanted to deliberately sabotage the entire financial juggernaut with the idea of doing specific business to a specific type of duck. Then, having succeeded at the near total destruction of the profitable lemonade stands, our esteemed aristocratic drake asked for a single grape juice stand. And he suggests he wanted this for sake of targeting unmodified ducks. Unmodified ducks who were terrified out of their minds during this whole incident for fear of being transmogrified into hybrid cybernetic forms. They never wanted to buy grape juice. They wanted to find a sane individual within ten miles and pay them exorbitant amounts of money to get them far away and to safety. In fact, that's exactly what me and Jukka did.

"In fact, we made over ten million dollars from these ducks in this operation. Jukka assisted me. Quite admirably, in fact, under the circumstances. We managed to ferry the ducks using the strong scent of breadcrumbs laced with Tears of Shelley to guide them through the chaos incited by the sovereign bird guy. I admit absolutely no regret whatsoever that my actions thwarted the newest scheme of Hickory. No doubt it saved us yet more chaos and failure. Now, by the time a few ducks had made it out and paid us, the nuclear blast was done. I can't say I fault Jukka for that either. You see, the cyborg mallards were already plotting how they were going to build a new empire, under the directions of Hickory. I figured a small nuclear blast was better than a great big mallard-run empire presided over by the august aquatic.

"As far as this whole incident with the plane, it is rather straightforward. You see, the crate of money was cursed by Jasper. That entire crate would have caused more problems if we brought it back here than everything that had already transpired. Rural Arizona is already experiencing immense amounts of severe bad luck. Famine. Disease. All of it. Steve the Rich is going to have that nickname for a very short period of time, I'm sure. I asked him to remove the curse, but Jasper wouldn't. Funnily enough, Jasper also cursed the plane. The nature of the curse is quite interesting. You see, unless someone screams something very negative and terrible, it causes random explosions. I solved this problem easily. Jukka was, however, in severe pain at this point. All that ear modifying and such. She was asking for someone to try and recalibrate her eardrums. A broom was the only thing around. Also, I'm sure she had quite a negative interpretation of what I had done. There was no time to explain, though, and all that."

After a minute's pause to determine whether there was anything left to be said, the Overlord shook his head.

"Disgraceful."

"I don't know how it is that you can go out and make such a colossal, expensive, bizarre, over-the-top failure out of everything. If I sent you out on the lake to catch some fish, no doubt you'd bring me back a story about wrecking a battleship. You're terrible servants! Jasper, for all your talk about being great at everything, how is it that you're never far from the scene when things go so wrong? So help me, if you ever have anything to do with magic or robotics again, your life won't be worth talking about. Come to think of it, that goes for all of you. And Crumb, Hickory, you were both useless! You're bad enough on routine assignments. The last thing I want you to do is to try to think for yourselves and come up with all of these schemes like you've been doing."

"However, I've decided that one of you was worse than the others. Besides all of the miscellaneous ineptitude, using a nuclear weapon was simply uncalled for. Also, their hearing apparently isn't as good as they think it might be. So Jukka the Sling, you're finished here. Don't worry, though, I have a great new job for you suited to your talents. When we're done here your capsule will take you to your new career: sound person for Justin Beaver. He needed a new vict -- er, employee to fill that role, since the last one, strangely enough, lost all of their hearing, and as he doesn't have time to get a new one, being scheduled to start a big tour tomorrow with Madam Nahnah, Kane East and the Cardassians, I think you're just the right one for the job!"

Cackling maniacally, the Overlord flipped a lever and the capsule blasted away with the speed of a rocket, leaving only the echoes of its occupant's screams in its wake.

That done, he looked back down at his three remaining servants. "Just three of you left. Well, I still have some use for you. You have a lot of creativity, more than perhaps is good for you, but I think I have a healthy way to harness it. Right after we're done with this interview, you'll be sent to one of my secured offices. No electronics are anywhere to be found, and my room is proof from any and all threats, magical, futuristic, or otherwise. Furthermore, you'll be taken through an intense security sweep to free you of any weapons, gadgets or other items before your arrival there. The only way you can possibly mess this up is if you act like imbeciles when you get there. We're not going to do that this time, yes? Anyway, in this office there are writing materials, typewriters, and a seemingly endless supply of paper. Use these tools to write things that will be best-sellers. I don't care if it's novels, collections of short stories, picture books, comic strips, or textbooks. All I care about is that it's good enough that a lot of people will buy it. Don't let me down again."

---

Some time later...

The Overlord coughed as he entered the hazy office, waving a hand to try to clear the air rushing up into his face. "What in the world is all of this graphite and chalk dust doing in here?"

He stopped to look around. "For crying out loud! Can I leave you for five minutes? All of these typewriters broken! The trash cans full of shredded paper and pencil lead! And what's with the Tic-Tac-Toe games and the scoreboard with all of your names signed on it on the walls?!?"

"These typewriters have your fingerprints on them, Jasper... these trash cans your fingernails, Crumb. And this scoreboard here calls you the "ten-time tournament grand champion", in your handwriting no less, Hickory."

"All I can say is that I'd better hear some really good explanations from each of you about all of this."

Jasper shook his head in exasperation. He too had been wondering why chaos seemed to follow him, despite his meticulous care and talent set. He made a mental note to mention that there was a significant correlation between the amount of damage that occurred around him, and the amount of time he spent in the other servants proximity.

"Would that you could have witnessed the events that just took place here, oh great and powerful Overlord. It almost goes without saying that Hickory was the main cause of this destruction."

"The mission began as they always seem to. I immediately set to work on a trilogy with a sort of 'Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings' sort of theme. Meanwhile, Crumb and Hickory mumbled something about being illiterate, and they watched intently over my shoulder, hoping to learn about words and writing. I was about halfway through my first book when the two hooligans became bored, and decided to start a match of tic tac toe. Naturally, they were very frustrated when I told them I was too busy to play, and insisted that I did. When I continued to decline the offers, Hickory began slamming the typewriter with his forehead. I grabbed it, and tried to get it out of his reach, but he's been working out recently, and overpowered me. That's the reason that my fingerprints are on the typewriter and Hickory's fingerprints are not:  He only touched it with his forehead."

At this point, Jasper paused to give a long look towards Hickory, and his ink covered forehead.

"I pulled Crumb aside, and convinced him (with much resistance on his part) to write while I distracted Hickory. I played a few rounds of tic tac toe, winning all three of them (And signing my name at his insistence), before going back to check on Crumb's progress. He had written: "Special K: A wholesome blend of unique flavors crafted to inspire your greatness and bring you goodness in every bite." He didn't seem sure what to write after that, as his memory of the cereal box he had copied it from ended there. So instead of writing something else, he began chewing his nails in a fashion that a normal person may use on corn cob. It was grotesque and unsanitary, so I decided it would be best if I took over. This upset Hickory, who said I was the only piece of good competition around here, so I was forced to multitask. I wrote a sentence and then told Hickory which space I wanted to take. Naturally, I put all my effort into the writing, so Hickory won every game after that, and declared himself grand champion. Crumb, in the meantime, began chewing on the paper once he ran out of fingernails. We had a considerable amount, so when he ignored my protests, I didn't push the matter. It was already something of a disaster and I had to try to make what I could out of the situation."

"I finished a considerable amount of work, and set it aside for publishing. I could tell just by looking at it that I had forged another bestseller. (Back in my younger days I was called "Jaspa Flyin' Finga's Caspa," due to my intense writing speed, and the success of my best work: Caspa the Sailing Goat.) Hickory had continued playing tic tac toe this entire time, and he was fuming. He told me I wasn't even trying to win, otherwise he would only be champion 9 times, not 10 times. I told him I put only my utmost effort into everything, and he responded by bashing more typewriters with his forehead - like an overgrown woodpecker. I collected the surviving typewriters as quickly as I could, and stacked them in a corner where he would have to get through me to get to them. (This is, of course, the reason my fingerprints are on the other typewriters.) I kept him away for quite some time, and Hickory really lost it after that."

"He began wailing hysterically: 'WE'RE TRAPPED HERE, HAVE MERCY PLEASE, I DON'T BELONG IN PRISON!!!" He began trying to break through the walls and door, which was unlocked. I couldn't stop him without leaving the typewriters, so I motioned to Crumb, but he had run out of paper, and had began chewing his way through the pencils and writing supplies. He was chewing like a squirrel who had just had 12 cups of coffee, and with such speed that little plumes of smoke were flying from either side of the pencil he was munching on. The shredded paper was the perfect fuel, and the sparks from the chewing set fire to it in an instant. At this point, I decided it was our lives, or the typewriters. I hurled myself onto the flames, and began rolling on them in a desperate attempt to put them out. Meanwhile, Hickory descended upon the typewriters with a wrath, and bashed them all in with his head. I manged to quench the flames, and could only lie there, panting in exhaustion, while Crumb found the book I had written and chewed his way through it."

Jasper buried his head in his hands. "I'll have nightmares of this mission for years to come, sir."

a crumb was a servant. She had always wanted to be a servant. Maybe not under these circumstances, but she felt the point stood. She took her attention off the drawing she had been doing in the dust, and spoke.

"Well, in order to truly explain what went wrong, we're going to have to unpack a lot of that spun narrative. The way I see it, there were three eras: the pre-fire era, the fire era, and the post-fire era. The whole fire thing really defined our time there, you see. Now, Jasper may well be a reasonably decent author, and his choice of blatantly ripping off two major series might somehow well not have resulted in exorbitant legal fees. However, none of that would even remotely absolve him of the damage he did to all other avenues we could have pursued to great profit. While he smashed away at his typewriter, I sequestered myself with Hickory between us. My sketching skills are famous, so I naturally opted to begin a lengthy series of comic book issues. I drew a wonderful first issue about the monsters under a child's bed, and ones in her closet, who join forces to find and rescue the child in the aftermath of her disappearance. Think about how brilliant that idea is. It was perfect. And then Jasper stole the issue. I told him to give it back, but he only made fun of me for opting for drawing instead of writing a book like him, which he deemed the superior art form and the only one we should spend any time on. Fortunately, Hickory found the issue. Unfortunately, he ate it. He started eating other paper too, and I convinced Jasper we needed to put aside our differences and solve the Hickory-eating-everything problem. I was preparing to reason with Hickory, when Jasper 'solved' the problem himself. He simply told Hickory to give up paper eating, and embrace arson."

"And so we arrive in the fire era. It started small, but Hickory worked his way up from lighting up paper and pencils to chairs and couches. In order to preserve both my ability to breathe and what was left of our paper, I re-purposed my earlier intended speech, and used it to dissuade Hickory from arson. worked, but he then moved to trying to break typewriters. I was really very confused at this. I mean, why was Hickory even eating, burning or breaking things at all? I don't know. That's just what was happening. Of course, the fire era came to a proper head due to shredded paper, as my esteemed fellow servant has pointed out. I suppose there is, as a general topic, the chewing matter Jasper mentioned that I should address. I only ever chewed anything, a bit of paper here, a pencil there, because Jasper had stolen all the food. The whole supply you delegated to us while we resided in the office. I needed to ear something to continue producing material. As far as the fire via chipped pencils goes, what Jasper neglected to tell was that I had, long prior to Jasper even realizing the problem given his own singular obsessions, put out most of the resulting fire. What was left was very near Jasper, so naturally his responsibility to put out. However, he instead removed the hoses from the fire extinguishers near him, and hurled those at Hickory. I expected he could have found a more productive way of warding off the typewriter-basher. If it wasn't for that failure, the fire's damage would have been very minor. Instead, that small remainder grew stronger and caused extraordinary problems. Fortunately I did manage to put out even that fire, but a lot was lost."

"After a last episode of panic, Hickory calmed down significantly. The place was mostly burnt at this point, and the typewriter situation was pretty bad. Nonetheless, I did ask Hickory if he had any ideas about creative production. He said he had tried to think up a story. He said that he had gotten horribly stuck, unsure of where to go, because he couldn't deliver on the theme of the project. I asked him what the theme was, and he said 'servitude', before sighing in exasperation. Eventually, he shouted 'Is there anyone here who knows, what servitude is all about?' Jasper walked over from near a cupboard, told Hickory 'Sure, I can tell you what servitude is all about', and went to a styrofoam-cup 'microphone' at a desk that was well illuminated."

"'And there were in the same country servants, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their pointless, unproductive jobs by night. And, lo, the gaze of an Overlord came upon them, and the glory of the Overlord's intelligence shone round about them! And they were sore afraid. And the Overlord said unto them, "Fear not, morons! For, behold, I bring you job listings 'o great service, which shall be to all the men, the women and a crumbs. For unto you is this day come a great leader, me, the titular Overlord. And you shall all be commanded faithfully for an unspecified period of time, spreading orderliness throughout the world. And suddenly, there was with the Overlord a multitude of previously employed servants, saying, "We had no choice but to serve the Overlord, and on Earth endless inexplicable chaos, and good will toward profit or power or whatever a given Overlord's fancy might be."' Slowly, Jasper walked over to Hickory."

"'That's what servitude is all about, Hickory.' Hickory was very visibly moved by that. After that, well, the post-fire era was really quite simple. I scavenged what paper and writing materials I could, and got to work to produce at least something in the way of a comic book. Hickory assisted me in gathering what he could. And Jasper spent just hours whimpering in the corner, going on and on about nightmares he was going to have because of this. No help at all in fixing all our problems."

After looking expectantly at Hickory for a long moment, and receiving no reply, the Overlord sighed and rose to his feet. "Well, I guess that tells us everything we need to know."

Suddenly, an explosion BOOMED from beneath the floor, and the capsule that the servant was in blasted up and flew through the air, through the ceiling, and then up into the wild blue sky yonder towards the moon.

"Who knows, maybe he'll make a comeback and be the next Lunar Stellaris, heh heh. Well. Two of you left. We're close to running out of you servants, and I've about run out of ideas. It all might be just as well, considering how much money you have managed to waste. You've certainly been our most expensive batch."

"That being the case, it's been a long day and I'm ready for dinner. I don't have any other help handy so I guess you'll do. Go get me a glass of water, and heat up the soup on the stovetop. It's already been made by somebody who knows what they're doing so you won't have to do anything but heat it and deliver it. Even you should be able to do that much."

---

Some time later...

"That does it for my hopes of eating at home, I guess. It looks like I'll have to get something takeout. You are unbelievable! It'll take the maintenance staff an hour to clean things up. How in the world could you break all my glasses, flood the kitchen, and waste all of my food?"

(Borrowing somewhat from Delthion's old format in OOXIV here. Since the quantity of responses this round has not been good, we'll do a best-of-three finale to determine who the last remaining servant, and the winner, is.)

"Since Jasper has already demonstrated a certain, specific tendency when exposed to beverage creation, it was decided I should handle the water, and he could handle soup. I even waited twenty minutes outside the kitchen while he got a special pair of gloves or something. Once inside, I found that the faucet didn't work, so I had to quickly fix the piping. No difficulty there. What did make getting the water difficult was that Jasper had, while I was working, stolen the faucet handle so he had something to stir the soup with. He had thrown all the spoons out a window, arguing that they were untrustworthy. Anyway, I put the empty water glass down, planning to go to the stove and ask him for the faucet part back. However, Jasper was not heating the soup on the stove-top. He had placed the pot on top of the toaster, which he nicknamed Bryan, and was trying to warm it up that way. I handed him a spoon and took back the faucet handle, and asked him if the stove was broken. He said it wasn't, but he was busy using it for something else, and wouldn't go near it. When I asked what he was doing, he simply warned me to not go within two meters of the stove."

"I decided that, ridiculous as it looked, the soup was actually being warmed, so I should just leave things as they were, hoping against hope that we weren't getting sucked into another insane scheme. I soon had a filled glass of water and went to go see how Jasper was doing. Before I reached halfway to the toaster, the stove was making a lot of noise. When I reached Jasper, the stove blew up. He was screaming "MY LEMON SOUFFLE! MY LEMON SOUFFLE!" At that moment, I decided we were getting dangerously close to rehashing old territory, and not wanting to have my fellow servant hurt himself, me, or blow the whole kitchen up, I moved to salvage what there was of the souffle amidst all the smoke and wreckage of what was once a stove. Unfortunately, Jasper threw the pot and all the soup at me when I waded into the smoke. Before I could wipe it from my eyes, I heard crashing behind me. Jasper was hurling glass dishes into the smoke, shouting incantations in Greek. I was forced to retreat, at which point I once again laid eyes on Jasper. He was all wet, having ripped off the faucet handle in an attempt at trying to squirt water into the stove's ruins, even though there was no fire. Of course, glass had blocked the drain, and the sink was soon overflowing. I could not find a tool to solve anything on this front, and I now believe that is because Jasper had stuffed any available tools into the stove alongside his souffle earlier this evening."

OOC : Sorry for the length of this post. I was really backed into a corner, or six.

Jasper presented a box of takeout Chinese on bended knee, before beginning his testimony.

"Oh great Overlord, it is with great sorrow that I bring you the truth of this evenings events. You see, a menace to the servitude has been hippity - hoppiting his way through all of our stories. He has tricked, manipulated and indirectly disposed of many unfortunate servant victims. The likes of Jukka, my own brother Fatch and Hickory ... we could go on... none of them are with us now because of one servant... Crumb! I didn't realize it until now. She always seemed to have such tight alibis, and the others always seemed to be so incompetent. But now I see that in a sinister plot to overthrow you, she has ensured that each of your allies are lost. It all began when she pushed Wile Coyote into the meat shredder, and continued until last round, when she cut out Hickory's tongue! I'm here to make sure it does not end with her blaming me once again for a situation that was entirely her fault!"

"You see, I began this mission with a sense of optimism. Crumb and I had tied the others to the post once. We were the two who always tried to salvage the situations. Now that the last of the trouble makers were gone, we could finally live a calm and peaceful life dedicated to coerced service. But as soon as we entered the kitchens alone, everything went haywire."

"As soon as we entered the kitchen Crumb stuck two forks into a potato for legs, and declared that she was the ultimate being with the power of creation, having now created 'POTATO MAN, BANE OF CRIME.' At first I tried to let this slide, focusing on the task at hand, but she began screaming hysterically and throwing things every time I picked up a spoon. You see, Potato Man's weakness is (apparently) spoons. After much assurance, I managed to strike a bargain: I would throw the spoons out the window to ensure her heroes safety, and she would agree to commit no further shenanigans. Unfortunately, she would not uphold these terms."

"Crumb wasted no time putting her pet ferret Kevin down the sink drain, and it was all I could do to keep her from turning on the garbage disposal switch. I asked her why she had done this, and she told me it was because I was not being sanitary trying to cook with bare hands. She would not stand in the kitchen for another instant until the problem was fixed. This, admittedly, was a good point, so when she stormed out of the kitchen, I put on a pair of gloves and removed the kitchen faucet to use as a spoon. (This should not have been a problem since we had a pitcher of filtered water, and faucet water is below an Overlord such as yourself."

"It was about this time, that Crumb returned to the kitchen. She seemed confused about the faucet for some time. She kept asking me why it wasn't working. Each time I showed her that I was using the faucet, and explained that it wasn't working because I was using it as a spoon. She didn't seem to be paying me much attention though, and she turned on the disposal, murdering poor Kevin in an instant. She cleverly decided that the dead ferret was blocking the drain, and began unblocking it. I poured a seperate glass of filtered water for you, muttering to myself, and continued to stir in disbelief."

"It was at this point that Crumb asked me where all the spoons had gone, and why I was stirring the soup with the faucet, the spoon incident apparently forgotten. I told her that they were untrustworthy just so she would leave me to my duties. I continued successfully for a short while, and soup was nearly ready. Then I got a phone call. The person on the other end claimed to be you Overlord, and I was told to make Lemon Souffle using black powder at all costs (with the intention to be used for an assassination attempt on the Czechoslovakian Prime Minister.) I would later be told by Wile Coyote that Crumb had asked to borrow his phone to make a call at around the same time, and disguised her voice by making the call from a wind tunnel. Naturally, I had been wondering why she took such a long bathroom break. This was, of course, the reason."

"I had no idea Crumb had ordered me to make the black powder lemon souffle, so I tried to keep it a secret, knowing how volatile she is around explosives. It never occured to me that she had made the call so that she would be able to blow up the kitchen. I even told her to stay at least two meters away. Since the stove was occupied, I used my ingenuity to warm it by rewiring a toaster. I called my creation the "Bigraphical Recalculator Yeti Amplifier Northcompressor, but just told her that it was called 'Bryan.' It was far too complex for Crumb's understanding, but she at least admitted that it was working, and left me to it."

"Crumb then taped a block of ice to the ceiling and began collecting the drips to fill a glass of water. I tried to inform her that I had already done her job for her, but she said this was the organic method. Once the glass was full, she approached me and behind her, the block of ice fell off the ceiling, onto the dishwasher. This sent a fork spiraling through the air into my souffle, which exploded. I screamed for the loss of my souffle with horror (which, you will recall, I had taken to be a part of a secret mission of utmost importance.) and Crumb turned and ran into the flames, trying to save the souffle, or pretending to. Once Crumb entered the carnage, she began chanting and dancing. The souffle bubbled and arose into the air, forming into a wispy evil shape that smelled like campfires and lemons. I recognize soup demons when I see them, and realized her plan all along was to call fallen evil to her aid to overthrow you. The demons are only weak against soup, so I used this to destroy it. Unfortunately or fortunately, some of the soup got in Crumb's eyes. She began chanting again, but I managed to stop her by yelling and throwing dishes. I was especially panicked, so I used my native Greek language. When Crumb finally came to her senses, she had the audacity to stare at me, wild from my efforts to stop soup demons from overthrowing humanity, and to say this was somehow my fault."

"Have you ever heard of praying mantises? As soon as Jasper started using Bryan, a horde of the beautiful creatures arrived in the kitchen, sampled from the soup, and left with my dear fellow servant's most sincere blessings. He was dismissive over my objections, insisting he could replenish any missing soup with more, based on some promise he had from someone. I naturally demanded to know what he had in mind. He refused to answer, and it was then I had to step out of the kitchen as he insisted he needed the whole place. Praying mantises were eyeing me from all the windows, and I decided I best oblige him, but make plans to find out his agenda. I never could have imagined its true extent. You see, Jasper was part of a scheme to create an infinite soup loop."

"At this point, I will have to forgo narration and make some broader clarifying points. Despite the imagination of Jasper and his wild allegations of some grand narrative about me being evil, things were quite a bit different from that. Simply put, there is no grand narrative regarding me. And besides, I am confused from my dear fellow servant's narrative whether I am incompetent or a genius, so let's just get to talking about the story of Jasper, three psychokinetic demons, praying mantises, and Bryan."

"After leaving the kitchen, I did make a phone call from a wind tunnel. I did instruct Jasper to make a souffle that was a small bomb. I made the call to create some insurance, given my worry over Jasper's plans. A nice bomb on the side in case of trouble. I did not, however, instruct Jasper in the fine art of complex toaster construction. Upon returning to the kitchen, I knew perfectly well what Bryan was when I saw him, even if Jasper's specific rewiring escaped me. Bryan was the latest in a long line of toaster-gods that sucker poor mortals into constructing them."

"A fork caused the destruction of the souffle-bomb, yes, but only because it came into contact with all the hardware tools Jasper had stuffed around the souffle, in an effort to disallow me the use of the tools. The chaos of the explosion fazed me for only a split second. I was at first merely concerned with preventing damage to the kitchen. Then I noticed Bryan chanting. The toaster-god was summoning a demon, and I had to stop it. I would quickly note that the demon was emerging from decimated souffle was irrelevant -it could have been summoned from any given material. Anyway, I began chanting to counter the emanations. Jasper's disruptions delayed me greatly, and since the counter-chanting would only work against the summoning act itself, and not the demon, I failed at this attempt. However, I tossed a clove of garlic into the soup at the last moment, and the garlic-infused soup Jasper splashed at it traumatized the demon into disillusion. Unfortunately, our problems did not end with that demon's destruction."

"I would note that the demon-summoning confused me for a minute. Then I understood what I faced. This quaint, white-washed kitchen was the point that a joint toastergod-mantis-Jasper axis was conspiring to turn into a time loop that could produce infinite soup. The key to this scheme was the use of psychokinetic demons, which can hand things to each other through time, while not moving themselves, and can maintain effects across time travel without letting paradoxes collapse everything. With that in mind, you see, Bryan's demon was the second of two. The mantises had produced their own demon earlier, in the pot, while eating half the soup. Bryan's later demon would hand soup in its enormous hands to the mantises' demon. This time loop would allow ever more soup to be thrown backwards in time to the mantises' demon. And the psychokinesis would neutralize the threat of a paradox arriving. With these two demons summoned, the infinite supply of soup would pour out from the kitchen, in exponentially increasing quantities, until the whole universe was a universe of nothing but soup. And Jasper played the enabling role for the other two parties: Bryan and the mantises."

"The weird thing about all of this was that Bryan was modified by Jasper into a two-slot toaster. This wasn't even a part of the toaster-god's schematic. Not even Bryan himself intended this bonus for himself, since he never would have predicted needing it. But Jasper spent ten minutes going on about the most brilliant part of his modification of the existing toaster. He said he was going to burn four pieces of bread all at once and there was nothing I could do about it."

"As you might have guessed, it is the second slot that allowed Bryan to conjure his second demon, for a total of three overall. Bryan was screaming this time. Jasper's brilliant idea in response to this scream-summoning was to bow down in an effort to placate the toaster-god. Operating on a slightly more sophisticated level, I used my advanced knowledge of quantum psychokinetics to quickly construct a three-ton biomechanical chamber that could generate nuclear power. I powered my handy phaser with its energy, and fired at the demon, destroying it, and rendering Bryan powerless. Praying mantises came and carried him off. Revolution eats its own, and all that, I guess. Thus, the threat was defeated. And yes, in conclusion, I think my staring at Jasper for his incompetence was merited."

"Absolutely incorrigible."

"What do you suppose 'not ever again' means? Not a week from now or a month from now or a year from now. Not "at some point in the future, near or far". It means NEVER. As in, don't. Both of you completely blew it! You're magical enough at getting into trouble on your own; you don't need to summon supernatural help."

"Jasper: Getting the takeout was a thoughtful gesture. You even got it from my preferred restaurant. It's too bad it isn't my favorite meal from there, and that the box looks like it's been half-eaten, but it's the thought that counts, eh? Unfortunately that's about the only thought you had that counted, but I suppose half points for trying. It might have saved your job, this time."

"Crumb: All of your fantastic claims about magic toasters and pulling soup from other worlds are all well and good, but what I can't get over is that you killed a ferret. They say ferrets are like perpetual kittens. I like kittens. So, that's a big strike against you in my graces. Consider yourself demerited."

"I'd like to whack you both with a ruler or something but I don't have the time and without food I don't feel like I have the energy. So drive back to the takeout place and get me a large garlic beef, and some lemonade. Oh, and drop by the pharmacy on the way back. I'm having a lot of anxiety issues lately (I wonder why) and my psychiatrist prescribed something she said might help. Pick up the prescription with the credentials that're lying on the table next to the door out of here. Get back to me in an hour."

---

Quite some time later, after sunset...

The Overlord shook his head, as he sipped from a giant cup full of lukewarm lemonade.

"Well, you *did* get some more takeout back to me, I'll say that much. And it even looks like the right stuff. But you took so long that it's cold! And why are there all of these groceries here instead of my prescription? You got ice cream, which might have been a nice (if unexpected) treat, but it's melted! You can't even do the things I don't tell you to do right! What's your story this time?"

OOC : Apologies for not getting another reply in on the last round. I wanted to, but I had almost 8 sports games in the last 6 days. Between that and homework, nothing was getting written.

BIC:

Jasper stepped forward. The faithful servant once again foiled in his heroic attempts to satisfy the simple demands of the Overlord.

"I hardly know where to begin, oh mighty Overlord. The disagreement started as soon as we stepped out of this very room, and into the garage. I started walking towards the standard unmarked white servant vans, spinning the keys on a finger, when I heard the unlocking of another vehicle behind me. I turned around to see Crumb, a large grin plastered on her face, flipping the keys to your Majesty's Lamborghini."

"'No. We're not taking that Crumb.' I said. Money has been tight due to the string of unsuccessful servitude ventures, and I knew this was one of your most prized possessions. This was an amphibious Lamborghini, after all. She shook her head to that : 'I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation Jasper. Let's not blow things' ... (She showed me the grenade palmed in her left hand) ... ' out of proportion. I've never driven the lambo, it will be very exciting. Think of all the turns we could do without signaling. And we could run from the police!' I did some calculations in my head. On one hand, if I let her blow up herself with the car, we would no longer have to deal with Crumb. On the other hand, there was always the chance that she would drop the grenade into the car and then run away. I decided it was too risky, and I slowly approached the car, making sure not to appear threatening, and stepped into the passenger's side."

"Next thing I knew, we were squealing around corners, and I was trying to tell her to slow down. She just laughed, and in a few minutes I gave up trying to convince her to slow down, and settled with analyzing several speeding tickets Crumb had picked up, which I believed I could talk my way out of. (I was known as "They-Didn't-Do-It-Jasper" back in my lawyer days.) They were all beyond 120 miles per hour of the speeding limitations, so it would be no easy task. When we reached the takeout place, the whole thing actually went off without a hitch. This likely had something to do with the fact that I swiped the handcuffs off a cop after we got pulled over for the fifth time, and used them to attach Crumb to a school bus that was parked in the parking lot. Takeout in hand, I unattached her and we got into the car together. Things were going well, and we even shared a moment as we recalled that time we effectively tied the other servants to a post."

"That was when we got pulled over again. Something was off though, Crumb was only going 2 over. I started to collect myself to fight the ticket, but Crumb put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. 'I got it this time Jasper, let me handle this,' she said. She stepped out of the car, and I nervously sat there, wondering how badly this could possibly go. I found out when the police officer opened the door, and asked me to step out. I did as he instructed, and the police officer stepped into the driver's seat and drove off in your Lamborghini. I stood in shocked silence for a time, before turning to stare at Crumb. She didn't seem concerned. 'I told him he could have the car if he gave us a break,' she said cheerfully. The reality of trading a 6 million dollar amphibious Lamborghini for a  2 mph speeding ticket was almost too much for me to bear. But there was no catching him now, he had driven off the road and into a nearby lake, where the police cruiser he left us could not follow. Shaking my head, I stepped into the driver's seat of the police cruiser, and we departed to the pharmacy."

"Once we got there, I pulled out the credentials, and collected the prescription. Crumb entertained herself by buying several sandwiches from the neighboring subway, and measuring them to see if they were indeed one foot long. We had lost the car, but at least the mission was going well. For this reason, I accepted her proposal that we surprise you by picking up a few of your groceries and some ice cream to make up for our last failure. I should have known that was a bad idea. Crumb requested to stay in the car, so I went in and got the groceries myself. When I returned, Crumb was red faced and mumbling about 'Bliffy Blumpers,' 'Heffalumps' and 'Woozles.' I picked up the empty prescription medication container, and buried my face in my hands. I took Crumb to the nearest hospital and got her treated for the Overdose. Unfortunately, the Police Department arrived to take back the cruiser, and we were left to walk the rest of the way back."

"Crumb refused to share the map, so she was our pathfinder. It was approximately 2 miles down the road to get back to the headquarters, but 3 months down the line and somewhere in the deserts of California, I decided it was time to call up an old buddy of mine, Ralph."

"Ralph arrived with his private jet, and picked us up. We were both exhausted, the takeout was cold, and the ice cream melted. I fell asleep on the flight back to HeadQuarters, and when I awoke, we had landed at the airport. Ralph hired a crew of janitors to clean out the jet, and told me if I ever tried to get Crumb back on one of his airplanes, I would regret it. I thanked him for his help, and found Crumb looking green and sickly in the baggage terminal. I found this fitting setting humorous enough to cheer me up, so I tried to wake her up. Unfortunately she was too sick to walk, so I carried her, the groceries and the takeout the last two miles through the hills to get back here."

"I'm sorry I could not do more, Overlord. But I tried to do what I could."

a crumb had stood motionless, stoic throughout the preceding narration. Upon its completion, she immediately took up her tale.

"You see, Jasper has been concerned about the state of his life recently. Worried about not getting anywhere. Dealing with people he's convinced are inferior to him. Too nervous to let anyone get close enough to cut his hair. That sort of thing. Naturally, he developed a scheme to resolve this issue and claim favor with you at the same time. Unfortunately, greatest Overlord, I can't tell you exactly what the point of the scheme was, because I don't know. I'm not sure anyone in the universe could figure it out. Which, honestly, is probably a frequent description of Jasper's schemes. Nonetheless, it involved a seagull."

"The white van was damaged, and I think this was causing exasperation for Jasper. I thought he was acting erratically, so I decided to take the Lamborghini. I made a joke about blowing it up, with a nonfunctional grenade and everything, and Jasper acted as if he thought it was funny. After that, Jasper just told me to drive, anywhere, if not just everywhere. Jasper kept telling me to go slower, but the traffic demanded a persistent, aggressive style of navigation. Afterall, driving is safest if everyone drives the same way and everything is predictable. I merely drove as was expected of me."

"Just for old time's sake, I let Jasper tie me to a school bus as he got the take-out. The take-out procured, Jasper stole a seagull from a marmalade salesman. Jasper was convinced the marmalade salesman was either a thief, or Santa, or both, on account of his even having a seagull, and for having a long white beard. Jasper also stole the white beard. While I drove to the pharmacy, Jasper was making a phone call. He told me to keep telling jokes as he did so. He was talking on the phone about bombs and stealing camels. I filed this information away, certain it would be important. After he was finished, Jasper launched into a thirty minute spiel where he fact-checked every joke he had ever heard that had inaccuracies in them."

"The whole Lamborghini crash incident was the best possible end result given the circumstances. I knew the car was going to explode due to Jasper letting the seagull have free reign over the engine. I naturally found a policeman and told him to drive carefully off with the car. Even got a speeding ticket waived thanks to my excellent communication skills. I would note the car was doomed, but I had a plan to get back most of its value at a later time. In any case, I thought everything was still going well enough. Jasper demanded to be allowed to get the medicine himself, so I let him do that. He also told me to go buy some sandwiches and feed the Seagull. Jasper got the meds just fine. The Seagull had at this time threatened me to stay in the car, and make sure Jasper was gone for some reason. I suggested ice cream and groceries -may as well get something worthwhile out of honoring the request of a mad seagull. The absolutely crucial detail is this: at this point, we had warm take-out, the prescriptions, and were even getting extra. Everything was borderline perfect, despite what my dear fellow servant alleges were grievous mistakes on my part. However, the seagull was the only care of Jasper at this point. The seagull was going to eat the prescriptions. In the end, knowing that the risk to myself was relatively light unless the seagull got angrier, I consumed them myself. It was simply the logical course of action available."

"Groceries, ice cream and take-out were nonetheless still ours. Things could have been done right there, even without the police car. But the seagull had stolen the true map and replaced it with a fake one. Jasper had clearly marked this one up, too, since it had lemon stains all over it. It led us astray, and no matter how much I requested we ask for directions, Jasper and the seagull demanded I lead them onward to their destiny. Two months passed and we were going in circles around the desert. The seagull had grown larger and larger, now the size of a three-story building. Jasper, meanwhile, was no longer eating and growing gaunt. They conversed often, and this seemed to drain Jasper further. In another month, a bearded Jasper was angrily arguing with cactus and threatening to destroy global capitalism. The seagull was eating cactus and threatening to eat the take-out. For a minute, Jasper snapped out of this and called Ralph. However, he then phoned him back and requested a few months' delay. That is why it's been seven months."

"At the end of seven months,  things got interesting in this desert. That's when the marmalade salesman turned up. He was Santa, and wanted his seagull back, on account of that being the true source of flight. The three of us were promptly bundled up and brought to the north pole. Once there, the seagull gained the upper hand and freed himself from custody, and scared off the reindeer and Santa. The seagull demanded Jasper stay with him, and that they could leave the north pole together and return to the desert. Jasper could not let himself abandon the seagull and threatened to take the supplies with him, but I countered by trying to remind him of the importance of our delayed mission. My persuasion skills were truly shining at this point, and even the seagull was getting alarmed at Jasper's wavering of commitment. Eventually, all of the impulses, all the idiosyncrasies, and all the schemes came to their natural conclusion. The inevitable unfolded, as the conflicted nature of my dear fellow servant led him to tie himself, with one hand, to the north pole. That done, suddenly Jasper found himself again. The seagull, disappointed, went away. Jasper got a haircut, ordered off a few camel theft operations, and returned with me and Ralph. I ended it in the end, but if it wasn't for Jasper's obsession with that seagull, we could have succeeded."

The Overlord looked old and tired. "Seven months without takeout makes one weak. I had to have pizza delivered that night when I figured out that you were never coming. You wouldn't believe what the rates are for delivery to an underground bunker."

He opened the takeout box, then grimaced and hastily threw it into a nearby incinerator chute. "That's disgusting. I see you didn't use the stasis shipping box."

"You're both frightful servants and getting worse all the time. I had gained some hope from the thought that I might never see you again after this long delay, the one consolation from this disastrous assignment, but we see how that turned out. Who knows what might happen next, so I've decided it's time to rid myself of you now before it's too late."

"Union law states I can only fire one of you at a time. I'm not rightly sure which of you is more dangerous so I think we're going to settle this the old fashioned way."

The Overlord opened a hidden compartment in his chair and took out a small square object. "Odds keep Jasper, evens keep Crumb." Tossing the die up into the air with a wild spin, he stared at it with feline concentration, and deftly caught it with in his left hand as it fell back down to earth.

It showed five dots on top.

Without further ado the Overlord pulled a lever. A hidden catapult thus flung the hapless Crumb up into the air and through a door that slid up to permit her flying exit to the earth outside.

The Overlord looked back at Jasper. "The one thing that you servants did do for me was to give me a convincing object lesson on the futility of materialism. Thus I've decided to sell everything I have, give all my money to the poor, and retire to charitable work in obscurity. As for you, you have a choice. Your personal contract is going to end, there's no two ways about that. The question is how you want it to go. I can buy you out and pay the agreed upon five million dollar sum. Alternatively, I have a curious object that I would be willing to give you instead, if you agree to waive the contract fee. It was rumored to have some secret benign power but I never was able to get it to work. Maybe you'd like to take a gamble on it?"

After a moment's thought, Jasper decided...

The End (of this Overlord's story)

... A smile slowly spread across Jasper's face. He slowly bent down to pick up the fallen dice, still showing the lucky odd roll. He tossed it in the air and caught it deftly.

"I'm feeling lucky, Overlord." Jasper tossed the dice back to him.

"Are you?"