Overlord's Orders XVIIb

[Fatch of Southsward]

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.

[Hickory]

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.

[Fatch of Southsward]

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]

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."

[a crumb]

"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."

[James Gryphon]

"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."

[a crumb]

"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."

[Hickory]

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]

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."

[Jukka the Sling]

"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.

[a crumb]

"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."

[James Gryphon]

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]

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]

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."

[James Gryphon]

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.)