Petty Squabble [ROUND 3] [Goldhenge]

There were a lot of things Jimmy Johnson didn't really understand about COFCA. Such as most of their projects, or why they called him the "Chief Custodial Officer for Nocturnal Affairs" instead of "the night janitor".

What he did understand was that they never much cared for cleaning up after themselves. He didn't understand what they were doing well enough to realize this applied metaphorically as well as literally, but he wouldn't have been surprised to learn about it.

Tonight, like most nights, he was bored. Bored enough to wonder why exactly they had nights at all; they were in space, after all. But more importantly, bored enough to mess around with the fancy high-tech video game some executive had apparently been playing in the meeting room.

It took Jimmy a while to get his bearings. He was a robot called Envoy, and he was apparently helping this guy named Parsley sneak into a castle of wizards for some reason. Something about murders. A glance at a map Parsley shoved into his view suggested that the castle was a good distance away; Parsley muttered something about three days of walking.

Oh. It was one of those slow and probably grindy games. That sounded even more boring than sweeping the floors, and Jimmy might have stopped playing if he hadn't immediately stumbled onto the button that turned on Envoy's jet boosters.

Parsley had been more than a little surprised at the demonstration of the Guildmaster's flight capabilities, not least because the machine had chosen to demonstrate them by flying right into him.

It took a little effort to get himself securely on the Guildmaster's back instead of awkwardly hanging off its arms, but before long they were high up in the air, and the three-day trip to Wizard Castle was looking considerably shorter.

It wasn't even hard to spot the castle. There weren't many buildings that tall around, after all, and even fewer at the top of a small mountain.

Parsley actually found that odd. He'd seen dozens of ominous castles at the top of foreboding mountain trails in his time, yet this was the first one he'd spotted since the illusion dropped. Perhaps this territory simply hadn't had as many nobles over the years, he mused.

But it soon struck him that if he could see the wizards, they might be able to see him.

"Fly lower," he said. "Best not to draw attention to ourselves."

"Which button do I press for that?" Jimmy asked, staring at the control panel. Finally, with a shrug, he pressed one.

It was at this point that he discovered just how fast Envoy could fly.

"What are ye doin?" Parsley shrieked. "At this speed, ye'll take us far past the castle!"

"Well, on the plus side," Jimmy said into the microphone, "that'll make it harder for them to see us."

---

Being harder to see did not necessarily make you harder to detect.

Indeed, an object traveling through the skies of an underdeveloped planet at supersonic speeds was actually rather easy to detect if you had a spaceship scanning for anomalies. It was one of the first things the scans checked for.

"Mr. Smith, we may have a bit of a situation," Technically-Still-Captain M'Tikk said. "Seems to be an object circling the planet at a high velocity. It's moving too fast for the scanners to get many details, but it appears to be technological in nature."

John frowned.

"Can we get a teleporter lock on it?" he asked.

"Not at those speeds." M'Tikk didn't bother noting that they didn't really have a safe place to teleport it to even if they could. Minor details like that had long ago ceased to matter.

"It's a danger to the other contestants, and therefore to my fun," John said, pacing around the bridge. Then his face brightened.

"But I suppose it's only a danger while the others are still on the planet."

"We can't get a good teleporter signal on them," M'Tikk reminded him. "You'll recall that Goldhenge has been interfering with our tracking signals for a while now."

"Well, that just means an excuse for a little away mission," John said, breaking into a grin. "Why don't you come along, Captain? I'm sure you could use the exercise."

---

Jimmy's efforts to master the flight controls, or at least locate the manual, were not going well.

So far, he had not only managed to reactivate the asynchronous transfer protocol, he had somehow disabled all but a few of the scenarios that interupted it. The only ones remaining were high-level damage reports on Envoy and the imminent death of a contestant. The end result of this was that the images on the screen were going much faster than Jimmy's mere human eyes could process, a fact that he didn't notice because he was still messing with the settings menu.

His experimentation was only interrupted by an important notice over a still image of the screen.

ENVOY'S JET THRUSTERS NEED TO RECHARGE BEFORE FURTHER USE IS POSSIBLE.
CONTESTANT PARSLEY KROSE IS IN IMMINENT DANGER OF DEATH BY FALLING AND OR/BEING CRUSHED BY ENVOY.

"That's bad, isn't it?" Jimmy muttered. "Really wish I could find those instructions."

---

Jimmy wasn't the only one concerned by the situation, even without counting the fact that Parsley would likely be very concerned if he hadn't fallen unconscious from exhaustion and low oxygen levels several hours ago.

The wizards had noted the fast-moving object in the middle of the night, but as it had quickly passed them, they had not considered it a specific threat - merely a potential issue that they needed to be aware of.

However, now that it was plummeting towards the Chamber of the Grand Rite, it demanded an immediate response. Whether this was a direct assault, an infiltration attempt, or merely a coincidental fast-moving meteorite, the object could not be allowed into such an important room.

Which was why Ferdinand Fern, head of security, was called in from his lunch break and weekly gambling session. He was used to such unpleasant interruptions; usually they involved a summoning ritual that had either gone horribly wrong or had gone exactly as intended but had been a terrible idea in the first place.

He was about to ask just what manner of terrifying creature was running amok this time when the Third Archmagus grabbed him by the arm, pulled him to the nearest window, and pointed up.

"Oh, is that all," Ferdinand grumbled. "A novice chronomancer can deal with this nonsense, you just need to slow the thing down."

As if to demonstrate the point, Ferdinand waved his arm and the large object seemed to hang in the air.

"It'll take the thing at least an hour to come down now. Plenty of time to prepare for whatever it is. So who brought this wreck into being? I'll bet it was the alchemists again."

"It was not our work, Fern," the Third Archmagus said, her antennae drooping judgmentally. "We detected this anomaly last night. As I recall, we even brought it to your attention. Yet you still left the castle knowing the threat it might represent."

"What threat?" Ferdinand said, scowling. "I can tell you right now, this isn't a Unified Systems probe. Moves way too fast for that. If anything, it probably distracted them from us with the way it rocketed off."

"And now this anomaly that has drawn their attention will be hanging in the air in the immediate vicinity of the castle for at least an hour." The Archmagus unfurled her proboscis in annoyance. "Not to mention its trajectory. Do you not think it a concern that someone may have launched a high-velocity projectile directly at the Chamber of the Grand Rite?"

"Really?" Ferdinand chuckled. "I'd say they were doing us a favor. This Rite of yours sounds like exactly the sort of thing that will blow up in everyone's face, and that's if we're lucky."

The Third Archmagus glared at him.

"I've got a construct in storage that should be able to get that thing flying around again," Ferdinand sighed. "That will keep your precious Grand Rite safe, and get the Unified Systems off our trail. The most we might have to deal with out here is a science team trying to figure out what stopped the anomaly, but I doubt they'll bother us if we make sure there's an alternative explanation for them to find first."

"Acceptable. Perhaps when you are finished, you can explain why you have not displayed a similar level of competence with regard to your assignments in Goldhenge."

"I can explain that right now," Ferdinand grumbled, walking towards his office. "Our only problem in Goldhenge is Diccioni."

---

Parsley had the sort of job where waking up in mortal danger was far from unusual. Even so, waking up hundreds of feet in the air was a new experience.

"I'll be needing a long talk with Stein when this matter is dealt with," Parsley muttered, glancing around him. At least they were near the castle, and it seemed they weren't falling particularly fast. The Guildmaster seemed unresponsive, however; Parsley had no way of knowing that this was because Jimmy had stumbled his way into the settings menu again, and simply concluded it was some fool thing Stein had done.

But Parsley found himself less concerned with the altitude or the mechanical Guildmaster's odd behavior than with the fact that the sun was up. More than likely, the wizards had already spotted them, and there was no chance of making it in undetected.

If there was a chance, however, it lay in first reaching the ground. Parsley carefully untangled himself from the Guildmaster's four arms, and climbed on top of it. He reached into the folds of his coat and pulled out a rope. As he did, and noted the number of pockets that were now empty, he silently thanked his master for teaching him that a rope was one of the most important things to fasten securely.

He tied the rope to a dangling arm, and dropped it towards the ground. It was still a good distance above the nearest treetop, but Parsley had ways of dealing with that.

He climbed down the rope, swiftly but carefully, and made his way to the very tip. He looked down, and guessed that he could make the jump with another two feet of length.

"Best hope the wizards don't notice me for another five minutes," he muttered, touching his fingers to the bottom edge of the rope. In an instant, it was bread; and then, the air below it started changing form as well.

Five minutes of intense concentration later, Parsley climbed down a three-foot long loaf of bread and jumped into the upper branches of a tree.