The rhythm of industry! Hammering and sawing are how things get done. Bang, bang, “Ouch! My thumb!” Wret, wret, “Agh, eye sawdust again.” That sort of rhythm, and there was a chorus, too. “Anyone want to help? We'll finish faster if you do. Don't stand there watching. You can join our crew.” No one can resist a good chorus. An officer wearing a crown and rich robes placed a nail, drove it in with a couple whacks, dropped the hammer, and wandered off, his duty done. A passing centaur paused there, began to cut a mortise in a board, nodded at the workers, and resumed his passing with the saw stuck in the wood.
Ah, the demands of a growing game. Commandment of Hero grew, and as a result its officers always had things to do. Ultra Rares Solemn Declaration and King Ostros left to take care of their Public Service and their Vigilant Patrol, the old stuff, while the Rares handled something new, something not quite so gameplay-ish. A man with the black toga of a specialist in the armies of Perandra Regna and the green hair of an adventurer wheelbarrowed in bricks while a tall, armored, halberded soldier hauled mortar. A fellow with a watch on a chain and a bowler hat whose orange skin looked like it would wobble if you poked it, the shiny and enticing skin of the buman race, managed a nail-to-thumb ratio of better than ten to one. Could his record be beaten? Officers with baggy Lanmaranese pants or a yellow Archensian coats tried, and a lady with a caduceus supported their attempts and healed away their failures.
“Thank you sooo much for stopping by even though you must be busy,” an archer wearing a green dress and the weight of gacha tradition along with it called after the departing officers. She took over the centaur-forsaken saw and gave the wood cause to complain for a moment before her head whipped up. “Um, Ulrik? Didn't we agree I'd provide the honey and you'd serve the vinegar? I'm sure I remember the Strategists coming up with that plan, and I don't think some villain implanted false memories, though that sort of thing happens, I admit.”
“Frequently.” A spiky-haired Rare rolled up the sleeve on lush black and red robes too large for his body, tall though it was, or at least not short, and continued hammering. “Both of us must have had our memories altered, because I remember that too. It was a good plan! Yelling at people who refused to pick up a trowel seemed fun. Seemed, Sindze. Past tense only, because I discovered I can't get mad when I'm wearing my costume.”
“Then take it off! Vinvin, agree with me.”
“Sorry . . . but . . .”
Sindze observed Vinnette Melban crouching behind her caduceus and concluded she would never budge. “Mm. Well. If Ulrik's just going to stand there grinning in his stupid comedy boss outfit . . .”
“I am.”
“. . . we need somebody else to take over the browbeating role.”
“What's that? You need some browbeating done?” A barrel full of nails and screws trotted up, and once it passed viewers could see holding it a short officer with a little cape, strawberry in color, whose luman skin resembled slate, the most boring of the rocks and minerals the artists used for her ilk. “OK! Tramda's here to take care of it! Hey Hyune! You think you look smart with that book in your hand, but you look dumb when you lay bricks like that. Afraid they're going to launch a counteroffensive? Put your back into it. Dennet! Stop having such floofy hair. Let's see. Ebulan Prav, you're doing fine.” A smiling officer doffed his hard hat and waved to Tramda Olex before getting back to work. “Anybody else, Sindze? Yeah, you. Tie back that hair when you're sawing, dummy.”
Sindze replied by tossing her head and shaking out her wind-livened blonde mane, and also by replying. With words. “Well, I thank you for that tip, which I'm sure you gave knowing I appreciate advice because I'm always trying to improve myself in every area. All I can do to show how grateful I am is to give you a tip of my own, so here it is. Insult them, not me! We're trying to shame people into doing our jobs for us!”
“Can do!” Tramda harangued any Super Rare or Ultra Rare she could find, though after she found Eten the other Rares advised she unfind him, since he was supervising the project. He had even labored manually alongside them to get things started in a commendable example of hands-on bossmanship. Her performance, redirected toward more promising targets, won admirers, and as a result a crowd formed like a peach around a toxic core. A couple Santas showed up, a Frankenstein or rather a Stezlinstein, and a luman rock star with even more fans than boas came to hear some fresh harangues straight from the orchard. A plush panda suit enveloping a serious young lady, a buman whose green skin bore speckles of Valentine's chocolate, and a near-seven-foot stuman, shorter than most, carrying a handkerchief tucked into a pocket of her spotless blouse she whipped out and waved when she activated skills investigated the clamor. There was also a vampire the grateful Rares greeted with waves and thumbs-ups. All those officers and more gathered to enjoy the latest sport, Tramda-baiting. Reach for a hammer, but then lean down and adjust your boots. Open your mouth to answer but sneeze instead. If the little luman noticed and yelled at the offender, put a point on the board. Noticed and failed to yell? Eternal shame. Tramda-baiting was a game for risk-lovers only.
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Most new sports fail, just as most mobile games, and Tramda-baiting lost its appeal before it hit its first anniversary, half-anniversary, or special gacha that required paid currency. Despite that the crowd, instead of dispersing, grew, for even before Eten stepped forward and called for silence, Freegate's latest addition stood whole and complete. A long building under a pitched roof, faced with brown brick, rectangular except for a lobby that extended forward from the rest of the pile to welcome visitors and residents, its door centaur-tall and piano-wide and its front more window than brick.
“Done!” Eten put his hands on his hips, a casual act which, when done by him, might have inspired a dozen sculptors to dash in and start chiseling with frenzied hands in order to translate into marble his classical muscles, the physique of a bodybuilder who forgot to include “nutritional supplements” in his budget but remembered to put in the work. Getting that much marble might cost a bit in trade-worthy goods, since Eten stood nearly as tall as a stuman and wider than most. “I didn't think there'd be an audience. Hey! I'll give a speech and we'll call this a grand opening!”
“Yeah! Do it, Master Eten!” A cry went up from the crowd, or at any rate from a single officer wearing a French maid dress done up in red and black who shouted loud enough that nobody else needed to say a word.
“Thanks, Skaya. Well, Part 3 has started. We've got some new officers, and they're a little exotic. I don't mean Ozric Orn Pallad. Come to think of it, he's a little exotic too. A Warper with a dagger for a lens? What style!” Eten pointed at a UR, the first officer from the country of Uxtran Regnelle in central Yoerbla as indicated by his poofy sleeves and padded doublet of green slashed with orange in the gaudiest Renaissance style over his dark, non-buman, non-luman, non-centaur, regular human skin. “No, I mean the less humanoid ones. This new lounge isn't just a pile of wood and bricks. It's a promise to respect our new allies and their unusual needs. In fact, let's hear it for Wiffle and Smidgen!”
The gathered officers no longer relied on Skaya alone to express their opinions, but rather applauded and cheered as individuals. Some even tried to clap the newbies on their shoulders in conspicuous camaraderie, but failed to find any on the two-headed hydra or the blue phoenix ever-crackling with the elemental power of Storm. The frustrated clappers tried to pass it off by running their hands through their hair or adjusting their belts, but everyone knew what had happened.
“Great! One problem, though. We've got the Inferno gym, Flood pool, Storm conservatory, and the Quake greenhouse. Oh, and the Eclipse museum. What's the other one again?”
The SRs and URs shrugged, shook their heads, or flapped. “I believe you will find you have forgotten the Rare closet,” one of the officers behind Eten said after shutting his book and pushing up his glasses.
“And the Rare closet. Really? That doesn't sound right at all. Hm.” Eten shrugged. “That's a problem for later. What do we call this place to really make our newcomers feel at home?”
Ben I. Sloup consulted his considerate brain to produce the exact right name, one that combined accuracy and hospitality. “The Freak Hutch. Yeah.”
“The Lair . . .” Cloton Zvolo paused to strum his guitar, “. . . of Unending Torment!”
“Oh, that's a good one.” Wiffle, pleased, flapped some more.
“We might call it what we ought to have named the Rare lounge, which is the Vile Den.” Darlotte Glofal considered. “Perhaps we ought to switch the names now?”
Hyl DeMereanch proposed something more along locational lines, as expected of a not particularly eminent SR who spent all day in Freegate except when on Public Service dispatches. “As it sits outside the main keep, the Outer Darkness sounds appropriate.”
“Wow, another good one.” Wiffle, excited, hopped from one phoenix claw to the other.
“It is! I can't choose! Do I get to choose?” Smidgen hopped straight up on account of not having two feet.
Off to the side, two URs from Enzet, alike in their black jackets and their skirts and hose which conspired not to cover everything, conversed. “Look at them waste their naming sense on a dumb lounge. Can you believe it, Zims?”
“Sure can, Quirce. Nicknames and titles make everything better. It's like it's really yours now, you know?”
“Of course I know!” Quircy Rau stamped her foot, gently, quietly, so as not to disturb the grand opening. “That's why they should give titles to important things. Like their swords. Themselves. Me.”
“Chief Quircy Rau, or Her Serene Grace Quircy Rau.”
“Exactly. Lady Treasurer Zimley Boe. That's only an example.”
“Don't let hearing this get you down, but that's just Class Evolution.”
“I don't want a revamp. I'm strong as it is. Just a little twist on my name. Something fun.”
Back at the greater crowd, which left much in the hands of the developers but not the erection or naming of lodges, since the Barracks had never been expanded no matter how many new officers the gacha sent to Freegate, the latest Valentine's UR, Ballroom Neur had a thought. “Lovely names, all of them. Without exception. I have a question on another point. Shall we move the centaurs in there?”
Never before had a celebration stopped faster, not even the Planksgiving party when the attendees found no such holiday existed. One of two world-changing questions invaded every non-centaur mind. “Is this my chance to get those dumb horses out of my lodge?” All but two officers wondered that. As for the unlucky pair, what could Smidgen and Wiffle wonder except, “Am I going to be stuck dodging horse butts for the rest of this game's life?” The centaurs in the crowd meanwhile pondered where they could get sugar cubes once the grand opening ended.
None of that mattered, and not in a philosophical sort of way, for a matter of greater interest by far interrupted. Jonathan Brightwater ran out of Freegate's main keep and yelled, “Announcement! Now! About us! Get in here!” When Jonathan Brightwater yelled, people listened, because he was very loud. In addition, he had his glasses on, which catapulted him up to A-rank on any tier list of how smart officers looked.