Opening Night (2/2)

“So let's um... how do you plan a rebellion anyway?” Fluffbear asked. “I've never done this before.”

“Well,” Thomasi said, kneeling and pulling the other two into a huddle. “The first thing to do is get a bunch of people, then a bunch of weapons, then go from there...”

Jean pulled Threadbare and Celia into her own huddle... or rather, pulled Threadbare in, and walked over to Celia, for there was no pulling her Steam Knight suit anywhere without the help of magical hooks.

“We are at the point in the play where the narration follows the actors a bit,” Jean said. “Now it gets trickier. If they screw up anything major, then the Fan Rage grows. It is possible to lower it, but it is slower to fall than to grow.”

“But if they're fans, shouldn't they have more love for something than hate?” Threadbare asked.

Jean shot him an incredulous look. “Oh no,” she said. “NOBODY holds rage like a fan who thinks something he enjoys is imperfect. And gods help the creator who tries to do something NEW with a work.”

“So, we need to manage fan rage,” Celia said. “How do we do this?”

“Act well and be bold, usually,” Jean said. “It really helps if you match the parts well. For example, if we have a legendary soldier, then you are the best Knight among us, Cecelia. You look like an armored warrior!”

“And if there are teddy bears, I can handle that,” Threadbare nodded.

“I do not think there will be many of those,” Jean said. “But perhaps a great sage, or a skilled spellcaster? You are all of these things.”

A roar of laughter came from the audience, and Threadbare glanced over to see Thomasi waving around a giant wooden spoon. “We'll feed our revolutionary army with this!”

“All at once?” Zuula asked.

“I think we'll need a bigger spoon!” squeaked Fluffbear.

The Fan Rage Meter is dropping!

“Now all we need is a massive army,” said Zuula.

“And no sooner had Kim Mei pointed out the current flaw with their plan, then a sympathetic spy made his arrival on horseback!”

Just offstage, two coconut halves started clapping together, rolling around on the floor as the strings supporting them tensed and released.

And a green outfit dropped down from above, fluttering towards the trio.

“I am a Spy!” Jean said, grabbing for it. “Wish me luck!”

And as the hoofbeats grew louder, the coconuts flailing for all they were worth, Jean waited until they stopped then ran on stage, waving. “I bring news!”

“The spy told them about the huge army on its way, led by one of the fiercest of the Emperor's generals!”

“We have been discovered!” said Jean, pulling the hood of her cloak down and having some trouble getting it over her ears. “We have no chance against this general, so—”

“Bah, let him come!” said Zuula. “Kim Mei de Brave fears no General So!”

“Compared to you he's probably chicken,” Thomasi said, still in that high pitched voice, then followed it up with a disturbing giggle. “Hoo hoo hoo!”

The audience laughed far louder than the line seemed to deserve, and Threadbare wasn't sure why. But the Fan Rage meter kept on dropping, so that seemed to be good.

“And then there were two,” Celia said, kneeling down and rubbing Threadbare's back as the curtains closed again. “Let's hope the parts fit us.”

The set reassembled itself as they watched, and Threadbare waved to Zuula and the others as they hurried off to the other side of the stage, waiting with the other actors.

“Meanwhile, in the mountain pass of So Fa So Gud, the Emperor's fiercest general awaited in his fortress!”

A pile of stone pillars rose from the stage, forming a makeshift castle tower. And another section of the floor slid open, revealing a suit of bronze armor... at least so it appeared on first glance. Some quick investigation showed that it was actually gold foil over cardboard plates.

“This'll be me, then.” Celia knelt with a hiss of pistons and wrapped metal arms around Threadbare. “Wish me... no, tell me to break a leg.”

“What?”

“It's a show business term. Wishing someone luck on stage is actually bad luck, so you wish them something horrible, and then they get good luck. It's reversed.”

“That sounds... complicated. Let's see. Spill the tea? Crack the marmalade jar? Dirty the dishes?”

“Close enough,” Celia said, letting go of him and touching the armor, raising her hands as it wrapped around her and catching a falling glaive one handed. “Time to make my entrance.”

She clunked over to the castle the moment the curtain rose. Off to the side of the 'tower room' she was in, a group of a dozen soldier puppets drilled and sparred, doing general military things.

“Keep training, you louses!” Celia shouted at them, waving the glaive in a vaguely menacing manner. “Flex those arms, move those feet! Show them our army can't be beat!”

“Hu Ah!” shouted the soldiers, redoubling their efforts.

And the narrator, whoever or whatever it was, liked it well enough to run with it.

“There the general trained his troops day and night, waiting for the proper moment to unleash his army upon the inevitable peasant rebellion.”

“Sure do hope those peasants get uppity today! Great day for quashing... rebels...” Celia said, hesitating on the last few words.

Technically once upon a time Celia HAD been both an officer quashing rebels and a rebel herself, Threadbare knew. This was probably bringing back all sorts of horrid memories.

At one point the general had to ring a magical bell to summon the image of the Emperor, which was represented by Anne Bunny being lowered on ropes, dangling, plump as a pinata with her padded robes and desperately holding her enormous imperial hat to her head. She shouted commands from on high and occasionally fired off a pistol shot to punctuate her orders.

The audience rather liked that, so Threadbare hoped she'd brought enough ammo to last the play. And also that this dungeon didn't have a roof, because otherwise she'd put a lot of holes in it already.

“And so the Emperor commanded the General to occupy the lands north of Lu and prepare to march upon the heart of the farmlands. But little did he know, that in his path lay a great and powerful arcanist. The first Golemist in all the world, whose workshop was right in the path of the invading army...”

It was crafting the plays to them, Threadbare was certain of it. Or there was some interchange between the story and the cast. Had the card draw mattered? Was it truly random?

All these thoughts and more Threadbare kept to himself as the curtains closed, the scene shifted, and stool with a pile of cloth on it slid in from the darkness at the end of the wing.

Threadbare had to clamber up onto it to get to the clothing...

And as he did, the stool shrunk, and his legs sunk down into it, as it settled around him. It was part of the costume as well, he thought.

He tried to walk onto stage, but his legs were snugly wrapped in some sort of holsters. But just the mere act of doing that set the stool in motion, its own legs clunking along, manipulated by strings that trailed off into the darkness above.

Stopping this is going to be interesting, he thought, as it trundled him into the scene. Pretty much every prop they'd seen at the beginning of things had been dumped haphazardly around the stage, and the backdrop showed a shack full of gears and crude machinery, and tinkery-looking devices.

“The day dawned bright and early for the noted sage and inventor!”

“My what a lovely day!” Threadbare said, toddling around the stage on his moving stool, shifting directions and dodging props. “I think it's time to put on a pot of something very warm and bad for me and eat greasy food!”

Across the stage he watched Celia palm her armor's faceplate.

But the audience seemed to like it, judging by the 'aing from that general direction.

Your Adorable skill is now level 95!

Your Adorable skill is now level 96!

He puttered around the workshop, doing his best to interact with the various props, while the stool kept a steady pace. He threw in remarks about what he thought he'd do with various devices, designating this one a jam stirrer and another one a catapult for house pets so that they could hunt birds more easily. It seemed to do the trick, and the narrator didn't correct him.

CHA+1

And as the fan rage meter dropped, he could see his friends relaxing. Easy scene; no surprises.

“And as the inventor worked on perfecting his yeetapult, Sung Sim and Yung Sim ran into his workshop, bearing an unexpected discovery!”

“Hey mister inventor!” Fluffbear squeaked, waving her arms so hard her bonnet slipped as she charged onstage. “We found a thing!”

Thomasi came behind, dragging a lacquered chest half again as big as he was, sweating so hard from the effort that it had soaked through his peasant blouse.

It was an ominous thing, seemingly carved from stone, and covered with patterns of scales and dark runes scribed in bloody red ink.

“The inventor examined it carefully,” the narrator said, “Not knowing that the general's army was mustering just over the hill to ambush the Big Spoon rebel army!”

Celia looked around, started forward, then came to a clunking halt as Jean grabbed her armor and whispered frantically.

Threadbare decided that this was all his cue, and he rammed the stool into the box, letting the legs churn while he made a show of poking it and looking it over. “It appears to be a box. Probably full of evil,” he hazarded a guess.

The audience laughed but not very loudly.

The narrator sounded a little peeved. “Despite the inventor's rather dry sense of humor, he could tell that the box was full of mystical energy and potential. All he had to do was open it to find out the truth of this artifact...”

“No, I don't think so,” Threadbare said. “Not yet, anyway. Appraise.”

This was one of an Enchanter's most basic skills, for it let them know what sort of item they were looking at. It was useful both in the laboratory and the field, particularly when one had a non-zero chance of mimics being in the mix somewhere.

And fortunately, this wasn't one of those.

Your Appraise skill is now level 41!

PROP SIX DEMON BOX

MUNDANE* DUNGEON MAGIC

INTERACTS WITH THE FANDOM STAGE

ENTRY POINT FOR ACTOR

“Oh my—” Threadbare began, only to be interrupted by the unseen narrator.

“Said the tinkerer, for he had seen the truth of the box and knew that it had to be opened before the General's army swept down from the foothills and crushed the rebellion before it began!”

“Do we know about that yet?” Fluffbear asked Thomasi, a little too loudly, and the audience muttered in surprise at the miscue.

The Fandom of the Lop Ear's Disapproval has grown!

You have suffered 15 points of Moxie damage!

The Fan Rage meter is rising!

“Oh you didn't see the scouting report? Yung Sim, I thought you were the clever one!” Thomasi hastily threw in, and the muttering died down a bit.

“I just got busy...” Fluffbear kicked at the stage.

“We're going to have to open this,” Threadbare decided. If all it was was a way for an actor to get on stage, then it probably wouldn't do any harm.

And with a few careful directional changes in the stool, he managed to get ahold of the handle of the overlarge box and pull it open.

Purple smoke exploded from the box, and the orchestra played intense music!

“And from inside the box, waiting for this moment to be set free upon the world, woke the daemon dragon!”

But nothing came out.

Threadbare clambered up, still wrestling with the stool, and peered into the box. It was empty, and had no bottom. There was a trapdoor directly beneath it, but the trapdoor was shut.

“Threadbare! Look to the wing!” Celia's voice whispered in his ear.

Threadbare shot a glance toward the place he'd come from... a glance that turned into a double take.

There was a costume sitting in a heap back in the actor's waiting area.

It was magnificent: glittering red scales, a long body made of cloth, and a head that looked something like a cross between a dog, and a lion, and a stag. And it just lay there in a heap, waiting for its actor to come and pick it up.

They had no more actors, though, and the audience was deathly quiet. Waiting.

“I see something in here, but I don't think it's ready to come out yet,” Threadbare ad-libbed. “Maybe it wants a longer nap.”

Thomasi looked around. “I think I see something on the other side of the workshop,” he said in his falsetto. “Let me go get it to wake the... creature up!”

But as he tried to walk off the stage, he paused mid-step. Looking back to Threadbare he mouthed the words 'can't move'.

“Well let me get that for you,” Threadbare said, steering the stool that direction until he ran into what felt like an invisible wall. Moving back and forth along it, he stretched out a paw. “Here. Distant Animus.”

Your Distant Animus spell has failed! Target is out of range!

Threadbare steered the stool back toward the center of the stage, just as the audience caught on that something was wrong. And the murmurs rose to the high parts of the hall. Discontented.

Not entertained.

The Fandom of the Lop Ear's Disapproval has grown!

You have suffered 21 points of Moxie damage!

The Fan Rage meter is rising!

Threadbare looked to Jean, back in the waiting wing. She was pale, sunk to her knees, both hands over her mouth.

And that's when reality rippled, and words appeared looming over the stage, shedding green light from on high.

NO MASTER DETECTED IN DUNGEON 01010111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01001111 01100110 01100110 00100000 01000010 01110010 01101111 01100001 01100100 01110111 01100001 01111001

PLEASE ASSIGN NEW MOB TO COMMAND VARIABLE TO CONTINUE OPERATION.

Threadbare knew what that meant. The dungeon's boss had left the core chamber. In thirty seconds, they would all be ejected from the closing dungeon.

Was this the Phantom's plan? To ambush them as they emerged, now that they were trapped by the stage and couldn't get out before he did?

Threadbare couldn't see any other reason to close the dungeon. He began to climb out of the costume, trying to shed it so he could prepare some hasty defenses, but no sooner had he begun than new words flickered briefly before disappearing.

NEW MASTER DETECTED!

The audience seemed to take no notice of it. They muttered and rumbled their discontent, as the Fan Rage rose and rose. And a few tomatoes started sailing onto stage, just a few, not well-aimed.

But in the back rows, Threadbare could see a few grim-faced fans starting to hand out bricks and flaming torches.

As threats went, he'd faced worse but there were certainly a lot of mobs in that audience.

And then Thomasi shouted, “Look!”

Instantly, ignoring the rousing crowd, the toys and their living companions stared at the costume.

The costume which was now wrapping itself around a stranger's form, obscuring it as it stood up from kneeling, long, trousered legs ending in brown furred feet. Gloved hands reaching up to adjust the headpiece, setting it straight so that when the dragon costume opened its jaws, two manic, glowing orange eyes peered out.

And behind the dragon's head, just where the horns forked backward, protruded two long, floppy brown ears.

“It's him!” Jean whispered, fighting to keep a rising wail of fear from her voice. “The Phantom of the Lop Ear!”