Granite 20, Year 108
________________________
"You're in charge now."
"What?"
"I said you're in charge. Now get out of here, I'm in the middle of my training."
Before long I found himself standing blankly in the meeting room, without a clue of what to do. "You're in charge now." Was what the previous commander of the fort, Syanas the
gorgeous crazy hammersuika told me. Not that I actually knew what being in charge meant. I'm a pirate, I do pirate-y things. None of the governing stuff for me, no sir!
Great swinging ear lobes? Totally hot material.Of course, I had no choice, because all the suikas were now staring at me for orders.
"Uh, just do whatever you were doing. Thanks." I mumbled. Some of them gave dubious looks, but others just grumbled a little as they went back to work. I swore I saw Totaku rotating his finger around his temple in the background. I told him to get back to digging.
"So..." I took a look around the fort. Everything seemed almost new to me, even though I've been around for nearly a year.
"Hey..."
My eyes caught the sight of a bunch of levers. Levers! I used to pull them in my pirating days, if I ever had pirating days. I rubbed one of the knobs slowly, drooling as I thought what might happen if I pulled it.
"Uh," Scruffy raised his head from the fields of plump helmets, "I don't think you should pull any of that."
"A lever is meant to be pulled," I replied sharply, "and this, this lever is asking to be pulled. Hard."
Scruffy looked at Nyotor, who shrugged. Then he looked back at me.
"Well I don't know what those levers do either, but I'm sure there were notes that Sya-"
I wasn't listening. With a single grunt I slammed the lever down with all my worth, hearing the sweet grind of stone as the gears turned. I grinned and wiped my sweat in satisfaction, my lever pulling urges satisfied. I turned back, to see that a wall had now lowered itself. It was...a bridge?
"Hey! The outside!"
"There are corpses outside too, let's loot em!"
"Hey, wait!" I couldn't even say another word as I was stampeded over by a few suikas, all clamouring to stake their claim on the loot of their dead friends. I personally don't care about the looting, and I was just about to dust myself off and walk awa-
F**k."Oh geez!"
"The undead!"
"I think I wet my pants!"
"Get back here you nitwits!" I roared. There was no time to waste. I scribbled a few places to be designated as a burrow and ordered everyone back in. More grumblings, but we got everyone safely in. What remained the problem was that those damned undead were going to do the same. I had to do something.
"Pull all the levers!"
Heliopolis dropped the mushroom he was about to put into a stockpile, "are you serious?"
"Pull them like you damned well meant it," I hissed, slamming one onto the right with a single thrust. A squelch. All the suikas who heard it immediately looked outside.
Did I just?The undead were gone. Appeared in their place was the sickening blood, now smashed to paste under the bridge. Ah. I know what to do now.
"Read the notes," I finally said, "we're going to pull the ones at the entrance. All of them wretched corpses can have a little taste of suikan atom physics."
I enlisted the help of two other suikas to smash the levers left and right. Tempt them with an unguarded entrance, then smash them right out! We did this for quite awhile till most of the zombies outside the entrance were either gone or crushed. As I would later find out, this would be a good idea.
On an unrelated side note, one of our dead diagnosticians had risen and started haunting the fort. He was put to rest after being memorialised.
1st Slate, Year 108
Things were going swimmingly. And by that I meant that I was busy exploring the fort. It was tiring, going up and down. Everyone was doing their own designated tasks, so I had little to do, thankfully enough.
And then suddenly...
Migrants!The sign of them first came when I heard thumping of footsteps above me. Steady, lively footsteps, not like the shambling shuffles of those accursed undead.
"Anyone home?"
"No one's here, I say we just head back..."
"Oh man, this place is creepy..."
Whispers. I started to panic. How were they supposed to get in? In a rare gesture of both sympathy and annoyance, Syanas informed me that the bridges I had been encrusting with undead blood were part of the entrance way for the migrants to get in. Well, blow me. I told everyone to stop smashing the levers and hoped that the new suikas could get in safely. After all, most of the undead outside must've been gone thanks to our cleansing...
"Hey, look! An undead!'
"It's alone, beat it up! Smash it into fine pulp!"
Oh dear.
The suikas finally arrived, some of them bloodied, but mostly triumphant.
"Where's your leader?" I inquired, upon giving some of them jobs to do.
"She's outside," One of them stated bluntly, "got her leg smashed open."
"Ah," I opened my mouth in realisation, "and, none of you thought of helping?"
My words were met with snorts of laughter. I guess not.
You have more worries than getting caught in the rainEtur, that's the name of that poor suika. She started tantruming, shouting about how the world was so unfair to her. I know because I could hear her muffled cries above. Only Suika herself knows why Etur didn't freak out at the sight of the zombies. She must've been really pissed.
She came back eventually, but not before tantruming in the fort again. I wonder if I should have smashed her open when she came. Sounded like a really good idea then.
Bridges lifted, barriers up, then I realised we didn't have a hospital. Beds have been designated, but the room hadn't been carved out yet. I immediately ordered to miners to get to it. Furniture were safely installed in empty rooms incase we hadn't had enough room for everyone. I shuddered in disdain at the cramped rooms. Sure, they had plenty of furniture, but they were meagre quarters. I had always been told that every suika should sleep in good, spacious rooms filled with awesome. I shall have to fix this issue soon.
Totally built for comfort.Thankfully, we had material for some traction benches, and spare cloth, crutches splints. Etur was put to bed in no time.
As for the military, I designated some of the suikas to join, although they had to do it without any sort of weapon. Seeing this, I told CaptainArchmage and the rest of the miners to get to digging into the cavern, in hopes that we would find something other than zinc. Some precious gems were uncovered, but nothing of use as of yet.
Disaster! Etur is growing thirsty! Before she was able to walk with her crutch to the barrels, but now it seems like an impossible task for her. We need to build a well. Now.
I don't exactly know how a well works, but hey, we have cavern water, and so I ordered a miner to dig a path straight above the cavern floor and installed a well. Now we have an unlimited supply of water. Hopefully.
Definitely Suika-falling-into-the-water-proof.
1st Slate
As the new month approached, something else did.
Hippie vans!Will they make it? Will we finally have some wood to use?
Lolnup.Then there's the problem of whether I should risk the entire military for wood and these hippies. I decided to wait, despite seeing Syana's fingers itching to grab that hammer. I swear she's making me nervous.
The Parsees didn't make it. Guess I'll have to wait.
Meanwhile....
Hoho. Ohohoho.
Whoever sent them must be a sadist.I've lifted the bridges for them to arrive. Hopefully they won't get mobbed by the undead before then.
They're here!SLAM THE LEVERS! LET THE BRIDGES BE DYED IN THEIR BLOOD!
Hoho. Hohohoho.Yuuka would've been pleased.
In retrospect, smashing them open with the stone fall traps would've allowed us to loot them, but there's always next time.
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