The first pan-ludic assembly barring Universe Testament, Lament Epoch, and card games left everyone satisfied with its accomplishments and hopeful for achievements yet greater in the future. First, it voted that the non-attending games “don't count,” which enabled it to simplify its own name. Second, it resolved never to stop seeking methods to break through the ceiling, no matter how zany. Third, in order to prevent any future floor-related incidents, since everyone had cooled off and realized aggravating the Gacha Core again might be unwise, all further gatherings of more than one hundred characters or one dreadnaught must take place inside member games rather than in Opuwa.

That included hostile gatherings, which henceforth would not be left to chance and the reports of shifty spies. The assembly established a governing body to establish rules, schedules, and prizes for competitions across the game block. Its initial plans included tennis and bowling tournaments, and a competition to assault Freegate. Gain a point for every ten minutes you occupied the Eclipse museum, decided a panel of non-Eclipse officers, and their recommendation seemed good to the general public. “I want to try first!” Orston Cuy said, and many said the same.

The last subject of deliberation concerned the establishment in every game of facilities to accommodate trade and welcome visitors. The idea won universal approval, but implementation of the idea required discussion, research, and aesthetic disputes. Experts on Furious Galaxy ship classes such as Lucco Deratti and Sindze U. Radalo testified as to how big the doors needed to be to pass Lepantos (“Just so big, you won't even believe it” Lucco explained), and engineers such as Evan Wheelwich were consulted on what sort of buildings might be fit with retractable roofs when the assembly decided normal doors of that size looked dumb. Luau Lua asked for a moment of the assembly's time and used it to deliver a speech about the need for a facility in every participating realm suited for indoor community events, including removable seating, reasonable acoustics, and windows that could have colored blinds placed over them. A line of officers and slayers waited to support her, but the motion was taken up and passed before they could speak. The assembly never stinted when it came to spending Eten's time, or that of the other foremen.

As simple as it was for the assembly to establish standards and mandate compliance, individual games pointed to the difficulty of implementing them for one reason or another. “You say the gift shop must be so close to the area of the spawn, and the auditorium so close, but in our home you will be in the toilet,” Jacques said in a blistering speech which Lasva identified as a cry of defiance that let those high-handed assembly members know where they deserved to end up.

“Lasva. He means the Vanilla Stage spawn point is in a bathroom,” True Beryllia told her.

“Issuing corrections when new facts come to light make the paper look undependable, which is why we don't do it,” Lasva said in response to the controversy.

Wruden Calx approved. “Very sound, you jackal,” he said. “You hyena, you vulture, you remora stuck to the flank of worthwhile society.”

“I know, I know. I hate doing the society page too.”

The go-getters of Always Leveling Titan offered a solution derived from their own experiences. “Listen up, D'Artagnan's more talented brother,” Tasket said. “A tunnel under the bathroom. Follow? To the trade port. Think of it. Trolleys in those tunnels later. You can get all around your game at your leisure, pick up your packages, see your cousin off at the airport, all of it in maximum convenience. Are you thinking big yet? We have regular trains running all over Opuwa too in the future I'm seeing. Passenger, mail, and freight. Even pigeons will be obsolete soon, at least for intra-block commerce. Calling it a block is OK, right? We don't resent the Gacha Core enough to make up our own term, I figure.”

The assembly held a quick vote on that issue and determined the body politic did not sufficiently resent the Gacha Core, and in fact found the whole banishment thing kind of funny. Not “ha ha” funny, but maybe “heh” level. Following that, it passed a resolution praising Tasket for his bold vision of an interconnected, lazy economy, and then voted to leave matters there so as to avoid missing the second episode of Dungeon Express 2. “The premiere of this new season wasn't up to snuff. I'll say that before anyone. I'm not in such a hurry that I won't watch another episode, when season one put it together like it did,” opined Legendary mayor Judge Feeley, representing Dust and Highway but speaking for a much larger constituency of mildly disappointed fans.

The great western forest of Perandra Regna, the sylvan pride of Commandment of Hero! Its leafy lords looked on Freegate, and if the officers there ever looked back at it, they felt a sense of wonder, in that they wondered why the artists bothered putting it in. None of the story chapters took place inside it, no modes, nothing.

“Timber!” A tree fell, sliced by a Rare's scimitar, which might have been impressive had the feller not stopped at a single tree. A halberd-wielding two-star spun and sent a ring of trees to the sympathetic earth while ten thousand shards carved through trunks at the command of Hilliarde Feablas. Darren (Construction) of Vanilla Stage worked much slower but much handsomer, and who could say which mattered more? The clearing went well and the tunneling went better, as related by BigGuy30 when head popped out of the newly dug ground near Eten, who grabbed a falling tree to prevent it from bonking the helpful Always Leveler's precious head.

Even more precious heads arrived attached to the bodies of Holy Legend Army's Surt, Cantrell Uwendis of Slay Every Dragon, C/D's pride DelveR, Chaos Cuisine's favorite mad scientist Dr. Golovkin, and more thought-capable individuals. “Welcome to our future metropolis,” Eten told them, his arms wide and welcoming. “We hid some storage sheds for furniture in here before, but everybody's going bigger these days. You are too, I bet. Got an experiment for us? A new machine or device?”

“A whole suite of experiments, sure. That's exactly right,” Cantrell said. “Our hope is that you can find room in this enormous financial, military, and cultural hub you're creating for a Pigeon Research Center. We have a letter to that effect.”

Eten read the proffered epistle. “Dear Eten, Minister of Construction. Having met with the Gacha Core, which spoke of the pigeons upon which we rely to carry goods and letters between games for the time being, though recent technologies have opened tantalizing possibilities in that area, in a manner that cannot help but raise suspicions, the bearers of this letter wish to conduct their own investigation as to the nature and purpose of said pigeons in parallel with whatever actions the Gacha Core may take. That being their goal, they approached me, Quircy Rau, acknowledged leader of the coalition of games including but not limited to Commandment of Hero and Holy Legend Army, concerning the creation of an institute where they may pursue their program of capturing, interrogating, and studying at least one but, it is to be preferred, more than one pigeon. Believing this proposal to have potential as far as producing useful research, I do authorize and put it in your discretion to construct the requested facilities in the Perandran forest. Should you do so, please discourage them from capturing pigeons within Commandment of Hero itself, as doing so might affect delivery services. Encourage them to conduct such operations in Divine Providence instead. Love, Quircy.”

“Some people write how they talk, and some . . . Well, she did turn the last two letters of her name into a heart. That checks out.” Eten stuffed the later behind his belt. “I think we can oblige you pretty soon, since we're making good progress.” He saw no need to elaborate on that, as the loggers had already moved on after shortening every tree around them. Stump-clearers came in, armed with shovels and dynamite imported from Gold and Dynamite by nervous ice cream truck drivers. “Pigeons. What's the plan for these pigeons?”

“We have not the plan so much as the ideas for the plans,” Dr. Golovkin said. “There is the cage baited with the food, the food laced with the drugs, the manual net, the invisible net, the arrow with the plunger on the end. So many ideas, none good, but you exhaust the bad ones to expose the good ones.”

“Exactly.” Cantrell's voice and face both said he was a dependable gentleman of a slightly more advanced age than the main cast, but his body language yelled giddiness. “That's just it, and I can't wait to get started. I will wait, of course, but not long, I hope. The beginning of development is the most thrilling, when you fail over and over but nothing seems like a failure. You know you'll get somewhere. Ah, seeing that flock of pigeons tests my patience.”

“A flock of pigeons, you say. I wasn't expecting any deliveries.” Eten turned around. “Huh. Did someone order an entire game?”

As plausible an explanation as any, for the air seemed more solid than the ground where the pigeons flew in a dense and massive body, a true ultraflock. Even a Universe Testament vessel might have feared the effects if that mess flew into its engines, not to mention the harmful publicity if anyone saw it. Before long, calls for government regulations on dreadnaughts in the atmosphere would receive attention, forcing a program of orbital bombardments to remind people what really mattered.

All the workers except the ones underground halted mid-step or mid-swing to stare in awe at that sun-blocking pigeon party. They asked one another who was ordering what and where to get enough junk to trade for that much stuff. You could only shave any given buman so often, at least till the project to breed superior bumans yielded results.

“Nobody up here's going to admit it, because what makes the most sense with what we know right now is that it was one of the tunnelers,” Ipons Ulsrada said, his arm starting to quiver from holding his ruler mid-swing to keep up with the latest fashion. “Because, look, those are explosives they're flying in, right? And those are too big to use safely on tree stumps, and I tested that earlier myself, that's how I know, but hey! That pigeon dropped one. Pretty clumsy. They usually do a better job than that.”

Once is a mistake, but fifty times might be something than a mistake. Pigeon after pigeon let loose its load, and most surprising to the watchers who stayed put, such as Ipons Ulsrada, was that said loads were primed to detonate. Bombs exposed the contents of storehouses to the sky and to the talons of pigeons that swooped down and made off with them, scattered the people below, and vaporized tree stumps, which proved every rainstorm has its rainbow. The pigeon assault shocked all, not so much by its effectiveness but by existing.

Officers and guest workers ran for the tunnel which had absolutely not been expanded wide enough to accommodate more than one escapee at a time. At the entrance, Skaya began knocking back Knights and Hunters with her psychically enhanced fists. “Let Master Eten through! The rest of you aren't worth anything!”

“Well, I'm sure some would say it's Eten who isn't worth anything right now because he's a melee fighter, although that seems small-minded to me, since he's useful for all kinds of non-pigeon-related work. Barbed Arrow!” Sindze U. Radalo, baffled in her attempt to flee, feigned nonchalance as she began the counterattack.

Warpers, Harassers, and ranged characters of every class, as well as those with no class at all, saw the ferocity of that mere Rare and realized they could never bear the shame of not killing way more pigeons than she did. They skidded to a halt, raised their various weapons, and darkened the skies with their shafts, figuratively. The Warpers put on more of a light show, so much so that tourists from Endless Disco would have felt at home. “Why did we bother coming here if it's like we never went on vacation? Forget this. Dust and Highway sounds way more exotic.” Something like that, perhaps.

Pigeons shimmered and disappeared, and none could confirm whether that was their death animation or a special ability. Certainly not the melees, who all took advantage of the dark tunnel's shining kindness. All of them? Almost all. Eten refused to leave his underlings behind, however much Skaya pleaded, and a request only he could fulfill came to Cantrell Uwendis. “Please throw me up there. I want to catch a pigeon.”

Eten did not question that slayer's sincere desire to expand the limits of knowledge via unconventional methods unlikely to succeed. He hoisted Cantrell and hurled him upward. The elismith flailed his arms, missed every pigeon in the vicinity, and fell to earth, defeated but far from daunted. “Again, if you don't mind.”

The ground-bound anti-air force thinned the cloud of pigeons, though some swore more arrived even as they fought. “Leave off from swearing,” Acolyte begged, but neither his rarity nor his combat ability commanded respect. Not at range, anyway. He had one little holy plinky thing on his S2. Nobody would have blamed him for running away, but they did mock him because he stayed, in accordance with the grand Commandment of Hero tradition of preferring strength to virtue.

Whether the courage and skill of the defenders came to anything or not, they were unable to tell, because the pigeons vanished without either claiming victory or admitting defeat. They left no sign of their intentions, no hostages to interrogate despite Cantrell's repeated attempts, but only looted sheds and dozens of craters.

Eten crossed his arms, thereby immediately restoring confidence. “Huh. Weird. Well, back to work. Skaya, find Quircy Rau or Metatron and tell them about this.”