They Halloweened up that area and moved to the tower which held the bell that rang to signal an emergency Monster Elimination, a special kind of emergency that happened every day so long as players needed elemental junk for skill leveling and a little extra fodder beyond the Sparring Partners.

“Not made with comfort in mind, was it?”

“Oh, but aren't pirates or whatever used to not having much room?”

“Stan the bandit doctor I be, Sindze, not Stan the pirate doctor.”

“Green Archer! Aren't you the lookout?”

“Tramda said something along the lines of, 'I'll handle it. Towers are too tall.' Then she shoved me upstairs, and I can see how some people would be offended, but not me, because her deep feelings reached me, maybe?”

“I know who that has to be. I'll allow it, since I see you Rares have a bunch of problems. I guess her feelings reached me too. Now reach up and hang some bats from that bell. Not too vampirically.”

The Rares decided to let Clyse handle the incomprehensible demands of an important customer, judging it to be the sort of thing shop owners presumably did all the time, while they put jack-o'-lanterns on the window sills and strewed fake ivy all around.

“Yeah, that looks good, guys. I wouldn't be terrible as a vampire, but we all know who's choice number one for that. All righty! That's the dailies done, so now it's the Trials room.”

“My understanding is that this is supposed to be the lord of the castle's office,” Reginald said when they reached their destination.

“Who's the castle lord?” Tramda Olex asked.

“Cadmos,” everybody except her and Burmin Trivvis said. Quircy Rau continued speaking. “You posted a lookout, right? I don't care who.”

“Yeah. Burmin said he didn't want to scuff up the floor with his metal shoes. He called them something else, but I didn't care.”

“Sabatons?”

“Bless you.”

“His concern speaks well of him, but is quite unnecessary. The only portion of this room visible to the players is this.” Hyune Giling walked forward and waved his hand over a mahogany desk with six letters each overlapping the one before representing the six Trials. “Do those boxes have a feather quill and an inkwell filled with blood, perhaps?” No, but they they had a pen with tiny bat wings on the cap.

After that, the Sally room, background for the menu that mattered most. A round table nearly two Burmins in diameter with a map embedded in it, which made less sense when Part 2 arrived and players could switch the map between two continents, dominated the space. The main map included the Story and Suppression modes, while a letter of challenge in the lower right and a gate with an animated portcullis ever rising and crashing down opened up the PvP and Event sections respectively.

“Do we put the cauldron in here, boss?”

“No, that goes in the Armory. It would be overshadowed by the table in here. Grab these scary tree cutouts and keep calling me boss. You set another lookout, right?”

“Yeah, Hyune doesn't want to look at territory he isn't ready to conquer.”

“He or she must not go out much then.”

The Rares nodded as decisively as they could and got to work. Plushies of paired black and white cats wearing pointy hats nestled under brown trees with gnarled trunks and grasping branches. A hat stand crowned at all times by a pointy witch hat much larger than any cat head could accommodate. Posters on which words were written saying outrageous things like, “You Don't Have to Be SPOOKY to Work Here . . . But It Helps!” All those and more enlivened the stuffy Sally chamber, and when the Rares finished, they realized how bare and sterile it had looked before.

“I never realized how bare and sterile this place looked before,” said Clyse.

“Have you been in here before?”

“Well, no, I have to say I haven't, now that you mention it, Stan.”

Quircy Rau drummed her fingers on the table. “I have, and I always hated how bare and sterile it looked. They should thank me for this, except that it's a secret. Concert Hall next.”

The auditorium where players could listen to their favorite tracks or set them to play over the main menu, but never did, received its proper adornment without any difficulty. Of course a banner reading “Happy Halloween” went over the stage. Naturally strings of orange lights were hung above and down the sides to frame the musicians when they returned. Not a word needed to be said about any of that. Quircy Rau looked over the results and approved.

“Good work guys! One stop left, and it's the Armory! Don't cheer. Sneaky sneaky, remember?”

The Rares remembered and kept their mouths shut, but fist pumps, dance-like wiggles, and high-fives broke out all over. Led by Quircy, they all but pranced through the hallways toward the Armory.

“Cauldron in the center! Did I even have to say that? Good. Stand back while I fill it up. ENZ . . . ahem. Enzet Lash.” Quircy Rau whispered her psychic water into the cauldron and poured some green food coloring after. She plopped a long spoon in and addressed the Rares while she stirred the contents to ensure the coloring spread throughout. “I feel witchy already. Now hurry up and decorate. All the doors seem to be unlocked for some reason. How sloppy of me.” She and Hyune Giling seemed on the verge of having another episode, but Ulrik clapped his hand over his elemental comrade's mouth and dragged him over to the genius room.

An indoor preserve housed the recruited genii. A pond, a grove, a sandpit, and a rock garden accommodated spirits of varied ecologies in theory. Where the one that was a bunch of pipes with eyes on it belonged was unclear, for which reason it sat out on the grass, looking confused.

“I'm not sure which ones are Rare,” Burmin said.

“Thf wms nmmd rfth.” Ulrik altered his hold and pointed Hyune Giling at Burmin. “The ones named 'Reti,'” the Strategist repeated.

The genii paused their cavorting or gamboling or whatever it was they did in there and watched as the officers approached them, still and alert. Their passivity lasted till Tramda leapt for an orange penguin, shouting, “I'll figure out what you do later!” The penguin jumped over her and ran away, squawking.

That squawking was an alarm that awakened the other genii to their peril. Almost equipped by Rares? Unthinkable! They hooted and hollered, scattered and scampered, and generally did not mind their manners in the least. Courtesy no longer appealed to the Rares either, who chased genii around the preserve, jumping and diving, but all to no purpose. Some of them may have improved their Speed stat by their recent exertions, but that applied to attack speed alone.

“This calls for strategy, or at least tactics,” Hyune Giling said. “Form a cordon and drive them against the wall.” The Rares joined hands and advanced slowly toward the side of the preserve.

“I don't think we need to join hands for real,” Dennet said.

“If we don't, how can I squeeze yours until it breaks?” Ulrik asked.

“Yeah, I've been wanting to talk to you about that for some time now.”

“Not now! We almost have them!” Most of the genii were pressing themselves up against the wall, trembling in fear of a dreadful future spent attached to a worthless officer. Desperation inspired them with a strategy formulated to counter Hyune's: they ran out the door.

“Now we're in for it,” Stan said.

“After them!” Burmin led the charge into the main Armory in the headlong Reaper style.

“What's all that noise? Sneaky, remember? Eek!” A genius parade ran over Quircy Rau while she was boiling up some toil and trouble, and a Rare parade followed when she was getting back up. The two processions succeeded in disordering the logs placed under the cauldron and applied to the purpose of heating its contents.

“No! Wait! Stop! Forget the genii!” The Rares halted their pursuit and looked around, aghast as flames rose around the room.

“Hyune, strategize!”

“I'm sorry, Tramda. All my fire-relevant plans involve starting them. Putting them out . . .” he closed his book and pushed up his glasses, “. . . is something I've never learned how to do.”

“Branch out in your studies!”

“Ahhh! Rares! Line up!” They presented themselves in obedience to Quircy's command. Finally the Ultra Rare was taking over. She looked them up and down, satisfied herself, and ran up the line slapping all of them.

“Ow!”

“Hey!”

“Again!”

“Who said that?”

She reached the end, switched hands, and made a return trip. “OK! Quircy's all charged up and ready to go! RAINS OF ENZEEEEEET!” She placed both hands around her lens and raised it skyward with her head up. A peal of thunder came, and then the rains.

“Three out of five.”

“What was that? I put out the fires, didn't I? Got something to say?”

“Never mind that. We're ankle-deep in water, all the equipment and everything's drenched, and it's pooooosssible somebody noticed.” Just as Sindze speculated, lounge doors were slamming throughout the keep and voices were being raised.

“Oh, ah, I, uh oh.” Quircy Rau closed her eyes and smashed her fingers against her temples in the most aggressive thought-stimulating fashion she could devise. “Quircy, think! Oh, I know Ahem. WHAT A DISASTER! THE GENII RIOTED! THEY'RE RILED UP BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN EQUIPPED FOR SO LONG! I'D BETTER FIND HELP! OH GOOD I FOUND SOME RARES TO HELP! There, that should do it.”

“Do what? Have you lost your mind or something? Do you need to lie down? Forever?”

The voices of upset officers came closer. “I knew those genii should have been assigned faster! To me! What are the players doing?”

“Excessive recruiting has caused another tragedy.”

“I don't know what's going on, but at least we can be sure Quircy Rau wasn't getting up to any zany schemes.”

The Rares alone saw Quircy's beaming, mile-wide smile, which she expelled from her face as she met the incoming officers and apprised them of the circumstances. “I didn't do anything wrong,” she told them.

“Forget that. We have to get back these genii, whose escape is in no way Quircy's fault,” Tiboleus the Experimenter proclaimed, and the assembled URs and SRs agreed. They spread out to search Freegate, and Rs pretended to help them.

“Jack-o'-lanterns? Creepy trees? The genii must have set these up to hide! Tear them all down!” So focused on their mission were those diligent officers that they failed to notice the tears of frustrated redecorators. Will the day ever come when we finally understand one another?