Marzzzz poked his head in the kitchen door as carefully as he could.

  "Uhhh, I have something for you..."

  Lady Evelyne, who had been standing at the stove for what felt like 24 hours trying to make incredible amounts of cake and pizza, turned around.

  "What is it?"

  "Well, we've recruited a few more people... here are the updated membership lists..."

  Marzzzz managed to pull his head back just in time before the plate smashed against the door panel and shattered into a thousand shards. Lene sighed, took the updated membership lists from Marzzzz and brought them to Evelyne by the stove.

  "434 people now!" Evelyne complained, "please tell me how we're going to feed them all! Marzzzz did go shopping. But nothing fits in this tiny sports car. I've sent Kodaxx and Dylan, our two gay strippers, er, sorry, lorry drivers, out in their trucks. I need lots of food! And a lot more help! I'm missing my Impel in the kitchen. She could chop kilos of minced meat in minutes. And her mince with bread was always wonderful!"

  "I'll help you," said Lene consolingly, "I'm really sorry, but there are more and more every day at the moment. GW starts tomorrow and we're being overrun by people wanting to join. In the meantime, we have to fill the bedrooms several times over and are putting up new beds everywhere. Where do you actually sleep? Do you even have a bedroom?"

  Lady Evelyne waved her hand. "I've set up a little bed upstairs in the library. I like to sleep between the books, I don't mind."

  "You can sleep in my bed too, Honey," Marzzzz purred charmingly like a cuddly thomcat from the doorway.

  The plate came flying so fast that Marzzzz couldn't avoid it this time.

  "Yesssss!" roared the Thunder brothers enthusiastically in the entrance hall.

  And "Dream on!" shouted Lady Evelyne after the fleeing Marzzzz. Then she quickly turned back to the stove before the pizza burnt.

  __________________________________________

  "The hospital called, Lippy," Devi said, "the casts can finally come off. Then you can get out of the wheelchair in time for GW and we won't always have to push you around the battlefield behind the combat team. That was damn annoying. I'll give you a quick ride down to town."

  Lipsyte was pleased. At the same time, he went through his personal blacklist in his head of which of his own brothers he would most like to burn. Anyone who had taken advantage of the fact that he had been sitting helplessly in a wheelchair with two broken arms, two broken legs and a broken nose over the past few weeks! Actually, all of them!

  Shortly afterwards, he was sitting in the hospital treatment room waiting for the doctor. However, he was more than familiar with the figure who entered the room dressed in a white coat.

  "Mink???" exclaimed Lipsyte in disbelief.

  "Dr. Mink, please," replied the man addressed in a friendly manner.

  "What are you doing here? I mean - why aren't you in the clan castle with us?"

  "I haven't been there for a while. You fools just didn't notice. Have you forgotten? I passed the crown to Thunder and then just didn't come back from getting a cigarette."

  "And when did you become a doctor?"

  "I've decided to make a career change," said Mink with dignity. "I've become a different person. All this fighting and all these wars and crimes - that can't be the meaning of life! I've decided that from now on I'm going to help people."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Bro, you might be away for a few weeks now. How do you expect to have completed a medical degree in that short time? I mean - do you have any qualifications at all?" asked Lipsyte suspiciously.

  "If it's qualifications that matter to you," Mink said offended, "then I might as well call Nurse Ivy to treat you. She has an education."

  "No!" cried Lipsyte in horror, "not Nurse Ivy! Let's not have her!"

  "Well, you see!" said Mink kindly and took an all-purpose slicer from the treatment table. "Now hold still. I'm going to remove all these casts."

  "Ouch!" roared Lipsyte, "You cut me, brother! I knew it, you have no qualifications at all!"

  "Now hold still, it's no wonder I miss cuts if you're fidgeting all the time! I'm just working here as a doctor until I get the coins together for the migration. Then I'll leave."

  Lipsyte felt like he was watching a live horror movie. "Brother, where do you want to go?"

  Mink looked dreamily into the distance. "I want to explore my true self, and then I will help others explore their true selves. There's so much bad karma I've accumulated here, in the city and on the GW map - I need to make up for it all. Everything will be different from now on. I feel the sound of peace deep in my inner center. I'm going to the East Indies as a guru."

  "Bro, you're completely stoned. I can even smell it! What have you been smoking? Ouch! Damn! You cut me again!"

  "I can give you a few more cuts in a minute," said Mink coldly. Startled, he then interrupted himself and put his hand on Lipsyte's shoulder in a gesture of pardon. "Oh brother, please forgive me. I'm still far too much in my old role. You see how much the Force has corrupted me. It will take many hours of meditation and inner contemplation before I can free myself from it."

  Lipsyte was tempted to pinch himself so that this nightmare would finally end. Unfortunately, however, he had the uneasy feeling that he was in the middle of reality.

  "Brother, that herb you smoked must have been bad," he tried again. "Cut the nonsense and come back to us."

  Mink shook his head regretfully. "I'm sorry, brother. One day you too will come to true knowledge, and then you will be very welcome in my ashram."

  He put the slicer aside. "You will still need the wheelchair for a while because you have to rebuild your muscles. I'll put you down for a few hours of physiotherapy with Nurse Ivy. She'll get you back on your feet."

  "Not Nurse Ivy!" wailed Lipsyte, "damn it, please not Nurse Ivy!"

  "Well, at least she has an education," Dr. Mink said smugly and handed Lipsyte the prescription. "By the way, brother: would you like my room and my weapons? I don't need all that anymore. It's worldly trinkets."

  Lipsyte was immediately electrified. A king's bedroom and weapons? That sounded great! "I'd love to, brother!" he said delightedly and immediately forgave Mink for any cuts.

  "Then take it," Mink said dreamily, "I'll just take the prayer drum and my singing bowl with me. And then I'll look for the seventh line."

  "Let me know when you've found it," grinned Lipsyte, even though he had no idea what his former king was talking about. But it didn't matter: this stoned self-proclaimed doctor had just given him a great gift that he wouldn't say no to! Delighted, he let Devi drive him back to the clan castle.

  _______________________________________

  The small figure who entered the kitchen of the clan castle wearing a kitchen apron over her combat gear was as familiar to Lady Evelyne as Mink had been to Lipsyte.

  "Impel?!" the Lady exclaimed in disbelief and dropped her wooden spoon.

  "Yes, that's my name," Impel laughed, pleased that the surprise had worked.

  "What are you doing here? What's happened?" The lady was still staring at her friend from the old days as if she had seen a ghost. The metal of the new RxG badge on Impel's chest gleamed freshly polished.

  "Well, Ghost kicked Genny out of leadership in the middle of the night and demoted her from R4 to R3. As a result, Genny is out... Vind helped her and secretly got her across the border that very night. And now we're all coming!"

  "Ghost... yeah, why am I not surprised?"

  Impel snorted angrily: "He told us every day how poorly we were doing. That he's the only one who can do anything here. That we're all nothing without him. That we have to be grateful that we have him. Genny and you, you never said things like that to us."

  Impel drew her sword. "And now I'm making mincemeat! Where to start?"

  __________________________________________

  Lipsyte lay in the huge four-poster bed in the bedroom of the former King Mink and could hardly believe his luck. The bedroom was incredibly large, luxuriously furnished and everything was made of gold. He felt like he was in seventh heaven. At last! At last, fate had been kind and rewarded him for all the terrible things he had to endure in GW1.

  He was just about to take a little nap when he was woken up by a crash outside the door and the door was ripped open. Several Thunder brothers, laden with huge packages, came marching in.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" shouted Lipsyte indignantly, "This is my room now! Get the fuck out of here! But now!"

  "Sorry mate," apologized Thunder Boo, who had stepped into the room behind the others, "but we need the space. The room here is far too big for one person alone, and the influx of new members into our town is not stopping. We are now building eight additional bunk beds here."

  There was already hammering and screwing in the background.

  "You bastards!" howled Lipsyte in despair, "I've finally had one lucky break in my life, and you're ruining it again!"

  "Like I said, sorry... oh, and we'll put some bedmates in the four-poster bed too, okay? Because there's still room there too."

  "Wait!" protested Lipsyte, "Who else is going to be in my bed?"

  "Since we need the rooms downstairs for the dining hall extension, the people from the previous dormitories will have to move up here... we were thinking of Horny and Cock."

  "I don't want to sleep in a bed with Horny and Cock!" roared Lipsyte desperately, "Have you gone mad? If you're going to put someone in my bed, how about Genny? At least she's pretty and sexy!"

  "I'll see what I can do, brother," Boo said reassuringly, "we actually have gender segregation, but..."

  "But you're all gay anyway!" roared the donkey from the stable.

  Boo rolled his eyes and left the room.

  __________________________________________

  Lipsyte had completed his first physiotherapy appointment with Nurse Ivy, who, as expected, had bullied him half to death, and returned to his room late at night. In his beautiful golden bedroom, in the eight newly constructed bunk beds, sixteen Thunder brothers were snoring and farting. It sucked.

  Slowly, Lipsyte slid into the big four-poster bed and immediately felt a warm body under the covers.

  Oh my! Had Boo kept his promise and given him Genny as his new bedmate?

  Lipsyte carefully felt for the person next to him. Strange. It didn't feel like Genny somehow... what was that in his hand?

  He jumped in horror, switched on the light and pulled the blanket aside.

  "Welcome, brother," I peg Liypsyte grinned at him, "I'm your new bedmate!"