Chapter 684

In the end, the task was finished not with a bang, but with a whimper. Kat ran around through a few more domes and even managed to convince one whole panic room worth of people to freedom. It really helped her get through the other five that rejected the offer of safety. Kress and Gareth didn’t really do anything interesting either. Digging through the ash yielded nothing of note, or at least nothing of note Kat heard about.

There was very little warning for the rain. One moment the black cloud was rumbling above her head like usual then the next it was dumping water by the bucket loads. Kat could hardly comprehend how the cloud had managed to stay afloat as the thick streams of water dumped themselves into the compound extinguishing the strongest fires and washing away much of the ash. Plenty still clung to the building and it would by a lie to say things were clean, but nothing was on fire and there was a clear path through the streets at the very least.

Once the water had finished washing through the streets glowing circles appeared bellow everyone, or at least Kat assumed they did. She hadn’t seen Green or Nixilei at the time, but everyone appeared once again in front of the fire chief Thyme.

“Good job rookies, you managed to save the town. Not the best performance, but I’ll admit I’m proud of ya. Your final tally for the round is 73 out of 100,” Fire Chief pulled a large sign from behind his back that really shouldn’t have fit there at all considering it was twice as tall and thrice as wide as the Chief. It had the numbers carved into it with what looked like amateur skill but the wonderfully carved, ‘final score’ at the top left the quality of the overall product up to question.

“Can you explain why that was our final score?” asked Nixilei, “I do not wish to dispute it but I am very interested in the scoring system,”

Fire Chief Thyme nodded, “Of course. Not every team has finished so far and we have time. To provide the most basic overview, there was a certain amount of damage that was unavoidable. Nothing you could do about it at all. There is a second set of damage that, while not completely unavoidable, may be rendered unavoidable depending on how and in which order you dealt with things. It was deemed unfair to punish you when the whole town was open to you from the start. You could have gone to any of the three areas and found a slightly different challenge there depending on how long it took you to arrive and in what order you dealt with them.

“For example, the street you, Gareth, and Kat went to first, if left till last, would have been the entire neighbourhood instead, requiring you to work with the water mages to find wells, the earth mages to make new ones, and the volunteers to help rescue people trapped by the blaze. Instead you dealt with it first, negating these issues.

.....

“If you’d sent more people to the Industrial area at first it would have been a gauntlet of burnt and unburnt buildings with the goal of getting to the bubbles and getting everyone out back through the maze safely. As it stood though you went there last and used the water mages and the river well to flood it and take out the fire.”

Fire Chief took in a big breath before hiding the oversized sign behind his back and pulling out another one. He started marking the first line off. “So, the first major point loss was letting Gloves destroy that fire crystal,” everyone glanced over to see Green passed on the nearby grass, “Oh... right. Um dropping character for a moment. Would you rather I remove her fatigue and restore her mana or let her sleep before doing that?”

Gareth wanted to answer but held his tongue and looked over to Nixilei for advice, “Well Gareth this is your choice. Letting her sleep is probably better for her mind, but healing her up would let her hear this debrief. While I don’t doubt Thymes prowess you can’t really restore the mind, only push the effects back to deal with later. I think it’s best to let her rest personally as your team healer, but I won’t stop you from choosing the other option,”

Gareth waved Nixilei off and said, “No you’re right. I bet if she was awake enough to answer she’d chose the option that gave her more sleep, plus this is more for your benefit then the teams. While it’s a good way to kill time, I don’t see it as an integral debriefing. It might be nice for us when we discuss this all after the tournament, but by then it’ll be mostly academic,”

Seeing everyone accept that answer Thyme dropped back into character as the Fire Chief, “Back to the fire crystal. That cost your team a full ten points. While the village in the forest was always going to be destroyed, the crystal itself is quite valuable and if you handed it over to the residence would have been used for repair cost. That’s not to mention that it drastically increased the difficulty of getting everyone out, but Kat managed to negate what was supposed to be a way of splitting the group by just... supporting the tree a bit. Good move in truth.

“The next biggest point loss, from your remaining 17, was five points for missing a well hidden panic room with no bubble built into the floor. It flooded when the rain started ‘killing’ that Thyme. Additionally, you lost another three points for just flooding the area. It was great, and definitely the best choice at that point, but the flood water damage still comes to three points lost. Now the last nine...” Fire Chief made a ‘so-so’ gesture, “is mainly a cumulation of a number of small mistakes each worth one, or less then one point that added together.

“For example, during the first fire that was fought, the street, minor damage was done to nearby houses that while you did put out, weren’t gentle with at all. The collapse of two additional houses also cost you a point each. Another good idea, that might have saved you more points than it cost, which is why they were only worth one point each. All of those little issues on the street add up to six points lost there.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“The final three were from accidents that happened out of your vision. If you were around and ignored them a bigger point cost would have been incurred. The Thymes you left to just exit the city had issues, trips, falls, debris, and a brawl. None of these were addressed, but you didn’t exactly leave anyone capable of handling them either and as such you weren’t punished too harshly for them. Just some minor points.”

Nixilei frowns at that. “Would sending Buff with them have helped? I don’t regret the decision to have him looking after Green, but I’d like to know,”

“Not really,” said Thyme dropping the fire chief outfit for a moment, “while in practice the version of myself you designated as Buff had the strength to deal with these issues, ‘he’ would never act without orders until things reached a certain point, which would still have cost you points because there was a fight you guys weren’t around to stop. Buff is the big tough guy, the strong silent type. If you had sent Buff and a minion ordering them to keep an eye on things that would have worked though, the mages and volunteers were... ‘higher functioning’ I suppose is the word,”

Nixilei looked like she’d swallowed a lemon after hearing that explanation, clearly unhappy with the idea that the Thymes were so stupid as to not just deal with their problems as a group. This distaste was only compounded by the fact she knew real were actually that stupid, or worse, wilfully ignorant with the potential to make things even worse. “I have no other questions,” grumbled Nixilei.

“Wonderful,” said Thyme with an overly large smile, not bother to shift back into their Fire Chief persona. “See you soon for the next round,”

Suddenly the ground lit up once again and everyone disappeared for a moment before Kat blinked and found herself in an empty room. Thyme appeared in front of her a moment later, “A shame with your eyes I can’t really play this whole thing up. Anyway, I guess you’ll just have to wait here a bit for the round to start in earnest. It’s simple in concept, but delightfully complex in execution.

“You’ll have a series of task to complete with another team. You need to work together to get to the end of them, while following the rules as listed on the board you’ll be set down next to. The twist... well the twist is that you won’t be alone. Every single person involved with have a double working to sabotage everyone.

“Between each task you can vote out two ‘people’ as doubles. The rounds will continue until 5 people are left or all the doubles are gone. However... a slight twist. The team that has the most players left will receive... something special based on how many more people from your team have survived. Good luck.”