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| “Aieeeeeeeeee!”
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| The driver disappeared head-first out of the cabin. As his boots disappeared, Boone pulled himself into the cockpit, honked the foghorn and hauled the wheel hard right. The great rig began to slowly bear around towards the Operations HQ, slewing sand out over the upturned COO gunship as the centripetal forces kicked in.
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| A dirt-bike dropped in through the curtain of sand, over the gunship’s lazily spinning wheels, and landed on its rear wheel by the cabin. Algernon whooped. “Let’s blow this joint, Boonester.”
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| Boone snarled into his wristcom, “We’re not home yet, Algy”.
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| Algernon gunned the Kawasaki.
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| The KPI explosives were primed. The detonation timer on the dash ticked down: ''5:30 and counting.''
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| Boone wrestled with the wheel. The rig groaned and screamed under the colossal Gs as it re-vectored to the north. ''Come on, you brute, come on ...''. The rig leveled up. The Gs eased off. Five clicks yonder, Boone could see operations outpost in the crosshairs, shimmering in the hot desert air. ''Your chickens are coming home to roost, my operational friends.'' He stomped on the metal. The monstrous diesel turbines screamed. The rig thundered forward.
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| The timer ticked past 5:00.
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| ''NOT … WHILE … I … BREATHE'' — A bloodied fist grabbed the running board. Kurzweil hung on for his life, for his cause, for his ''honour''. At first, it was all he could do, just to keep his hold and stop himself being swept beneath the monstrous wheels as they pounded against the dirt, inches from his ear. He clenched his buttocks as the dirt roadway grated and pummeled him all over.
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| But slowly, he hauled himself back into the game. He got a second hold. He fist-jammed in the wheel-arch. He executed a switch-grip, squirrel-jumped onto the grille, dragged himself up onto the hood, heel-hooked and established a firm boot-hold on the chassis. He clambered up like a limpet He edged around the towards cabin door. ''NOT … WHILE … I … BREATHE.''
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| The timer ticked past 4:45.
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| The CB in the cabin pinged. Capcom sounded rattled. “Hey, Kurzweil do you read? We see your vector heading north. Please account for the deviation. What’s going on? Is everything in order?”
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| Boone picked up the receiver. “Ah, capcom all is in order. We are just seeing some interference — regular, totally routine stuff, you know, so — er — we are re-routing to approach from the north-west. Ten four, over.”
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| There was a pause before capcom clicked back in. “Heinrich, is that you?”
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| “Er, yeah, of course it is. ''Ja'', I mean. ''Ja'', hier ist Kurzweil.” Boone winced.
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| “But you seem to be heading straight ''at us''! This manoeuvre isn’t in the playbook! My [[line manager]] say this is a [[steerco]]-reportable [[operational risk event]] —”
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| “No, no, Capcom, it is all routine, totally normal. We do this sort of thing all the time. I cleared with Commander, um, Commander Scheisskopf. this morning.”
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| “Commander ''who''? Who is this? What’s going on?”
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| Boone re-winced. He clocked capcom’s caller ID on the monitor. “Hey, er, hey Maxine? Listen: the channel is getting a bit choppy, okay? We are struggling to maintain secure connection. But rest assured: everything in order. Repeat: everything in order. We got this. Tell Scheisskopf we’re under control. Going dark, over.”
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| “Heinrich? Heinrich?”
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| Boone clicked off the receiver. “That was getting boring,” he muttered.
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| The timer ticked past 4:30.
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| The rig roared. Kurzweil snagged a crimp on the aerial mount. He traversed along the running board, edging with his toes, keeping his weight balanced. He ducked his head beneath the overhang, below Boone’s sightline out of the window.
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| The timer ticked past 4:15.
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| Boone’s comlink crackled. “Heads up Boone: you got company.”
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| Georgie’s dirt-bike burst into view off a low ridge, exploding through scrubland and pulled wheelie.
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| Boone pummeled the dash “Yeah! Georgie! Where you been all my life!”
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| “Not me, Boone! On your cabin! Eyes right!”
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| Boone looked out but it was too late. With a single fluid motion Kurzweil vaulted up, leant through the window, baffed Boone across the jaw, and grabbed the wheel.
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| Boone spat a string of blood. The taste of copper filled his mouth.
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| Kurzweil came again, but this time Boone was braced for him. An elbow to the cheek knocked the operations commando back, cracking his head against the stanchion. Boone clamped him, but the Operations man kept swinging. He got Boone by the throat: ''chokehold''. He gripped like a vice. “''NOT … WHILE … I … BREATHE … BOONE''”
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| The rig veered and fishtailed as they struggled.
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| The timer ticked past 4:00.
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| As his air-flow constricted, Boone felt himself going light-headed. He scanned the windshield blearily. ''Where were the dirt-bikes?''. He tried to reach for the wristcom to call them, but Kurzweil’s reach was too long. Kurzweil baffed him again, and somehow hooked a boot on the latch. The door swung wide, with Kurzweil on it. He hauled Boone out by the throat.
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| Boone couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. There was no sign of George or Algy ''anywhere''. His muscles slackened. Huis peripheral vision blackened. Kurzweil doubled down on the clamp. Boone swung limply at him, but he found nothing but air: the big man’s reach was too great. The door swung back. Kurzweil booted Boone in the face. Boone lost grip on the wheel, Kurzweil pushed it back round.
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| The rig ground around back towards the western vector. Kurzweil lined up the Legal Settlement. The cross-hairs locked and flashed and beeped. On the cabin floor, Boone groaned. As at last he passed out his last thought was, ''where the hell are you?'' He slipped into unconsciousness with the hopeless image of Algy hearing his broken plea.
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| The counter ticked past 3:30. Kurzweil clocked it and realised there were precious seconds to lose now. If he was to get all the way to the Legal Final Settlement, and make it out intact before the payload blew things would have to be perfect. There was no more room for error. Even now, there was no way he would make it out of that forensic rat hole on foot. Kurzweil knew: this might be his Waterloo. ''I do this for the cause'', he thought. ''For all operations people, everywhere''.
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| A horn sounded behind. He caught a glimpse in his wing mirror: the remaining COO Gunship was roaring back into view. Suddenly there was a path out of this. He could escape! He waved at the gunship, urging them forward.
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| He threw the rig in a high gear and jammed a brick on the pedal. The motor screamed.
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| Boone moaned and shifted woozily. Kurzweil baffed him again, Boone collapsed.
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| Then, at 70mph, on a desert track heading straight into the jaws of destruction, Kurzweil had an brilliant idea. ''Yes. This is right. This we should do.''
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| “Cover me, George!” barked Captain Algernon Farquhar, B.S.C, D.S.O, Acting Deputy Captain of Eagle Squad, ripped hard on the Kawasaki’s throttle. The bike surged forward, ran fast up a narrow ramp in the sand and jetted across the trailer. He kicked out of the stirrups, let the bike go, and back-flipped onto the trailer. He shinned down the access ladder and slipped into back door of the trailer.
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| The Kawasaki flew executed Putting his head through the British Army blanket that hung down between the seats and the hold, an improvised shield at best, he reversed the Webley in his grip. The old Webley that had belonged to his father during the First War.
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| Coldly, he struck Kurzweil across the side of the head.
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| “Got him, Boonie – but are we too late?”
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| Boone looked at the countdown timer. 2:15. The sweep hand mocked him with its relentless spin.
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| “You know what we need to do,” he said.
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| Algie nodded.
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| The big rig accelerated.
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| Boone and Algie looked at each other.
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| “I’m not sure I will see Rugby again, old man.”
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| “And I’m not sure I will ever kiss my girl again … but I will be dam**d if those KPIs are going to wreck HQ.”
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| ==Thots==
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| Hello! it’s [[Kaylene Trangle]]! — New Zealand contrecta
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| Algy and George take out the gunships
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| The Battletruck carried on, blamming left and right. A crump in the prolixity resevoir, it collapsed to one knee and emptied itself all over the forward Reg relations team.
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| “they’re going to a baffled for weeks!”
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| A sprint burst to the right which took out a discombobulation stack. ''The defences weren't holding''.
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| The GC wailed: “I don’t understand! They’re not listening to our careful arguments! I don’t understand!”
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| Outer perimeter fails
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| You got to speak a language they understand.
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| ===The Farm===
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| {{Smallcaps|The oldest portal}} into, and out of, Lissingdown was the Moor’s Gate. It opened out onto a region beyond the city walls they called The Meadow and, beyond that, the dark forest of [[Bretton Woods|Bretton]].
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| {{indent|The Meadow was a wide flat, low-lying mud plain. It turned briskly to swamp whenever it rained, which wasn’t often, but often enough that the itinerants who for generations had maintained it had created narrow plank walkways around the miles of rows of cages that made up The Farm. These “boards” ran from the Gate all the way to the Woods, and along every row and aisle of The Farm where they raised and cultivated clients. Such a feature were they of the propagation and cultivation of client relationships that were the principle business of The Farm the itinerant travellers who walked them in the service of milk production were called the “on-boarders”.
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| Just now, a cross-eyed, black-toothed, puck-faced peasant limped along the boards with a pail of slops, tossing chicken bones left and right and ladling mouldy porridge to grasping beasts who slobbered through the slats.
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| A slight ginger lad stepped carefully along the board that ran from the Gate to the Farm until he caught the boarder’s attention and then stopped. The boarder stopped her round, too, eyeing him carefully. She held his stare for an a beat too long, weighing him up, as if undecided between amusement, irritation or malevolence. At length, she settled on amusement. She said, “Whatta fucka ''you'' wanna? Wanna-you some chicky, ah?”
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| She fished a chicken bone from her bucket and tossed it at the boys’s feet. He couldn’t tell if she was being serious until she roared at the joke.
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| Just as he began stammered out an oily yuck to move the vibe along, she ''stopped''. “Well, amigo, whatta you gotta?”
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| [[Ramsay Punchface]] held out his tote bag. “I just caught these.”
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| The onboarder snatched the bag and up-ended it, dumping a handful of a small, rabbit-like animals into the dust. Their legs were loosely bound and they wriggled and whimpered. She grunted, and turned each over carefully with her boot. “Littl’uns, innit?”
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| “They’re segregated cells. J ... J ... Jersey. I think.”
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| The onboarder grunted again. “Feeble.” She looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Quasi. Whatta do you makea these?”
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| A old hunch-back, naked but for a sacking tunic and a dirty loincloth, scurried out of the farm on all fours. Despite his apparent age, his eyes glittered, though he gripped a monocle in one. He moved nimbly with a nervous, muscular energy. He regarded the onboarder, and the boy, and squawked. “What is it? What is it? What is it? HEY?”
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| “Heh. Lil runty fellas.” The boarder poked the animals with his foot. “Any good?”
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| “Any good? Any good? It’s all good. Any good is all good is every good boy deserves football —” The old man snatched up the rabbity thing, sniffed it, drawing its aroma deeply, an action from which he derived no small pleasure, inspected the animal’s fur closely through the monocle, taking it in his fingers, picking out fleas, or dirt, or imperfections. “Meh.”
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| He peered into its ears, yanked open its mouth, inspected its teeth. Finally, he pulled, a stout wooden device from his tunic and held it up against the animal. “Heh. It’ll do,” he said, “but it’s not exactly going to make the quarter. It’s a bit scrawny.” He scratched his chin. “Call it a three. Yes; a low priority three.” He tossed the first one in the smallest pen.
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| “A ''three''?” Ramsay quailed. "But Jersey [[Oik]]s are a key business priority!”
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| “That they are, so they are, so I gather, soldier blue, but there are no oikeys here. That’s an SGPS, my young lad. Sociedade Gestora de Participações Sociais, to give him his full regalia, if you please, and he hails from —” he snatched up the beast again and began riffling through its fur “ — Porto? Lisbon, I wonder — oh! Madeira! Of ''course'' it is, my dear, Madeira, my dear. ''Similar'' to Oikey Oikses, they are, but — oh! — just not the same. It’s their milk, see? The yield is poor and it’s a bit thin, and sour, but it will nourish you juniors all right.”
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| Ramsay sighed and motioned at the other two espiecies. “What about the others, then?”
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| The old man examined the first one briefly. “This one — nah, Qatari: won’t net.” He tossed it away. His dog, a mongrel bull terrier, chased it under a fence. “Bosun! Bosun!” he screeched, at the dog.
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| He picked up the third, gingerly, turned it over in his hands and looked doubtfully in its ear.
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| Suddenly, violently, he threw it down, kicked out at it and scurried into the dark recess from where he had originally come. The boarder squawked in anguish and grabbed a spade and hid behind these nearest cage. Bosun leapt at it, but the man swiftly yanked on the dog’s chain to pull him out of reach.
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| “Get away, Bosun! Get out of it! JESUS! What do you think you're playing at, bringing that nasty little blighter in here? Take it away! Get rid of it! QUICKLY!”
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| Ramsay flapped his arms. “What’s wrong with it?”
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| “Just get rid of it before anyone sees you with it!”
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| Ramsay gingerly picked up the frightened little thing. It was barely bigger than a hamster and hand beautiful, soft, golden fur that shone auburn in the sunlight. It seemed so harmless. So pure. It trembled in the palm of his hand. “It’s okay, it’s okay little one,” Ramsay soothed.
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| The inspector was screeching and shaking the cage, screaming “GET RID OF IT! GO! GO! GO!”
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| Ramsay put his hands on his hips. “Well, I’m not leaving here without my commission.”
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| “Get rid! GET RID GET RID!!!” howled the inspector.
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| The old man strode over and snatched the animal, which was still snuggling on Ramsay's palm, hiffed it powerfully, into the sky.
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| “Hey! What did you do that for?”
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| As the [[espiecie]] arced towards the ground it it exploded in a ball of fluff and guts.
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| “Jesus wept, lad!”
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| “All right, all right — but what about my — for the other two?”
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| “Strike a light!” The onboarder fished in his pocket and tossed a couple of quarters towards Ramsay, into the dust.
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| “Half a stinking credit??!” Ramsay looked distraught and fished them out.
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| “Think yourself lucky kid. And let this be a lesson to you. Know run along with you and take that nasty little thing with you, before Quasi here has a goddamn ''aneurysm''.”
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| “What’s ''wrong'' with it?”
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| “Panamanian variant. Just take it away okay?”
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| Ramsay’s eyes widened, he retched and bolted for the Wood.
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| The onboarder looked at the two scrawny mammals in the cage, and let out a deep, existential sigh. “Lean times, indeed,” he muttered, and tossed a bone into the cage, where the little espievies fell upon it.
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| The inspector had calmed down by now, and just chuckled darkly.
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| ==Random thots==
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| [[Bretton Woods]]: a dark forest beyond the mythical settlement of [[Lissingdown]], where combat sales units would hunt [[espievie|espievies]] and other prey which they would domesticate and farm for [[commissions]]
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| Sales details ride in with captured [[espievie|espievies]] and toss them into a holding pen.
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| Evaluates and sorts them, tossing out the runts. A junior sales squire gripes about his treatment. The office manager tosses him a couple of credits and tells him to scram. "Too small". "Won't net". "No track record taste awful."
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| There's a commotion in the fields as a hunting party comes back in. It is Charlemagne, the celebrated sales guru, leading his retinue, leading in an elephant-sized beast by a velvet rope.
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| Sidemutter: "He got it from the forbidden fields. There are none of these in our territory. They don't exist."
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| Capture the docs team leader who is too weak to resist the onslaught
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| Coo people trying to break in in and tame master agreements.
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| Capture small ones
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| So the lawyers treat them as as pets, and horse whisperer them etc comma believing this is the only way to to control the danger they present and harness their power. The Theo coming like the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang force the agreements into a framework controlled by Romanians reading instruction manuals.
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| Bigger ones bust out of their glcages destroying everything
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| Apocalyptic scenes where tiny little cages ISDA s, all confined in small rectangular pens like battery hens suddenly all explode at once overwhelming the management systems.
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| Giant monsters called Goks housed in luxuriant pens, where teams rub their skins with champagne and Keep them supple and milking them of commissions. Good are free to come and go. There are several Gok pens around the city. To encourage the gearbox to go into them they need to be b-complex fully invisible 2 to city residence other than those charged with managing the pen itself.
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| Feed smaller stick with Vega and they grow larger
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| Conan the barbarian riff with isda jocks captured and tethered to the mill in a mountain training camp where they train school leavers in the ninja arts. School leavers keep running away. Escaping for a better life
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| Lissingdown is the elven home on earth. The settlement is an offshore centre.
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| }}
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