King Mink looked around the clearly coked entrance hall of the former clan castle of the 656, which was now his. The rest of the castle was still in pretty good shape, but the entrance hall had taken a beating. Half of the ceiling panelling was on the floor, and what was still hanging half-attached was being dragged down by his victory-drunk Thunder brothers and thrown onto a large pile on the floor.


    ''Burn it all!'' they shouted enthusiastically, and some of them actually pulled out their matches.


    ''Are you crazy, you idiots!'' shouted Mink, ''do it outside, if at all!''


    ''But boss, we''re supposed to set fire to all the enemy buildings!''


    ''We''ve conquered this one, you lowlife morons! It''s ours now! You''re setting fire to our own building!''


    Grumbling, the Thunder brothers packed up the matches again. After careful consideration, they had to realise that their king was right.


    One of them took a closer look at the boss and sniggered: ''Brother, what happened to your face? Did you get too close to the fire?''


    Others also noticed the boss''s visibly changed appearance.


    ''You look terrible!''


    ''No, he was already ugly before!''


    ''Rumour has it that Yikesy ironed his face because he refused to take a shower...''


    ''Oh boy. So now he not only stinks, but he''s also ugly...''


    ''Well, I think he looks better! At least the wrinkles are gone! He looks so rejuvenated!''


    ''No, he looks like Quasimodo.''


    The door to the back corridor opened and Lipsyte entered the room. He was about to say something else when his eyes fell on Mink.


    ''OMG, what happened to your face? You''re completely burnt!''


    Mink snorted. ''It''s nothing!''


    ''Have you had plastic surgery? Or adeep chemical peeling? I had something like that once, and I looked similar, and...''


    ''I didn''t have plastic surgery, damn it!''


    ''That''s right. That probably wouldn''t do you any good either.''


    Mink gasped for air. Another unsuspecting member entered the room.


    ''Oh, boss, that happened to your face?''


    ''That''s enough!'' roared Mink, ''Just do your jobs and don''t annoy me! The next person who asks me stupidly what happened to my face, I''ll burn him with my own hands!''


    The hall was immediately as quiet as a mouse. Everyone ducked down.


    Then the door clanged behind Mink and Kodaxx came cheerfully into the room: ''Oh, brother! You look like shit. What happened to your face?''


    Mink rolled his eyes in despair. ''Oh, not you of all people, please! It will be a bit difficult to do it with you...''


    ___________________________________________________


    Genny sat at the table in the entrance hall of their new base, which was actually one of their old bases. They had left it back then to move to the desert and had now returned to it. Fortunately, they had found everything exactly as they had left it, and so now there was a bustling scurry as they stowed their luggage and put away the supplies they had taken with them.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    ''How many are left?'' Genny asked sombrely.


    ''We should have a roll call,'' replied Lady Evelyne, still carrying her upturned cake bowl with the icing dripping from it on her head. ''But if I''ve missed it right, another 84.''


    ''There were more of us yesterday.''


    ''Yesterday was yesterday and today is today.''


    ''Who have we lost?''


    ''Well, the ones who are leaving now are some of the eunuchs, it seems to me.''


    ''Eunuchs? Aren''t they those guys with no balls? Is that what we had here?'' asked Genny, aghast.


    ''Genny, dearest - we''re a former harem, remember? Of course we had eunuchs. They just never really stood out. So they won''t be missing when they leave. I''ve written to the leadership of the 652 and announced that our eunuchs will be joining them, and that we are very happy that they are taking them.''


    ''Huh? That makes me wonder. What do they want with these guys with no balls?''


    ''The answer gives me much more to wonder about. Maybe it was a machine response from the AI. They wrote back that these players would fit in very well with their team.''


    _____________________________________________________


    The rioting and looting of the Thunder brothers in the former clan castle of the 656 never ended. Mink retreated to the upper floors in search of quieter rooms. Behind a wooden door, he found a tidy kitchen in which the fire had only slightly damaged one wall. Relieved, Mink closed the door behind him and looked around. A cake knife with pink icing stuck to it was still in the sink. An ironing board was leaning in the corner, next to it - a cold shiver ran down the king''s spine - was an iron on the shelf.


    ''Have you had a shower?''


    Mink wheeled round with a shout. He hadn''t heard Yikesy come in, perhaps she had already hidden in this room. Now she was standing right behind him.


    ''Not yet, Grandma. But I''ll do it soon. I promise. Or later. But in any case, today... or...''


    With a smug smile in the direction of the iron, Yikesy left the kitchen, humming.


    Mink dropped onto a kitchen chair, breathing heavily. Damn! Yikesy was just everywhere, and she always heard everything! That woman was just a nightmare! He was trying to process the shock when his eyes fell on a piece of paper that someone had rammed into the wall with a cake knife.


    Astonished, Mink pulled the knife out of the wall and took the note.


    ''HELP!'' was written on it in large letters. And smaller underneath: ''Yikesy is bullying me. Thunder Dude.''


    With trembling hands, Mink took a pen from the kitchen counter and wrote underneath: ''Me too! Mink.'' Then he rolled up the note, put it in a bottle, closed it tightly and threw it out of the window into the river below.


    __________________________________________


    The roll call in the new old clan castle of the 656 revealed that even more people were missing than expected. They were worried about Captain Zax, who was still overdue. Zax the dwarf, who had stood alone against a hundred. What madness!


    Genny counted the heads of her loved ones over and over again. An unsettling feeling crept over her. She suddenly had the vague certainty that she had forgotten something very important.


    ''Little Miss!''


    A single cry set the ball rolling. ''Little Miss is missing!''


    ''Damn it - she was still in the building when we ran off... she must have stayed behind... how could this have happened?''


    Genny pushed aside the people standing in her way and took off running. Straight out of the castle, back the way they had come, straight towards the ranks of the enemy.


    ''Genny!'' Several girls wanted to follow her.


    Frog and Ace pulled her back.


    ''Leave her alone. She''s doing the right thing. She''ll be fine.''


    _________________________________________


    Mink had never been so annoyed by the roar of his Thunder brothers as he was that night. He had worked hard to get to this point. How hard, only his closest confidants and, strangely enough, his enemies knew, who paradoxically often paid him more respect for this than his own people.


    The looting and roaring horde had reached the upper floors and found a laundry basket full of the girls'' worn underwear.


    Now the Thunder brothers were fighting over the laundry to the point where it was a real embarrassment. Mink decided to urgently recruit more women in future. The only problem was that there were far fewer women than men in his favourite T4 accounts. He was already much closer to his dream of a clan consisting only of T4 accounts, and if he was honest with himself, women were only a nuisance. Yikesy was bad enough - he didn''t need any more of that kind.


    Once again, he looked around the kitchen to see if the enemies had left anything interesting behind. A corner of paper peeked out from under the hob, and Mink bent down with interest. He pulled out the piece of paper and was immediately electrified.


    Yikesy''s handwriting! What was a note written by Yikesy herself doing here, in the heart of the enemy''s castle? Was his R4 secretly corresponding with the enemy?


    Mink sat down at the kitchen table under high tension and began to read. ''Russian Borsch''... what was that supposed to be? There were numbers, apparently quantities, and various ingredients. It looked like a recipe. Obviously a secret code?


    No more shivers of cold, shivers of joy ran down the king''s spine. He would decipher this code. And then - at last! - he would be able to get rid of Yikesy. A charge of high treason. Then burn her. At last! Never again would that vicious old Russian woman harass him and iron his face. Never again!