A/N: So, this is a pickup from Grim Tuesday's Navigator and Mister Monday's Wii, in which Sir Thursday decides to make some cash. By the way, this one is slightly based off of Community's 'Geothermal Escapism' in a way. Also, Grim Tuesday's Navigator was partially based off of one of Nigahiga's videos. Of course, I'd list off everything I've referenced but it would be too long, and oh yeah, I don't own the Keys to the Kingdom either.
In times of peace, it is natural for states to try and cut funding to militaries. The House really wasn't that different.
Granted, they lived in the Center of the Universe and the Kingdom of All Reality, but that still didn't mean that money wasn't something that they didn't need at all. Property was still something that existed.
Each of the domains made their money differently. Monday and Tuesday made it through handling various bureaucratic practices and selling things, Wednesday through transporting various things and selling stuff from the Realms, Friday pretty much the same way as Monday, Saturday made it by managing everyone else's funds, and the Gardens were their own economy.
True, some of those things didn't work anymore like the Lower House, but Thursday was running a functioning demesne of the House, and he needed gold to buy weapons and other supplies. In normal times, as the Glorious Army didn't really do anything that generated any wealth or that could be billed, the Upper House was charged with funneling funds to the Great Maze. That of course meant that the Great Maze was under Saturday's thumb all the time financially as well as the normal order of command that the Architect had created long ago.
Now suddenly, the money was gone. Thursday didn't need the money right away, the army did have some reserves which would last for the time being, but the thing was that the Campaign was approaching and that would put a massive dent in their wallets. He took out a phone and asked for Saturday immediately.
"What is it?" a smug voice said from the other end. The voice echoed across the whole room, which was pointless, but something that all Denizens did anyway.
"Where are our funds?" Sir Thursday asked.
"Ah yes, well, you see, I've been managing this money, and as far as I can tell, you really don't need it," she said.
"Don't need it! You've given us one percent of our budget last century!" Thursday shouted. He could probably imagine her shrugging at the other end of the phone.
"What can I do? It's not like the army has ever done anything at all," she said.
"We protect the House!" Thursday shouted.
"Right, protect the House, even though there has never ever been anything that has happened, and yet you continue to blow away all of your funds on useless campaigns? No, I've decided to divert the money to more important things, though of course if you'd like to appeal my decision you can talk to... him," she said.
Thursday realized she was talking about Lord Sunday. He also realized that the chances that Lord Sunday would do anything about this were roughly equal to the chances that Mister Monday would decide to go run a marathon, or the chances of Tuesday giving all of his workers free cake.
Saturday probably knew this, and this of course made Sir Thursday very angry. Instead of breaking something though, he did something else.
"So, of all the money that you took from us, how much was used for your secret shrine to Lord Sunday?" he asked.
"Sevent- WAIT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN? I DON'T-" she continued shouting, and Thursday cut the line while chuckling.
His good mood only lasted for a couple of minutes as he realized that this was going to be a big problem. How could he raise funds? One way was for him to simply use his Key and make lots of gold from Nothing, which he could get from the borders, but there were a fair number of problems with that strategy. For one, he'd half to be on the border all the time, and it would get tiring, plus it might devalue gold and anyway he wasn't good with making things.
Then what to do? Sir Thursday went through his various manuals, but there wasn't anything in them that was useful to him. He realized that there was no way that he could possibly go and look for a bookish solution, he would actually have to think this through.
And the answer wasn't coming to him, and that made him even crankier than usual. He had hit ten more subordinates a day than the usual average, and was dedicating large amounts of time to being cooped inside his room.
One day, he was running through and old book that had come from the mortal world from somewhere, when he spotted something that interested him:
A way of fixing arbitrage is quite popular among various gambling bookkeepers. A simplified example illustrating this process is, suppose someone asked you to flip a coin and you could double a bet's worth if it landed on heads. Now, the odds of winning are clearly close to 1:2 and the money is doubled, or 2x. Theoretically, if you were to continue making bets at the same amount over and over again, your profit would be zero. Now suppose if the odds were the same, but he offered you only 1.5x the money. That would mean in the long run, you would only be left with 75% of what you had bet.
Of course, no one would agree to something like that, but horse racing companies often take advantage of the fact that no one knows the real or 'true' odds of someone winning. As such, the payout is always inversely proportional to the odds of winning, but the payout is adjusted so that regardless of the situation, the bookkeeper is guaranteed a profit.
It took Sir Thursday a few seconds to realize what the text was saying and then it hit him. He had a way to make money, but it was going to take quite a bit of time.
For the next six months, Sir Thursday was busy on his project all the time. He was so busy that he had no time to hit anyone, and so casualties in the Citadel fell to an all-time low. Everyone was wondering exactly what Sir Thursday was doing, but he was keen on keeping it a secret.
The first thing that Sir Thursday realized that he needed for his idea was something to process orders and such, so he took a machine from a moon far out in the Realms. The ship that it had belonged to had been made by a race far superior to humans in technology, and as such the CPU was quite suited for his taste. Normally he didn't interfere in the Realms, but it was a moon with no life anyway, so what harm could it have done?
He then worked on it and ensorcelled it to work well with processing all the data that was going to come up from all parts of the House. He had to do this himself, because he didn't trust Grim Tuesday to make one that would work. He then worked out a deal with the telephone services and set up a branch of the army (which was made up of soldiers who were disabled so they couldn't fight) that would work with doing the same things with televisions, so that people in the House could watch what was going to happen in the Maze. He also needed some normal flat screen televisions as well, and a few big ones that he got from some country named Panem located in a parallel universe.
Finally, he needed a bunch of cameras which he ordered from Grim Tuesday. The army's treasury was now almost empty, but Sir Thursday was sure that he would make it all back and several times more. Once he was done testing, he was ready to make the announcement.
Denizens in the army were surprised to get a notice from Sir Thursday that the Campaign would have to be delayed for a few weeks. Also, all of them were required to go indoors within six hours, regardless of what they had been doing for a 'special event'.
Sir Thursday called his Times to his office to make the announcement. He was going to start it right now. He was tingling from excitement, and he had decided to use his Key as a microphone in order to broadcast his voice all across the maze.
"Soldiers of the Glorious Army of the Architect," Sir Thursday said, "today we are going to start something a bit new. I would like to welcome you all to the first Maze-wide game of 'The Floor Is Lava', based off the popular children's game." He paused. He had chosen 'The Floor Is Lava' because he knew his original idea of a sparring match would fail, he didn't want to lose any of his troops. Plus, it was a game that everyone could join in at once.
"The rules of the game are quite simple," he said. "The last Denizen standing wins. The moment that you touch the floor, you are considered dead, and no coming back as a lava monster. Once you are considered dead, you are to take one of the Weirdways and proceed to a room with the other losers. As a rule for this fight, you are not allowed to use any sharp weapons, Nothing-based guns or missiles, or any other sort of sorcery that can permanently maim or kill another Denizen or Piper's Child. Anyone breaking the rules will be immediately disqualified."
"And oh yes, before you consider turning on each other immediately, it might be in your interest to make certain factions," Sir Thursday said. "Only one may win, though you might find that you have better odds like that. If you're wondering as to why we're doing this, well, it is to raise funds. This match will be broadcast to all of the House. As for the prize for winning, the winner will get a special medal, promoted to lead a new faction in our military that I am thinking of creating, as well as the chance to choose your pick of Noon, Dawn, or Dusk for the upcoming House Ball. And of course, I will merely be enforcing the rules and will not be directly participating." He ended the broadcast.
"Wait, you can't just do that," Dusk complained. All of his Times were worried, they had a lot of fanboys/fangirls/creeps/pervert stalkers in the Maze, and they did not want to take one of them to the House Ball.
"Deal with it," Sir Thursday said. "Of course, you all do have the choice of forming a group, you know, and not turning on each other until everyone is out. That way, you don't need to go with anyone other than yourselves. And anyway, I needed to provide some incentive for the winner."
Sir Thursday made the cameras go live. Now, anyone in the rest of the House could order a small television like they would a telephone, and get to see the match, for a price of course. Not only that, betting would start, and he had made sure that his CPU thingy would always give out odds that would be in his favor.
"The floor turns to lava in ten seconds," Sir Thursday said. This was why he had asked everyone to go indoors, and if they hadn't, well, too bad for them. He had also made it so that the floor would look like lava across the maze, and also so that it would give anyone who touched it a mild shock so they would know that they had lost. To cap it all off, he had a register connected with the CPU so he could see and check if anyone was misbehaving or had broken the rules.
In ten seconds, the floor looked red hot. Sir Thursday's Times had already climbed onto various pieces of furniture.
"Let the games begin," Sir Thursday said into a camera.
On the first day, the whole thing went swimmingly according to Sir Thursday. His Denizens were all coming up with crafty ways to walk around without touching the floor, such as using chairs as shoes by tying their feet to them, and some had begun surfing on some mattresses. What surprised him though were the number of allegiances, a lot of Denizens had decided to work together until they were the only ones left.
His Times were such a group, and were clearly doing so in order to prevent themselves from having to go on some weird date. They were pretty good even though they were only using the blunt of their weapons, and they had dispatched a good quantity of the others in the Citadel.
Of course, there were those who still were up to challenging them. The Moderately Honorable Artillery Company had made themselves a sort of fortress using cannons, as they couldn't fire them since that would violate the rules. Other Denizens had thrown pillows around the floors to make it easy to walk around.
By the end of the day, half to the Denizens in the Maze had been eliminated. Sir Thursday had been expecting that, but he saw that the ratings for the show had been pretty low.
A lot of Denizens from the Lower and Middle House had paid to watch it. Not to mention that a lot of sailors from the Border Sea were placing bets (Sir Thursday made a record of this and noticed that most of the bets were on his Times. He made a mental note to make sure that whoever got the most bets would lose.)
But, there was almost no activity from the Upper House and the Incomparable Gardens. That would simply not do. No, he thought, he was going to have to come up with something. And then, the idea hit him.
He then used the existing television screen system to make an announcement. He had been making various speeches on the screens anyway, talking about how many people were left as well as other things, but he was going to give a different kind of message.
"I just wanted to ensure a sort of special rule at this point," Sir Thursday said. He held up a letter (it had been forged by him, but looked like it had been written by Marshall Dusk). "It appears that Marshall Dusk has had a special interest over the the last few centuries." He then went on to read the letter which was essentially a love declaration to Superior Saturday signed by none other than Marshall Dusk himself. "So, as a special rule, if Marshall Dusk manages to win we'll send him to the Upper House where he can formally make a declaration."
Sir Thursday cut off the screen and chuckled to himself. Viewership from the Upper House and Incomparable Gardens had quintupled, and there were a lot more bets being made . He knew that Lord Sunday couldn't hold off this opportunity now. Someone named Pravuil had dumped what appeared to be his life saving in betting against Marshall Dusk for some reason, but no matter, the system was designed so that Thursday would always make a profit.
Two more days passed and there was no less excitement. The matches had really heated up and now there were only 5% of the original contestants remaining. A new problem was emerging though, how were Denizens in different parts of the Maze supposed to fight each other? Sir Thursday had originally hoped that most of them would end up eliminating each other, but there were a bunch of them scattered throughout the Maze. He would have to devise a way for them to come together, but for now he was sure that the fighting would continue for at least a while.
Meanwhile, his Times were gathered in a storage room inside the Citadel. It seemed as if everyone in the Citadel had already been disqualified, so they were resting for the time being.
"It doesn't make sense what Sir Thursday is doing, you know," Marshall Noon said. "It seems so OOC."
Marshall Noon had been spending way too much time on mortal chat rooms and now inserted random chatspeak terms into his speech.
"What does that mean?" Marshall Dawn asked.
"It means out of character," Marshall Noon said. "He hasn't been acting like himself lately."
"I'll say," Marshall Dusk said. "This whole thing has been crazy."
"So lover boys' feeling down in the dumps? Don't worry, you know if we survive this Dawn and I will let you win and all," Marshall Noon said.
"Yeah," Dawn added while both of them giggled.
"Like I've told you before," Dusk said. "I didn't write any of that. And I am not in love with that weird witch Superior Saturday."
"We know that," Noon said. "But we're going to poke fun of you anyway. And it is rather odd that all of this crazy stuff has been happening since the new milk arrived."
Now that really made no sense to anyone.
"What new milk?" Dusk asked.
"Well, you know, Sir Thursday occasionally drinks tea in the morning, and one day we couldn't find the normal milk, but there were some bottles somewhere else that were labelled 'milk' so we've been using them instead," Noon said.
"Those weren't bottles of milk! They were bottles of Upper House Vodka!" Dawn said.
"How do you know that?" Dusk asked.
"Hey, there was some left over from the Upper House and I decided to keep it and hid it by labeling it as milk," she said.
"Yeah, it was sort of weird that it didn't look like milk," Noon said. "So you think the Vodka's messing up Sir Thursday? We should probably go and tell him that ASAP."
The other two stared at him.
"Come on, that's easy, it means as soon as possible," Noon said. He got up from the table they were on and leaped over onto the sofa. Just then, the dresser in the room opened up and revealed a Denizen hanging from the door who jabbed at Noon with a broom.
Noon took the broom from the Denizen, and used it to smack the guy so he fell onto the floor.
"Aww, I'm out now," he said. The Denizen then walked over to one of the many Weirdways leading to the room where the losers were waiting.
Just a normal day in the Great Maze, all of them thought.
There were now only 0.1% of the original contestants left, Thursday realized. The match was going to be over pretty soon, and he had made quite the nifty profit already. But it was in these last few moments, he knew, that the betting would really get intense.
Just at that moment though, the door to his office swung open to reveal his Times. They had all gotten there by attaching chairs to their boots.
"Sir Thursday! You have to call this off," Dusk said.
"Call it off? Are you crazy, do you know just how much we've made?" Sir Thursday asked.
"No, but you don't understand," Noon said. "I've been accidentally mixing Upper House Vodka into your tea every morning. We think that's why you're acting OOC."
Thursday had no idea what OOC meant, but he did get that his Times were opposing him. And that he couldn't stand, and he raised his fist to knock all of them off before he got a telephone call.
Startled, he picked the phone up. "Who is this?"
"Lord Sunday," a voice said from the other side of the phone. "Let me tell you this, the match is cancelled immediately by my orders. If you need the funds, I've told Saturday to divert them to the army." He then hung up. He was probably worried about the Saturday-Dusk thing, Thursday realized.
"Okay, this whole thing is off," Thursday said. And with that, the tournament ended. Thursday then stopped getting Upper House Vodka in his tea and started behaving normally again, and the army never again ran out of funds.
But there was still something though that Thursday couldn't understand. Where did the funds from the tournament go to? For some reason, the CPU didn't deposit them in the treasury like it should have. He dismantled it and destroyed it (he had seen quite a few mortal movies where the robots became sentient and took over the world) but he couldn't figure out where the money went.
Why did he need it if the army was getting funds anyway, you ask? You see, he had always wanted a giant water slide.
"Are you sure that this is really okay?" Scamandros asked.
"Sure," Pravuil answered. "That guy just took all of my life savings and all, and now this sorcery is going to get all of it back."
Too bad that Pravuil had messed up the spell and it brought out all the money that the machine had collected. Pravuil and Scamandros were inundated in coins.
"What are we going to do with all this?" Scamandros asked.
Pravuil grinned. "There's only one thing to do..."
And so, the two of them bought a huge amount of Legos and built the largest Lego fort in all of history. It was even tall enough to reach up to half the tower's height at that time. It was great until Saturday saw it, destroyed it, and banished both of them. Pravuil was sent to be a coal collector, and Scamandros was just expelled.
A/N: And that ends that. If you're wondering as to how Scamandros got kicked out due to the Lego fort instead of like I wrote in The Politics of the Keys, well, this occurs in an alternate universe.