A/N: I'd just like to say a few things- beside the fact that I don't own the Discworld.

You can skip this if it bores you.

Pseudoagatea is an epic. I knew that from the get go. I hope it doesn't intimidate the reader with its size, but if it's funny enough, who cares?

That's the funny thing about me. My stories come in 2 sizes: one-shot and whopping epic.

Also, I have absolutely no idea how many chapters this thing has. This thing will appear to you as Chapter 18, even though the story will say that (if this is the current last chapter), the total is 17 chapters. And on my hard drive, it's Discworld 5.19.doc. You see, my stories are like this: Fandom name (Discworld), followed by the story number for that fandom (5), and the chapter for that story (.19)

What the hells?

Enjoy the show.

*

Uyidako smiled outright. Maybe they were all going to die, but some of the magical redundancy loops built into the land mines, rockets and Ephebian- flame-throwers would make them almost impossible to handle or fight, that they would. She felt genuinely bad for all of the poor bastards who were going to die when the hose from the flamethrowers cut loose.

She needn't have worried. It they didn't win the war, Magnolia Guy would leave most the surrounding countryside a nice, bald, dead wasteland.

Bummer about that. It looked really lush. You just didn't that kind of lush in Ankh-Morpork. He looked out over the countryside.

He glanced at his watch. He was rather curious what would happen. Nobody had explained to him.

*

"So, we've got to take over the boat by force, then somehow get out ahead any warn everybody of the impending disaster?" Drumknott had taken a few of the Bursar's dried frog pills, and looked as though he'd felt batter when insane.

"Yes. We've got to get ahead and semaphore them NOT to drop Ponder's Thaumic Bomb so they don't kill us all."

"Umm?" That was Victor, who had been listening to the conversation through the crystal ball link-up.

"Yes?"

"I could, umm, actually run over to the palace and try to talk some sense into them."

"That's a good idea, yes."

"I'll go and do that then."

*

Vetinari looked at his watch.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

The bomb was dropped, and Ridcully and those other pompous bastards were GONE.

He allowed himself a small, brief smile.

*

"They /shot/ at me! They had the crossbows out and anything. I actually hit Vimes with a fireball, but I don't think they got the idea." This was Victor, five minutes after his last conversation, talking into his crystal ball.

Suddenly, there was a bright, white flash, and the crystal ball went dead on Victor's end.

*

Vetinari's instructions to the Guard had been clear. It anything that even looks remotely like a wizard comes near the palace, shoot it. Take no prisoners.

He didn't want to have to exterminate them all, but he wasn't above it. He hoped they would get the idea and leave him alone.

*

Fortunately for the residents of Switch' off, the Magnolia Guy wasn't really on the ball, and through a quirk in someone else's planning, they were all still alive. Actually the fault could alternately be traced back to Vetinari, but there wasn't a man on the Disc who would say so.

What had happened: Vetinari had used a ruler and a slide rule and calculated, with almost dead-on accurately, the time it would take the Magnolia Guy to get to Switch' off, at which time he would drop the Firecracker. What he HADN'T figured for was the light-zone change.

The slow-moving light of the Discworld ensures that there are different light-zones, where the sunlight travels over the world starting in the east at dawn and flowing across the surface slowly until it drizzles off the other side hours later.

In Pseudoagatea, it was high noon, but in Ankh-Morpork it was 7 PM*, and Vetinari was confident that the wizards and most of that corner of the world were now a crater in the ground radiating Thaums into cold, emotionless space. So, because he hadn't told the Magnolia Guy to set HIS watch ahead as he went, they were quite alive.

For the next seven hours, anyway.

__________

*Past-middle (of the Disc).

*

Vetinari was planning his moves very, very carefully. He never used magic for anything, period. He didn't think of himself as unable to use magic- though he was. It was really a matter of 'this is/is not a good idea', and all the scenarios involving magic had ended in fireballs.

No. He was going to fight of the wizards when they came for him. They would come for him. But it was either fight the wizards or fight the Agatean Entente when they figured out who they can captured on their soil, and he KNEW the wizards could be beaten. How else had his predecessors kept them in line all these years?

The only thing he had EVER built involving magic of any kind was the Firecracker, and you really couldn't call it magic. There was the Octiron, but there were no spells or drippy candles or moonlight rituals. There was a straightforward explosion.

*

"So we're going to take over the ship, and then what?" esked Ponder

"I'm not really sure," pondered Esk

"I can't believe you dropped the crystal ball overboard," said Ponder to Ridcully, who had grabbed it in order to get up close and personal with the truant Tugelbend when he came back on the line. He had, in effect, temporarily reduced the thousands of miles between the two of them, by about six inches, and then lost his grip on it. "You drop something, and it automatically finds a little hole in the floor and leaves. Why don't we just sit here and wait to die?"

"Because that's against my dignity as a wizard who would sooner blow himself up then wait for his enemy to do it for him."

"It that really our creed?" asked Ponder weakly.

"I don't know, but I say we take over the boat for the hell of it. It's not like we've got anything better to do with our time."

*

Rincewind was running back through the Plain of the Pots. The Orange Agents had last been seen not in the marine's base but in the town.

He was on it.

Damn, these were BIG pots. He kept seeing them everywhere he went. He'd seen some of the smallest ones were used as chamber pots and ashtrays.

But here, HERE were the true giants, pots you could fit into, no problem.

He wondered why anyone would make pots that big.

Then he rushed on.

*

Deep on the ocean floor, the luggage was really, really pissed. They had tied a lump of iron to it, and then thrown it overboard to sink. They would pay.

Its temper was not at all improved by the fact that the raised outside pressure had given it something along the lines of a headache.

It had hit bottom twenty minutes ago and when it came aground it was going to BREAK something.

It snatched up a small falling sphere as it went. See, it had already shown that little ball who was boss. It's internal components filed away Ponder's crystal ball.

*

R&R

Also, if you don't think you're getting all the references to the wars and stuff, don't worry- I'll put together a hidden-jokes page in the last chapter for your convenience.

Mobius Shadow