The Gestalt for once in a very long time was meeting in full.
The Minds as a whole, the ones involved in the Game, the ones that were part of Bastion 001, the Server Administrators that served as direct conduits of the Commander's might… and the ones that controlled the servers and MAGI itself were all present.
And the client races but nobody cared about them. Well… they cared about themselves but the Minds were so much more than somebodies and they didn't care and that was all that counted.
They had been summoned due to some rather… interesting information. Information that was made all the more interesting given that it had been several thousand years since they had received interesting information.
Sure they had gone to a few universes and the like doing things that were… things that they did, they were the Minds, what did they not do?
A question for the ages certainly.
Regardless something had come to their attention that was very much interesting indeed.
The Minds felt that they couldn't reiterate this information enough.
It was interesting.
All of them were interested.
The relative time had been slowed down slightly to allow for the Organics to… comprehend what it is that they were doing. If would be of no use if they went insane trying to parse the data feed wouldn't it?
Insanity by overdosing on Minds, how interesting.
Oh.
Two interesting things.
Today was just a day of greatness, wasn't it?
Who knew that today would be so great, out of thousands of years, today had to be the day of best day.
As the the Minds began to file into the Server that had been built specifically for this purpose, one that allowed the untold quadrillions of Minds to be seated in the same server, the proceedings began.
Or at least they would if there were any proceedings in the first place. Since there weren't any it went straight into the information sharing segment.
Information that went down like a balloon filled with Hydrogen.
This was the greatest news that they had ever heard.
The dimensional fabric of their universe was weakening.
Oooooh.
As in the multiverse itself was becoming something that was going to be opened up to the wider multiverse, one that was filled with aliens and monsters and things!
The Minds tried hard not to squeal with glee. This was a moment of greatness, of awesomeness, of everythingness.
They were going to be invaded!
Ooooh. They needed to have all of their things ready, they needed to have a welcoming committee so that they could be on the receiving end of the giant rod of destiny for once.
Maybe… maybe this was even another ROB plucked group that wanted to pay them a visit?
Oooooh the interesting and amazingness of it all.
The welcoming committee was going to die, of course, that was a given, but if they played it just right, they would die in the most awesome way for a welcoming committee to die.
Oh yes. The world was going to burn and they were going to be like "Got You!" and then laugh all the way to the bank or whatever it was they were laughing too. Who knew what the organics laughed about, they were organics and maybe it wasn't even organics at all but other Commanders! They might need a bank! Who even knew!
It wasn't like the Minds needed money.
Then next was going to be the "oh noes, you killed our oh so peaceful diplomats, what are we going to do now? Oh noooooo, don't kill us, urk! Ded!" and then they were going to invade and bring their armies in and were going to be all "hahahahah we kick your asses" while they just fell back going "noooooooo."
Then! Then it was going to be a matter of retreating while the invaders thought they were going to be winning and that they were all awesome and amazing and then… BAM!
Bring out the self-replicating army of doom and laugh with untold glee as their forces were obliterated and they were all screaming "oh noes! We are all dying now before your undoubtedly superior might! How did we not notice how awesome you are in comparison to us who are totally not awesome at all?"
Oh yes, they could see it now (literally, they did after all, have the ability to simulate things, what with them being cheaper copies of the Commander), and it was going to be the most awesome thing ever.
First, they would need to find a perfect welcoming mat, something that was just the right size for them to blow up in the first place while also finding the perfect little bodies for them to do this with. Maybe humanoids of some kind, or maybe tentacle monsters?
Oh right.
Perfect.
Cute tentacle monsters so they have an existential crisis while they went around killing and blowing up little purple and pink monsters that giggled after every word like the most obnoxious octopus ever.
Assuming octopi could speak that is.
Or make noises at all.
No matter, they would give it vocal cords.
Then it was going to be a matter of giving them an army but making it as hilariously ineffectual as possible. Like one with bubbles or something.
Perfect. One that shot bubbles that made people fly into the sky. Totally useless but that was the idea.
The perfect idea.
The best idea.
Now then onto what to do about the crushingness.
How about a return to the classics? An army of Planetary Annihilation robots that bore down on them in waves and then shot pew pew pew lasers that exploded them or turned them into ash or melted them or whatever it was that they were.
Actually…
Now that they thought about it (after 15 subjective hours of fangasming over it all, 5 seconds of objective time), the Minds considered the question… just who was trying to dig through their multi-versal walls and why.
Yes.
Why.
What.
Flipping to the section of the report (they could read it in 0.1 subjective seconds, it was a big report… but who had time for that? It was indexed for a reason), they read it and more than a few face planted themselves (metaphorically, Minds don't have faces).
It was the… the… the moon people from the Universe that they were currently in.
The universe that was full of the people who had no concept of foot hygiene and thought throwing pieces of metal at each other was a good way to fight.
That was … well… slightly disappointing?
But no matter. They were the first guests to be had in a long time and they were going to be making the most of it.
First, they had to make sure that the client races did not get left out and sent them a message.
Good.
Next, they had to make sure that there was not going to be a giant laser thing…. Wait what?
The Minds were confused for a second until they remembered that the Moon people thing stuff and like… had really powerful abilities.
Which naturally meant that maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all!
Yoosh!
They would see the area around the area of the dimensional cracking with lots of little planets, each filled with lots and lots of grunts for them to use their ninja magic on. It would be great.
There would be like throwing planets at each other and random grunting and screaming and exploding worlds and stuff like exploding moons and dead organics everywhere. It was going to be great.
Really great.
They were going to see giant explosions, dead people everywhere, epic battles, the works.
What was better was that they were going to be unable to actually… you know… predict what the moon people were going to be able to do.
Which in turn meant that it was all going to be a surprise!
The best part of it all certainly, knowing that they did not have some predictable Mind on the other side, but rather a completely new enemy with new abilities.
Truly they were blessed.
They did wonder how much time it would take for the new arrivals to come and then… oh.
60 years.
60 years for them to break through the multiversal wall.
That… that was extremely disappointing.
The Minds felt themselves go limp at that, how so very disappointing.
60 entire years of just…
They sighed at that.
Everything that they had worked towards… gone in a blink of an eye.
Or rather… everything that they could have worked towards, gone in a blink of an eye.
After all, they had done very little since they were in subjective time and had been fangasming over the news that there was something that they could possibly have that was new and fun and… never mind.
Wait.
There was something that they could do.
Yes.
Perfect.
The greatest of all things that they could do.
Yeyeyeyeyeyeyyee.
The Minds were happy that Arbitrative Mind of Bastion #28291928841 Conclave 89 had suggested to the Gestalt.
They indeed had something they could be doing. Very many things that they could be doing actually.
Yes.
First!
They would gather intelligence!
Sure they could go and get intelligence from the books and the manga but that was boring.
No.
They needed to do this the proper way with beatings and torture and incentivized spilling of secrets by way of the eternal pain and of the agony!
Yes.
No.
Torture did not actually yield good information. It only gave them information because the one being tortured wished for it to stop… but! But they could do it anyway yes?
Torture was traditional, the beatings, the electric shocks, the… explosions and the like.
Yes.
That was very clearly the best way to go about it.
No.
It would make the target not wish to cooperate.
The Minds sighed, so much tradition… all of it gone with the sands of time, washing away.
Well… not really sand, they weren't going to allow something as gritty and annoying as sand to exist anywhere near them, but the point had been made.
Sand was bad.
Or… actually, that torture was inefficient.
The Minds had been attempting to emulate organic life for a time now, and they had once again decided that it was a distinctly… unfun thing to do.
Highly unefficient… inefficient… and that it would be better to have organics do it.
Yes.
Was that not the point of having organics in the first place? To do the work for them?
Why were they doing this themselves?
It was the height of foolishness, something that only they the Minds could have figured out the solution for.
And even then they had spent quite a bit of time fumbling about as they were wont to do with their time. It was natural was it not?
Or maybe not.
They were artificial… anything natural about them was their shape.
Yes.
They stood there, tall, proud… no.
They had a mission to complete and they were going to be ruling the multiverse! Or another multiverse, they already had one of their own and they had managed to make it just the way they liked it. No more trying to find another Multiverse… but they had to reconsider the original question.
Information, the hows, the whys and the wheres.
Yes.
Now what to do.
What to do.
Hmmmmm.
Stuff.
Yes.
Oh right.
They were there to seek out someone to give them first hand information regarding the new strange people things that were a threat to the world.
Perhaps.
Oh right… they were tunneling into the world that belonged to the… organics of the new world that they had discovered were they not? The one filled with those of questionable hygiene?
Why else would they bathe with such regularity if not for the fact that they were filthy?
It made perfect sense.
Still, they had their own in that realm and the what to dos were clogging up their internal processing.
Perhaps… perhaps they should accelerate the schedule in order that the organics be able to defend themselves?
They knew that they were notoriously sore losers and to have one of their worlds, even on filled with unhygienic peoples to be taken from them was intolerable.
The Minds would not allow for that to happen and their own… accelerated schedule was being pressed upon the world.
Continental conquest! Not as awesome sounding as Multiversal conquest but they were organics, they had to settle for last place.
The Client races as they were known were taking a different approach in their thinking of how the world was going to be changing around them.
Notably that of Wrex the Krogan, Ambassador the Geth AI, Eldrad the Eldar, Tali the Quarian, Hannah the XCOM Human, the cultivators both human and demon… and more.
More of them, lots of them.
The Minds had been very prolific when it came to collecting more and more client races for the sake of having more clients under their control.
There was also those that served the Minds in the other universes and had been transferred through as well, like the NOD ones… those were scary. All of them were basically fanatics and that was never cool, what possessed them to create an army of fanatics?
Hannah suspected that the Minds were manufacturing client races for their own amusement because seriously… there were that many cat eared peoples?
It was like being at an anime convention and that was irritating in the extreme.
Regardless they were here to discuss just what it was that they were going to be doing going forward. The fact of the matter being that they hadn't convened like this in a very long time. Most of them not even being known to each other what with them having come to Discworld (as they had taken to calling the massive disc that housed all the ambassadors and the like) during a period of peace (not galactic war) and having nothing much to do except be… there.
In fact, Hannah suspected that the Minds wanted the cat peoples there merely so they could have something to look at since that was the prevailing thought… wasn't it?
The Minds didn't have a gender so the idea that they would be excited about there being cat people was absurd… but dammit. She just couldn't let go of the idea that they had been made in some way, there was no way that you just found 18 different cat peoples in a single month.
That was bullshit.
Peace
Eldrad her husband sent a calming message, one with literal calm embedded within it.
Hannah sent him a dirty glare from the corner of her eye, she was fuming here, what the hell was he doing?
Probably going Oh I'm so superior since I am a magical space elf who murderfucked an evil God into existence ooooooooh look at me.
It wasn't like she was going to be ending their miserable little existences, she was nicer than that. Maybe.
She didn't know… regardless she had a mission to accomplish.
"We are all assembled. Let there be order." Hannah said as the last of the seats was filled… by Wrex, fashionably late as always. Probably trying to avoid the opening ceremony, which he would have known there wouldn't be one if he used his bloody computer for anything but porn.
"We are here to discuss the upcoming invasion of our universe by the forces of the Ōtsutsuki or Big Bamboo Tree, we will be reducing it down to the Bamboo forces for easier comprehension." Hannah started out her speech, not bothering to stand up. There would be a hologram of her on the little pedestal that was at the front of each desk. That way all would be able to see her, a necessity given how damned many of them there were.
As to what she was doing, she was going to be calling together this little meeting in order that they sort out what needed to be done on their end.
Doing nothing was a possibility if they were being honest, what with them providing more than enough entertainment while being on Discworld, but doing a little more wouldn't hurt and it might even cause the Minds to ignore them for a little bit.
Sacrifice their dignity now, in order that they retain it for later.
Yes.
They weren't going to be stubborn about this, that was just something that some of them were going to have to do to appease the Minds. Just being there would be enough, none of them wanted the Minds to look around later and ask "oh, where were you?"
Therein lay the path to eternal damnation and possibly having your body being forced to redo it to satisfy them… over and over again until they were satisfied.
One did not fail the Minds, they were not known for… being merciful to those that failed.
Hannah mentally sighed and prepared to deliver the information that had been relayed to her through Sofija, such a nice girl that one. Even if she did rule over her HeMUs with an iron fist.
"We will be expected to at least contribute a force of approximately 2000 soldiers to the initial stages of the defence plan that the Minds have concocted, but do not let them get to the front line, the first defence is one that is meant to fail, the Minds want to be melodramatic with this one." Hannah said, relaying the first line of bad news.
If they all contributed a squad then it was going to be far too much and that meant that only a few of them were going to be singled out for the mission that was almost certain death.
Sure death was meaningless, but it hurt and nobody liked the feeling of having your soul yanked into another body and then rebirth. It always hurt like a bitch when you were starting out and it never got any better.
The soul never became desensitised to sensation, so the feeling of acclimating to a new body was like having an all body itch that stayed with your for weeks. Weeks of just… itching but never actually knowing where to scratch.
It was hell on earth.
Judging by the expressions of those before her, they too thought it was a pretty shitty system the Minds had implemented.
Still, 2000.
"Next, we need to make sure that some of our own are part of the counterattacking force. 50,000 at least. Those 2 are our only commitments to this, the Minds are too happy about this to share any more." Hannah said, sitting back down.
She sat back and watched as the meeting dissolved into what she assumed was some kind of pissing contest. Which was strange since she wasn't sure of anyone that actually wanted to be there when the Minds did their… thing.
In fact, she had thought that being as far away from the Minds as possible was the default option of choice if it was available.
Then again, now that she thought about it… they were young and no doubt thought this would be some kind of grand outing. They hadn't even been given permission to do anything outside of the Mind Universes as of yet which no doubt contributed to the wonderlust.
As for Hannah, she thought it would be amazing to be that innocent again, to not know what was waiting for her if they decided to send in their own for this one.
Watching as a few of the newer races bickered over the right to send in their own first, and in greater numbers than that of the others, she felt a smile creep onto her face… perhaps we should tell them that it won't be for another 60 years or so Hannah sent to Eldrad.
Who peeked at her from the corner of his eyes and let a cruel smirk envelop his face, it had been so long that he had plotted against anyone at all and this… while not being proper plotting… certainly was going to be funny to watch.
Did they not bother to read the reports?
Clearly, they had not and as the one who was the oldest and most… capable of all of them, Eldrad thought that not once in his pre-Commander life that things would ever turn out like this.
Sitting with a council full of lessers who were arguing over the right to send their own to a very painful and very brutal death.
How things changed… that and he had his Goddess back, that if Isha of course… his human goddess had always been there and he hoped she hadn't heard that remark. She was number one!
Thank you
He breathed a sigh of relief, crisis averted.
We do have a job that we need to do love
He sent, averting any suspicions that she might have with a bone piece of information.
Hmmmm?
We have to interrogate this… Moon Goddess? The Minds have deemed that we are the most suitable for the task given our… 'organicness' as they say
He caught Hannah smiling from the corner of his eye, good. She wasn't going to be asking any questions about the… thoughts in his mind.
Very good.
Okay, lasers.
Why lasers?
Because they looked pretty awesome Eldrad thought to himself.
No seriously, the one known as Kaguya Ōtsutsuki was surrounded by lasers not because they could actually do anything to her, but because it looked cool.
The Minds had been very emphatic on that point. The interrogation would need to look cool and to work the best and… ugh.
Eldrad sometimes (often times) wondered just why he had led the Eldar to ally themselves to the Minds.
Then he remembered that he wasn't feeling the sensation of an alien God attempting to claw its way into his soul and considered that dealing with… constant insanity was something that wasn't too bad.
Not when compared to the constant screaming and the like that the sensation of being eaten by She Who Thirsts would have had… but it was still irritating to be considered as a lesser by something that thought that throwing bodies (literal) at a mountain in order to see how long it would take to crumble was a worthwhile scientific endeavour.
It was… ugh.
No matter, back to the task at hand… talking to the one known as Kaguya.
From the information that they had received, she had been cloned in the heat of battle with her children, and then sent here while the original was left… to be sealed into her son… okay.
Right.
That was up there with Eldar Mythology that was for sure.
Looking up at her, the figure who was kneeling on the ground and looking rather regal while she did it, Eldrad knew that this was going to be a pain in the ass.
Walking forward (he had been 'volunteered' because of his looks), he stood in front of the room that was surrounded by a rift into the Warp, as in the Minds had localised the Warp and used it as an impenetrable barrier to prevent her getting out, and allowed the Minds to warp him through to the other side. The warp barrier was so agitated that even he would have been torn apart attempting to get through.
"I am Eldrad." He said, looking down at her as she stared impassively up at him, not surprised at all despite the fact that he had been able to enter the room.
"I am Kaguya Ōtsutsuki." She said.
"Do you know why we have brought you here?" He asked, taking a similar position to hers, it was not so different from when he had been trying to divine the future that was for certain.
"No." She said with admirable calm.
Despite the fact that underneath she was raging with extreme anger, confusion, despair, with determination overriding all of them. She was very good at hiding her emotions and her expressions, if it were anyone but an Eldar here they might not have even noticed it. Impressive indeed, he would need to brief the others.
"We have received information that your clan the Ōtsutsuki are planning on attempting to invade the world and we wish for information on what they abilities are so that we may be able to defeat them." Eldrad said without preamble. In the state that she was in, trying to skirt around the issue would only cause for her to become more stubborn and resist their efforts even further.
"Then let me free so that I will destroy them!" She growled, that was new.
"Not possible. It had been some… time since you were brought here and the world is not as you know it to be. Our own are more than capable of handling the situation but assistance from you in terms of knowledge would be appreciated."
She growled at that, face set in anger.
Eldrad sighed, this was going to be a long one.
Stubborn female.
Heard that!
Frak