One fine day at IOU

[telerib]

Club Meeting Schedule
*DelMonte Productions, Room 421, 3pm
*Society for Creative Reconstruction of Historical Water Pipes, Room 421, 3pm
*Campus Defenders, Room 421, 3pm

Hey, it's Administration's job to allocate rooms. Rooms were allocated. You got a problem?

The three characters arrived at Room 421 with rather wildly varying expectations. Rational discussion of what, exactly, was going on was curtailed when Amaranth noticed a camera projecting from the closet. Concealed within the closet was one of her more, ah, persistent admirers from a campus "furry" group. She seized camera and student.

DelMonte, fearing for the student, rushed forward to the rescue. Amaranth got right the hell out of the way of the tentacled creature, which then proceeded to comfort the poor undergrad. The poor undergrad was fairly into it. The camera was destroyed via blaster fire. Captain Cannabis liked the pretty plasma colors.

Then the robotic attack pigeon came crashing through the window, turned, and launched teeny tiny missiles at the Frisbee-sized flying saucers hovering over the Avant Gardens. Undergrad ran into the hall. DelMonte slithered after a short time later. The Captain watched all the pretty colors. Amaranth shot the pigeon, burning away the feathers and revealing a Terminator-like structure underneath. And the saucers prepared to return fire.

Amaranth grabbed the Captain and jumped out the window just before the room exploded in light. Captain Cannabis called out to "his friends, the shrubs" and encouraged them to break their fall - which, strange to say, they did.

Inside, the Robocrat caught up with DelMonte approximately 16.8 seconds after the room was damaged to present him/her/it with the forms that needed to be filled out to adequately document the occurrence. For reasons known only to Robocrat, it picked up the shoggoth-in-a-can and sought out the other students who had been given use of the room - then, despite this apparent knowledge of the schedule, asked for a single "club president." Captain Cannabis, never happy around Administration officials, sought to hide behind his faithful shrubbery - but they were more scared of Robocrat than of him, apparently, and ran off. Having graduated from the Space Patrol's version of ROTC on campus, Amaranth was no stranger to arcane and repetitive paperwork and volunteered to fill the forms out. Mollified, the Robocrat left.

The saucers were gone by then. So the group proceeded to the Avant Gardens, looking for wreckage, munchies, and fish. DelMonte wandered off on his/her/its own, hoping to find fish first (apparently, as love or lust tokens for Amaranth, who expressed an interest in fish).

The Sahudese Gardeners were pumping tobacco juice over one tiny wreck; Captain Cannabis cheerfully offered them hash brownies in an attempt to slow down their incomprehensible, rapid-fire speech. Not only did it not work - high Sahudese prattle on *faster* - they got angry when they realized that he'd fed them an intoxicant hidden in a chewy baked good.

While the gardeners chased the Captain around with the tobacco juice pumps, Amaranth got an up-close look at the saucer wreckage. It was a technology at least as advanced as her own starfighter back home, and so probably not a stray WUSE class project. It looked like it could hold a crew of three very small (hamster-sized, say) creatures. The thing had ports for escape pods, but the pods were... missing!

DelMonte found the koi pond. By it was a lone meep! It meeped in a friendly manner, and DelMonte, affected by its innate cuteness, went over to pick it up and cuddle it. DelMonte forgot that a meep acting in such a manner is about as usual as Bigfoot inviting a photographer in for a documentary feature. The next thing DelMonte knew, he/she/it was somewhere dark and suspended in midair, with something muttering incomprehensible words in an ominous whisper. Finally, he/she/it requested that the speaker "speak up"... which apparently worked! Dr. What-7 suddenly sauntered into view and offered a list of seven pieces of advice, mostly incomprehensible. The only one that made any sense was that DelMonte should go see the ArchDean as soon as possible.

The pair aboveground were searching for traces of either the aliens or the shoggoth, and found the shoggoth's trail first. Jumping down into the hole near the koi pond, they found DelMonte, now slowing settling to earth. Informed of the need for a trip to the ArchDean's, they all climbed out of the hole.

DelMonte finally caught the koi he/she/it was after; it was, unfortunately, an Uplifted talking koi and obviously unfit for consumption, so it was tossed back. The Captain, vaguely looking for munchies, found a coin-operated Zen dispenser, which made everyone feel very Om for a moment. (The Captain actually dug up a second quarter for a second dose of Zen, and that time heard the sound of one hand clapping).

Then, on to the Clock Tower and the ArchDean. This perfectly straightforward operation was interrupted by a scene of campus lockdown! Razorwire leapt up out of the ground, platinum swack dragons lumbered into the skies, sirens blared, the windows of the Clock Tower automatically shuttered themselves with blast plating, and helicopters roared overhead, searchlights sweeping the ground.

All the searchlights suddenly converged on the party. A shadowy figure in the lead helicopter silently gestured for them to go to the Clock Tower.

Seeing as how they were already headed there, the group went.

The ArchDean, in worn battle fatigues (hinted to have previously seen service with either The Sword or War), explained that the pigeons around campus had disappeared during the battle with the saucer - and that after the battle, her cats were missing. The group, having witnessed the initial attack, was enlisted to Find Her Cats. Get Out of Class Free slips were the implied reward, and the group was also given a "hall pass" to enable them to request aid from University officials.

The ArchDean also asked for a report of what happened. It was delivered mostly by Captain Cannabis, who somehow managed to call the ArchDean "dude" very many times and yet still leave the office with all parts intact. DelMonte put in the occassional comment and reported Dr. What-7's advice, and Amaranth offered a brief summary of what she saw in the saucers.

Since the pigeon-bots were under the control of THE Computer, it seemed prudent to check with it first. All THE CS majors were in a state of uncontrolled weeping, tooth-gnashing and hair-pulling when the group arrived at THE Computer's cathedral-like building. The reason for this soon became clear: their idol was unresponsive, stuck in an infinite loop. The only clue left: THE Computer was repeating, over and over again in Morse code:
MARS... NEEDS... PIGEONS. MARS... NEEDS... PIGEONS.