The Declarations

Something was wrong, music-has-stopped-in-a-horror-film wrong. nilbmah was at war with LusciousLocks.

It had almost been a week and the nilbmah scout troop had only just arrived at Lokton, a small town 20 miles from the nilbmah-LusciousLocks border. The peculiar dark mist that cloaked LusciousLocks kept the nilbmah military in the dark as to the activities within the nation. So they sent in spy planes that all mysteriously disappeared; everything appeared fine and then they lost radio contact never to hear from them again. So the army was sent in, but the recent and frankly supernatural exponential increase in the density of the forest had completely overtaken the road and the scout troop inched along.

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nilbmah was still not at war, perhaps even farther from it now than ever. The magistrate was a knocked over hornets’ hive. But he only had himself to blame and he knew it which made him all the more enraged. Impatient with the political road blocks to war (even with 95% of the politburo in favor, the bureaucracy of repealing the requirement of blood shed for the declaration of war was time-gorging), the magistrate took the reigns and pulled his puppet president to call a referendum to enact a state of emergency, which would allow him to sidestep into war. Unfortunately for the magistrate, while he had nilbmahian politicians in his pocket, he did not hold the strings to the nilbmahian people.

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The troop was small, 20 members, and apart from a nasty patch of hidden briars, their trip to Lokton had been uneventful, just slow. They essentially had to cut their way through the woods to get to the city and they didn’t even get a whiff of the beasts that welcomed isa and winfry to the woods. But what was waiting for them in Lokton was perhaps more terrifying.

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In spite of their support for war, nilbmahians were skeptical of the state of emergency. Sure every nilbmahian in the 6th grade could tell you the state of emergency was the 1st amendment of the nilbmah constitution and that it probably saved the budding nation in its 3rd decade of existence. However, nilbmah’s pride towards the state of emergency during the plague of retro-virus HIL was a historic romanticism. They loved that their foreparents had done it but they would never do it now. While nilbmahs would give up their money and their labor to the government, they had grown too attached to their say in government actions to give that up. That was something the magistrate hadn’t quite understood. So even with the nilbmah post rooting for the state of emergency, only 26% of the population was fooled. The referendum was a flop and the magistrate was livid.

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After being lumberjacks for five days it was slightly relieving to see Lokton appear behind a wall of trees, but it was also an anxiety spike. This was the first time that any nation (except for Foggistan but you couldn’t really trust those pretentious pricks) had contact with LusciousLocks since they went catatonic and the black mist seeped in. The plan was to scope out the town and find out what was going on. Before entering LusciousLocks, the bigwigs labored over how the troop should approach Lokton without being noticed and hide out until the rest of the nilbmah forces could arrive. The plan and the protocol kept the troops calm. It gave them an illusion of control which they were glad to grab hold of. However, their arrival at Lokton snatched the plan away and their background music came to an eerie halt.

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It was time for jacob to pounce. The magistrate had finally lost some of his footing opening him up for a jab. While the magistrate was terribly elusive, mr. martin, with all his ins and outs, could have easily been director of intelligence for the nis. Even so, he wasn’t able to dig up much. The magistrate owned or at least had private access to three condos, an apartment building and four hotel rooms (all of which were paid from banking accounts in landers name), but there was no evidence to suggest he resided at any of them. jacob suspected the magistrate didn’t sleep for days at a time but there wasn’t any evidence for that either. jacob had an extensive inventory of everything in all these places but nothing on the list was particularly useful. In spite of all this prying, his biggest lead came after he took a page out of his friend winfry winster’s book and visited the library.

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It was immediately apparent that Lokton was abandoned. And that shouldn’t have been so surprising in and of and by itself, but there were no signs that anyone had left except that no one was there. The hovercraft were still parked on the street, the public tram was still running on automatic schedule, the video boards were still touting the wonders of the new ArrowMae conditioner for “luscier locks”. But just to confirm the town was truly abandon, the troop spent the day watching the town like a herd of hawks. As every hour slipped past the troop with no sign of life, the questions buzzed in their ears like a wasp they couldn’t shake. How did the people leave without their hovercraft? Why would such eco-friendly people leave on the city power? Where did they go? Why would they go? Lokton was a ghost town and the questions were haunting them.

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Before winfry had gone into exile (jacob was sure his friend wouldn’t have stayed in nilbmah; he had too many foreign connections for that.), winfry and jacob had numerous conversations about the unusual occurrences around the world: the black band on Styx, the Foggistani fleet, the absurdity in LusciousLocks and nilbmah’s role in the mess. They both agreed this would be a turning point in history and that nilbmah, with the right guidance (their guidance), could possible wind its way to the top. But that was a long time ago and where was his friend now? Jumped ship with a hot chick. That’s where. But that wasn’t really the point. The point was that winfry told him that all the paranormal activity was very similar to some of the accounts of the fall of Breckinridge. A review of the history and myths sections in the library proved winfry correct. Why was jacob still upset about winfry leaving?

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The troop decided to spend another night in the woods and wait until morning to explore Lokton. The troop went off in groups of two to explore every street of the city. Except for a foreign emporium with excellent cejambastanian manistinis they didn’t find anything of interest until the afternoon when the troop met at the town’s southern square. After a half hour reporting what each pair found, one of the troop noticed it. Like the picture of the young lady that transforms into hag when you notice the necklace looks like a mouth, the plaza took on a new darkness when one of the troop commented on how surprisingly clean the plaza was. It must have cleaned right before the town left and not just a normal street cleaning but the deluxe-super-sparkle. But it was just the plaza and the road that led out of town that had been cleaned. All the other entrances were just as dusty as the rest of the city. What’s more, the shops on the southern side of the plaza had new windows. This was a bit suspicious and with nothing better to do the captain of the troop order a search of all the buildings around the plaza. When they found that all the March 23rd security tapes were missing in all of the shops around the plaza, the search became a full out criminal investigation. And that was when globe began to tip off the shelf.

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mr. martin could solve the magistrate’s referendum fiasco but he had a price. Eventually war would be declared, that was still inevitable, but the referendum had dramatically decreased nilbmahian enthusiasm for war. The blindfold of passion slipped a half a centimeter. martin could tie back the blind fold even tighter but the magistrate would have to let him see freely. With his research at the library he was nearly certain that he saw past the magistrate’s veil of elusion, he just needed to confirm he had discovered the necklace that transformed the magistrate into a monster.

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Within the first hour, the troop found many pieces of incriminating evidence. They discovered carefully concealed re-plastering in the walls of the southern shops and three bullets hiding under low cabinets. Something terrible had certainly happened in that plaza. Something terrible enough to cause everyone to vanish. But even after 4 hours of intensive investigate, they had no clue what had happened. But then they found a video recording that sent the globe spinning of the shelf.

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jacob had conjured up a death. isa's death. When they first met, jacob, as was his custom, looked up her political file and realized it had been tamper with and when he was in nighline for his first warmongering article, he found her grave with her body in the coffin. Yeah, very creepy but we don’t have time for that right now. So jacob once again dug up isa’s body and used it to frame LusciousLocks with blood on their hands in article that was about to go to press if the magistrate answered his questions. And if the magistrate refused, a second already-printed-article explaining the truth about the original warmongering article would be released. And that’s exactly what jacob told the magistrate when he finally returned to room #1203 in the corrison hotel. After a dramatic-as-always pause, the magistrate told him to ask away. “Is Assmachestan responsible for recent activity in LusciousLocks and Styx and are you an Assmachestani agent?”

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They found the now infamous tape hidden in a one-way-mirrored safe on a window desk over-looking the plaza. The four hour tape showed how batches of the citizens of Lokton were marched into the plaza and put into transportcraft at gun point. And the last hour of the tape showed how the last batch of citizens resisted at the southern end of the plaza and were brutally shot by the Foggistani forces leading the operation. Within 5 hours of the discovery of the tape, the multinational force on the edge of LusciousLocks declared war with Foggistan.

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“That was shockingly quick, mr. martin.” Even this question didn’t seem to faze the magistrate. At least he took even longer than normal to answer. “Yes, mr. martin,” and then his voice went into its eerie shouting-whisper, “WE ARE ASSMACHESTAN AND WE ARE BACK.”