[GALLERY] The Abominable Snow Mobster's Abominable Stuff

[English Mobster]

Hi there.
Vidya Games:
Domain:

Max:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/hole-1.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/evacuate.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/doors-4.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/dome.jpg
Ingame:
http://hce.halomaps.org/images/users/lg/B1D1C720-96A6-4970-85986E536165CADD.JPG
http://hce.halomaps.org/images/users/lg/D93617D0-4938-46AD-9EDE6D21D95EE674.JPG
http://hce.halomaps.org/images/users/lg/614DC99D-0986-4E11-9FF2910AB3515EB5.JPG
http://hce.halomaps.org/images/users/lg/9ABDF027-E364-4EC8-912F03CCB20CCFF0.JPG
http://hce.halomaps.org/images/users/lg/4B9C206A-8DB2-4F28-A19249954651307B.JPG
Download:
http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=4682
Gridlock:

Please note these are all WIP and thus I'm still tweaking UVWs and such.
Max:
Old model:http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/escalators-4.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/gridlock_render_1-6.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/trainstation-5.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/westgate-4.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarks-1.jpg
Remodel:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/westgatenormal-1.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/westgateclay-1.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarksnormal.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarks-3.jpg
Ingame:
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/e08de658f5b054ca88a4005e76eb9fe465494c72.png
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/d031f494660f56765de3630e943bdd334f2b041d.png
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/9d5a56805b3afd12db12f8744d5b4b880657bdda.png
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/7a2e0bc9f477e302ae0832bfcdf1a394e813f4aa.png
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/0e95caa496695eb775c553e3fc555e86b52709fe.png
Omen (Dead, for now):
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/omenconcept.png
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/bluebasebeachhead.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/redbasewateroverhang.jpg
Hi-Res Ghost:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/ghost2-1.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/ghost3.jpg
Russian SU-47 Experimental Fighter Jet:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/SU-47-1-nonclay-2.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/SU-47-1-clay.jpg

Photoshoops:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/muslim_WoW.jpg

Literature (See next post, including this made me go 5,002 characters over the limit, and everyone's going to go tl;dr anyway):

IRL:
Model Railroad:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/layout-2.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3180338.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3180340.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3180342.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3180344.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3240966.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3240967.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3240968.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3250975.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P4010362.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P3310346.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P4010361.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/0403092051.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/0403092051a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/0403092051b.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/0403092059.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P5070220.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P5070219.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/P5070218.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091437.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091437a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091437b.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091439.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091439a.jpg

Oh, hello there.
hr7sqw7cLsM

Some recent news:




I was at what essentially amounts to a model train swap meet in the Ontario Convention Center (in Ontario, CA, the convention center is just a few blocks from my house, actually), from which I acquired 2 new engines: a Santa Fe Dash 8 (the red engine in the video above) and a Santa Fe GP-50 to complement my OTHER Santa Fe SD-40. The GP-50/SD-40 team will eventually be used for light freight duty and switching coal cars at the coal yard; the Dash 8 will be used for heavy jobs like pulling coal or container trains. And yes, I WILL repaint some of the train cars and make them TF2 colors with "Red" and "Blu" on them, just because I'm cool like that. Look at the TF2 train prefabs in Hammer to see what I'm talking about.
Since my last update, I have been working on the technical side of things. This means working out the bugs and working with electricity. Lots of working with electricity. Electricity is fun for your body and for your soul. Electricity loves you.



And I didn't forget pictures.
NEW TRAINZZZZZ:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091621.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091621a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091624a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091638.jpg
(GAAAAAH INSTRUCTIONS)
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091633.jpg
AND TINY PARTS TO WORK WITH :gonk:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091624.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091629.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091629a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091630.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091638a.jpg
Train car loaded with nails for trackwork on-the-go = :iamafag:

And let's take a look under the hood:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091639.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091639a.jpg
Every little bit of track is now wired up and ready to go. The train now has very little issues getting to any place on the entire layout; although the switch to the coal yard needs to be replaced (it causes a shitload of derailments).

[English Mobster]

Literature (Spread out over the next couple posts to allow for the addition of more as I write them):
The Army of Idiots (Incomplete) (Winner of "Douglas Adams Award for Sheer Madness" in HBO's Fic Pick of the Week! (http://hboff.bungie.org/viewtopic.php?t=6301))
Chapter I:
The Beginning
The attack had begun.

Stepping swiftly from the Pelican dropships they had just flown in on onto the beach, the marines got ready for their ground assault. Two armored jeeps, nicknamed “Warthogs” and driven by the best drivers in the unit, exited the Pelicans and waited for orders from their commander.

The enemy knew they were coming; no one for miles around could have missed the sound of their insertion Pelicans. Right about now, soldiers were running about, grabbing weapons or possibly just climbing out of their bunks.

The base they were launching an assault on was just an entry point into enemy territory. It was an abandoned, decades-old power plant, humanity’s first major attempt at a viable wind-powered power generator. The idea was, instead of having many small-output miniature wind power generators, you could build just one, giant fan, powered mostly by the wind, but utilizing some nuclear reactors for additional power. In reality, the fan didn’t actually do much, and the plant almost completely relied on the nuclear reactors. The environmental groups bought the fact that it was an eco-friendly power plant at first, but quickly turned against it once they realized it was really just a massive cover-up scheme for more nuclear power plants. After years of protest, the reactors were shut down and the facility fell into neglect. Now the plant is just a pile of ruins on a shark-infested beach, but, if taken, it could be the biggest stronghold they had as they marched off to victory.

No one really knew WHY either side was fighting. It was probably something along the lines of the world military government of the United Nations Space Command not giving up their wartime governing powers or something like that. I really don’t think anyone actually KNEW, should you ask them. They just liked to fight over stupid things for stupid reasons. It seemed all humans were that way.

On the beach, the air was tense with the anticipation of battle. They had many of their best soldiers standing on the beach, waiting. There was no way the enemy, codenamed "blue", could withstand their attack.

Unless... Unless the enemy had their best soldier, one who never lost a single battle.

Little did they know that soldier was stationed at this outpost.

He has killed millions, and once won a battle single-handedly, outnumbered 300 to one. They said that he ate bullets for breakfast, nails for lunch, and bad Chuck Norris jokes for dinner. There was no stopping him once he started fighting. It was almost as if he had some sort of "health bar" they didn't, because it seemed that he could take dozens of bullets without dying, then simply duck behind a piece of scenery for a few seconds and come back out as if he had just stopped to tie his shoes. His movements were so fluid, it's almost as if he had some sort of device that could control his movements from afar, a "controller" of sorts, and the operator was somewhere far, far away, watching from a TV screen in his living room. Some said he had hacks and cheat codes, granting him superhuman abilities. The rest looked at those some funny and slowly backed away, because there were no hacks nor cheat codes to real life, those were only found in videogames. And even if there were hacks in real life, you'd have to hack your life console to get them, and that voided the warranty. And no one wanted to void their warranty, because what if your life console broke? You'd have to send it back to God, and then he'd tell you that he can't fix it because you voided the warranty. The only one he ever fixed a life console for was for his best buddy, some guy named "Jesus" or something. That was screwed up, man. Fix it for the rest of us, too, don't play favorites because he's your BFF or boyfriend or something. Anyway, while some rumored that that soldier used hacks, obviously, he couldn't, or else he would void his warranty, and God would bring down the banhammer on him faster than you could say OMFG YOU HAXOR!!!!1111one. And being banned from life sucks. But I digress.

Unfortunately, Blue team's one awesome soldier of awesomeness was currently on vacation.

His replacement, named Bob Guy, was a noteworthy one. He had skills that were unbelievable. He was so good that... Pfft- That... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Who are we kidding? He was the worst shot in history.

As the other team got ready for their assault, Bob was already ready for action. He looked around, as if searching for something, like a voice in the room that didn't have a person to match it. And it was talking about him, describing his every movement, condemning him, making fun of him in a very narrator-ish tone.

"COMMANDER! THE VOICES IN THE SKY ARE TALKING TO ME AGAIN!" Bob said.

His commander, supervising troops in the dark grey command center of the power facility as they prepared for combat, replied, "Just ignore them, Bob, and they'll go away."

"Ok. Mr. Voice, can you go bother someone else?" Bob asked.

There was silence, as the narrator voice didn't have a reply. He simply narrated what was going on around him; it was his job, he must do it, and as such there was no going away for him.

"Commander! The voice says he doesn't have a reply, then said that he wasn‘t going to go away!"

The commander yelled from the other room, "Bob. Ignore it. It'll go away soon."

After saying this, Bob’s commander whispered something into the ear of one of the soldiers, and then walked over to speak to Bob.

"We're losing men, fast. I would send you out there, but you have... Special needs."

"That's what my mommy told me!" Bob said, a bright and vibrant smile on his face.

The commander paused. "We need you, though."
"Need me for what?"

"We need you to stay the hell out of everyone's wa-” The commander started, then rethought what he was about to say.

“I mean, we need you to watch the base,” the commander said. “I'm going to have to go out there. I have to leave you in charge of the base, but whatever you do, do NOT hit that button right next to you."

Bob looked around for the button, and then found it next to a large display, which was, in turn, next to him. The display, formerly used to monitor the power the generator put out, now had been reprogrammed to operate everything in the base. Like most UNSC tech, it ran Windows 2500, an operating system which still thoroughly sucked, but was better than anything else out there. Little had changed in 500 years; it still got the blue screen of death on a regular basis. The date on the Start Menu read July 2555.
Below the monitor, there was a red button with an extra-large sticky note on it. Above the button, it read: “CAUTION: SELF-DESTRUCT”.

"The red one with the BIG sticky note which reads 'DO NOT PRESS THIS, BOB' written on it?" Bob inquired.
"Yes, that one. Do you understand?"
"Yep!"
"I need you to repeat what I said, Bob. What did I say?"
"I need you to repeat what I said, Bob, what did I-"
"NO, NO, NOT that!"
"NO, NO, NOT that!"
"Repeat what I said the first time."
"Repeat what I said the first time."
"Repeat this: NEVER hit that button next to you."
"NEVER hit French toast before bed."

The commander paused and sighed. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with Bob this way.
"Umm... Yeah. Let's go with that. I'm going to back away slowly, and you're NOT going to hit that button."
"OK!"

And, with that, the commander slowly backed off and left Bob alone.

Bob's tiny mind struggled with the difficult order his commander had given him.
"Never hit French toast before bed?" He said to himself, "I can do that. Ooooh... What's this shiny red button thingy? Do... Nut... Press... This... Bob... Donut press this Bob? IF I HIT THIS, I GET A DONUT? Sweet."

And, with that, Bob pressed the button. Suddenly, he remembered the first lesson his mom taught him: Pressing shiny red buttons in the hope of getting a donut was bad. VERY bad.
"I didn't hit the button," he said, trying to reassure himself. "My finger did."

Just then, a sultry female voice echoed through the halls, coming over the loudspeakers. It had just a slight metallic tinge to it, enough to remind you that there was not actually any girls present in the facility and that this was just a computer talking. The entire fiasco was actually rather depressing.

"This base will self-destruct in 60 seconds. Free coffee is available in the command center if needed. Have a spectacular day."

"That lady is very nice," Bob said, "she wants me to have a spectacular day! HAVE A SPECTACULAR DAY, TOO, NICE LADY!"

Windows 2550 suddenly got the blue screen of death.

Bob then calmly left through the main entrance and casually strolled past the intense firefight that was occurring between his team and the enemy. Both teams were pinned down in a side generator structure, in ruins now, which used to be used as a place to temporarily store the windmill’s power before funneling it to the main structure, the place where Bob had just hit a shiny red button.

"See ya later, Commander!" Bob said, casually strolling past the battle.

The commander turned, saw Bob, and waved. "Bye, Bob! Wait... Bob! I need you! Come back!"

Bob stopped and paused.

"I think it's very sweet that you feel that way towards me, but I prefer my relations with women."

"Bob! Come back! This is insubordination!"
"I really don't care about the 'in' status of whatever the hell subordination is, but I do agree, that 'subordination' outfit looks very good on you."

And, with that, Bob hopped in one of the now-empty enemy Warthog jeeps and drove off.
Surprisingly, no one shot at Bob, possibly because half of the other team had died of laughter, and the other half couldn't stop laughing long enough to hold their guns steady. Blue team was about to make short work of them when C4, buried in strategic locations around the building (if by strategic you mean that people decided to stuff it everywhere it could fit), went off on a timed explosion set off by a red button sixty seconds beforehand.

The only survivor was Bob, driving casually out of the explosion, going off to visit his old friend Ian in the next camp. He was stopped by military police, who wondered why the first thing he asked is where were the donuts he was promised. After they learned what he had done, they decided to take him off to the general of the area, but almost decided to shoot him anyway because he wouldn't stop asking if they were there yet.

A short while later, Bob was in a bright white room. Most of the lights were off, except for one very bright one shining down on Bob, who was sitting Indian-style on the ground in front of the highest-ranking official of the area.

"...You were responsible for the loss of ALL OF B COMPANY!" The general said.
Bob took his finger out of his nose and stuck it into the air. "I wasn't. My finger was."
The general was, at first, taken aback by this comment. Who in the right mind would backtalk like that to a general? Then he realized he was talking to an idiot.
“I cannot let this go unpunished. I am going to send you to noo- Err... N company." He allowed a little sarcasm into his voice. “It’s the absolute FINEST out of all of the companies under my command!”
"Will I be able to meet some new friends?"
The commander paused for a moment. "Yes, yes you will."

Bob‘s eyes suddenly lit up. "Awesome! Will I get a mouse? I‘ve always wanted one! Can I get one, please? A widdle white one! It‘ll be sooo cute, and I‘ll play with it every day, and give it all the cheese it will ever want! So, can I get one, pleaaaase?"
“No."
"Can I get a cute widdle pony then?"
"No."
"Pweaaaase?"
"No."
"Just one widdle white mouse? I'll name him Mister Squeaky, and he will be MY MISTER SQUEAKY, forever and ever and ever!"
"No. Take him away."
"Take who away? DON’T TAKE AWAY MISTER SQUEAKY! NOT MY MISTER SQUEAKY! NOOOOOO!!!"

Suddenly, two uniformed guards burst through the door, picked up Bob, and carried him off. As he went down the hallway to the van that was waiting to carry him off to his new desert outpost, he could be heard shouting, "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"




They called it Blood Gulch for a reason. There were two bases; each had been taken by a small company for each team. This is where each team set their rejects, as the territory didn‘t really matter anyway.

The reason why it was named Blood Gulch was because no blood is ever spilled there.

Coincidentally, both the companies sent in by each team were given the designation “N” company, and the same joke was going around both teams that the “N” stood for noob, standard UNSC computer slang for moron. Secretly, the N really DID stand for noob, but the official statement issued by each team’s command center said it was just an unfortunate naming coincidence, and not, by any means, a name that implied the very low skill level of whoever was unfortunate enough to be sent to the company. The only people who actually believed this statement were the people of N company.

The blues had managed to secure one of the two bases in the canyon, the other team, codenamed "Red", the other. Each base existed because there was a base on the other side of the canyon. It was a box canyon in the middle of nowhere; no one cared if the other team actually ever CAPTURED the other base. It was just a place to send their rejects.

And the Blue's commander, Commander Pie, was just another reject. He worked his way up the ranks by proving his worth in the simulators. But, when he was called upon to fight, he always lost, with most, if not all of his team, wiped out in a “Unfortunate grenade incident” or “Unfortunate bullet wounds” or “Unfortunate jeep crash where the jeep the Commander was driving drove most of the company off the edge of a 500 foot cliff, barely escaping his own death by a well-timed bailout”. The Commander had never won an actual battle in his life. But, even when he was demoted, he still tried to order people around. So, in frustration, they promoted him back to Commander and sent him to command N company. And this commander was about to get the new recruit Command had been promising him.

Pie stood outside his base, watching as a military jeep drove up, threw Bob out by the seat of his pants, and then drove off. Pie extended his hand.
"Hello Bob, welcome to N company."
Bob looked at his hand, confused. "What does the N stand for?"
Pie kept his hand extended, waiting. "Don't ask."
Finally, Bob spit on Pie‘s hand and looked up at Pie, satisfied. "Don't Ask doesn't start with N."

Pie stared at his hand, and then dried it off on his pants. "It's not 'Don't Ask'."
"Then what is it?"
"OK, it's a French word, pronounced 'Nub'. Most people go and say 'Noob', but that's butchering the name. Completely butchering it."
"You sure that's French?"
"Of course I'm sure! I was at the top of the bottom of my class in French! Bon-jor Mouse-your! That's French."
"French for what?"
"I don't really know."
Bob got a vacant look on his face, and then said gloatingly, "I learned something today."

Pie took Bob to the main room of the base. It was brightly lit, with standard-issue military-cliché grey plating on the floors, with concrete walls and ceiling. In one corner was an obviously smart man, in his late twenties or maybe early thirties, who was playing with a small metal replica of an F-16. You never were too old to play with toys.

In the other corner was someone who looked like a bum. Somehow, he managed to tear up his barely-worn dress uniform, and he looked as if he hadn't shaved his entire life. Maybe he was afraid to.

Pie lead Bob in and started to make with the introductions.

"Anyway, here are your squad-mates. This here is Kyle Andross. We call him 'Flyboy' or 'Fly', mainly because he meant to check the 'Air Force' box when he signed up for the Army, but he checked 'Marines' by accident. It was sad."
"Hey Fly."
"Hey."

Pie continued: "Next, we have Joe. Joe was a Hobo who was drafted during the last war. Since he always insists on wearing ripped clothes EVERYWHERE, we call him Torn."
"How are ya, Torn?"
"Well, I'm-" Torn started.
Bob cut him off. "That's nice."

"And finally, we have me, Apple Pie, Commander of the finest company in this god-forsaken canyon."
"Your name is Apple Pie?" Bob asked.
"It's an Irish name."
"It is?"
"No. I had two idiot parents who thought they were being funny."
"Oh."

"Anyway, everyone, off to your posts! Flyboy, go draw up attack plans. Torn, guard the entryway from the reds. Bob... Umm... Protect Flyboy. I'll be in my cabin reading the articles from Playboy magazine. Don't disturb me."

Pie walked off to his cabin, and everyone went about to do their duties. As he went, Flyboy shook his head and muttered under his breath, "Nobody ever just ‘reads the articles’..."

Chapter II:
That Part That Comes After the Beginning
Flyboy sat at his desk, the pencil furiously flying across his paper. Bob, who was at attention behind him, finally couldn't stand being a silent guardian anymore.
"Whatcha doing Fly?"
"Drawing up plans to go capture the red's flag."
"Someone on the Red team has a fag?"
"No, the Flag. We want it."
"Why do we want a fag? Unless... Flyboy... No..." Bob had a stunned look on his face. "You're not gay, right? Because I thought my last Commander was straight, but a comment he made to me right as I was leaving revealed his true feelings for me and made me HIGHLY uncomfortable."
"I'm straight. Sometimes, I steal Pie's Playboy magazines and do things while looking at them."
"What kind of things?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Well, now I’m curious.”
“Naughty things.”
“Oh. But why do you want to kidnap the red team's fag?"
"THE FLAG."
"Oh, the flag." There was a pause, a moment of silence where you could hear a pin drop, or a Zombie apocalypse virus spreading, or maybe even the distant thunderclap of a team of ninjas being unleashed upon a pirate ship which was sailing on the seven seas. Finally, Bob went on: "What flag?"

Flyboy turned his office chair around to point at a large tattered blue flag, emblazoned with a giant "N".

"See this flag? Torn used it as a blanket for a little bit, but the reds have one just like it. We want to capture that Red flag and take it back here."
"If they have one just like it, why do we need it?"
"Because... Well... IT'S THE FLAG!"
"But we already have one."
"It's a sign we captured their base or something. If we get it, then they have to surrender. That's the way it works."
"What if they don't surrender?"
Flyboy let out a frustrated sigh. "Go bother Torn or something."

Across the box canyon, in the red base, the red team's commander, Nate, was fixing an ATV. It had been making funny squeaky noises for the past few days when he pushed it around, and he had no clue why. There was a mouse that had made a home in the suspension, but Nate hadn't figured that out yet. He had a companion, George "Ducky" Montague, who earned his nickname when he was in basic training by refusing to get out of the pool unless he was ordered to several times. Not surprisingly, the first place he was sent was here, to red team's "N" Company. Inside the red base were the other two members of "N" company: Puma and Cake.
Puma's real name was Pu Ma. He was Chinese and served his function as the base’s stereotypical computer genius. The sounds of him hammering his palms on his computer’s keyboard were audible from anywhere in the base. Females tended to shy away from him due to the odors emanating from his armpits, and consequently, late at night, the sound of him hammering on his keyboard was replaced by a different kind of hammering.
Cake's real name was Vanilla Cake. He was Pie's cousin, and both their twin mothers had a sad sense of humor. Growing up, Cake and Pie had always hated each other’s guts. In fact, if he could, Cake would have murdered him and used his entrails as party favors.
When he heard what side of the war Pie was fighting on, he immediately joined the other side, just so he could get the chance to finally fulfill his dream.
"Nate, can I drive now?" Ducky pestered,
"No." Nate insisted.
"Now?"
"No."
"What about now?"
"NO."
"Now?"
"Ducky, if you ask ONE more time, I will get that Rocket Launcher we have in the base, and I will fire it at point-blank range at your face."
"What if I duck and you miss your shot?"
"It has 2 shots in it."
"But you'll kill yourself."
"You'll die, too, so it'll be worth it."
"What will Puma and Cake do?"
"The exact same thing they're doing now. What are they doing now?"
Ducky tilted back a little bit so he could see inside the base, which had pretty much the exact same style as the blue base, except with a few more red colored lights.
"Doing a pole dance with the flag." Ducky replied.
"WHAT?"
A smile slowly started to creep onto Ducky's face, but he managed to stifle it before it became too noticeable. "I think they're running a strip club."
Nate got out from under the ATV and stormed off towards the base. "Alright, I'm going in there to stop this."
After he was inside finding out that there was no pole dancing going on, Ducky crept over to the ATV and started it up.
"YAY!"

And, with that, Ducky went on a joyride across the canyon.

Nate came back out of the base, angry as to why the other members of the team lied to him, saying that they weren't doing anything like that; when he trusted Ducky's word enough to know they were. Actually, he didn't trust Ducky at all, he just wanted an excuse to give them punishment.

"No they aren't. Ducky? Ducky? Where'd you go? Oh well, time to get back to working on the..." Nate then realized what Ducky's true motives were. What he didn't realize is that because of Ducky's actions, there was now one more mouse in heaven. "DUCKY!!"

Nate went inside to grab their experimental laser-type weapon, the Anti-Vehicle Model 6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle, as it said in the instructions which had come with it. He had been meaning to test their new weapon, which he affectionately called the "Big Shiny Laser Beam". He had named it himself, and was quite proud of the very original name he had come up for it.
He set the sights on one of his marines, riding around the canyon, humming the song "William Tell" while going on a joyride with his new ATV. Poor Ducky couldn't figure out why the squeaking had stopped though; maybe Nate fixed it. He was sad, because he was getting attached to the little squeaky noise, it was almost like getting the pet mouse he always wanted, except you can't really take care of or play with a noise like you can a mouse.
"This'll teach him to mess with me..." Nate said, as he slowly charged up the battery in his laser. "Hey, Ducky! IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER!"

At this obscure internet reference, Ducky perked up. Then he saw a little patch of flowers next to him.
"OH LOOK! A FLOWER!" Ducky rushed off his ATV and ran to the flower garden. As he did so, Nate let out a cry of "SHOOP DA WHOOP!" and a laser fired across the canyon, destroying the ATV and leaving a scorching mark on the ground.
Puma, meanwhile, put his face in the palm of his hand.

"OH MY GOD!" Ducky cried, "A BUNNY!" Then, oblivious to the destroyed and smoldering hulk of what was formerly a military ATV, he ran over to play with a little white bunny rabbit hopping around on the other side. And oh, how much fun they had for the thirty seconds they knew each other! That bunny was Ducky's new best friend, the companion he always wished he had. That is, until Nate fired another shot, narrowly missing Ducky, but hitting his poor, poor little white companion, killing it instantly.

"NOOOOOOOO! MR. BUBBLES!" Ducky lamented for the loss of his friend, and he immediately ran off crying towards red base. Nate, out of battery for his laser, decided to go back inside to put it on the charger.

As Ducky ran towards red base, he ran into Bob, who was taking a brisk jog around the canyon, which he was told would build his muscles, but was really just to leave everyone alone.
"Hey Ducky! Long time, no see!" Bob said.
"Oh, hey Bob. I lost my best friend today to a superheated laser shot."
"Sorry to hear that. That's how I lost my pet turtle. Poor, poor Speedy." A tear formed in Bob's eye. "Anyway, before I start to break down and cry, any plans coming up?"
"Yeah, my teammates are going to take a fag somewhere."
"Whoa, that sounds awesome!"
"Yeah... But I'm a little homophobic. No real reason for it... Its just they creep me out. Except the lesbians. God, I hope that by fag, they mean a lesbian. A HOT lesbian. That would be SO AWESOME. Except you know they'll never have any attraction to you, so it's pointless to even try, but they're hot anyway. Unless they have a unibrow. Or if they’re fat."
"Yeah. Anyway, I got to go. See ya later, Ducky!"
Pie was on guard duty outside the base when Bob ran up to him.
Bob, slightly out of breath from his brisk jog, said, "Pie! I heard the reds say that they're taking a fag somewhere!"
"What? And why aren't you leaving all of us alon- I mean, going for a nice jog?"
"I said, the reds are going to take a fag somewhere! And I got tired of jogging, it's exercise! I don't like exercise."
"So the reds are going to take a fag somewhere. Riiight. How about you go ask them? If they let you live, maybe we can follow them."
"Wow, that sounds like a great idea!"
"I think so too, Bob. I think so, too."

Nate had a feeling he was going to have an unexpected visitor. He didn't know why; he just KNEW. This is why his initial reaction wasn’t to fire the shotgun he was holding when a stranger in the blue’s armor walked up to him.
"Hey, where are you guys taking the fag?" Bob asked.
"The what?"
"The fag."
"We have a fag?" Immediately, thoughts of his worst fears confirmed went through his head: He was trapped in a base full of gay guys. Then he realized that the reason this stranger was in the blue's armor was because he was on blue. He thought about shooting him... But that was too easy. "But I DO know that we'll be in Sniper Country soon."
"Oh, thanks."
"No problem." Nate said, watching as Private Bob Guy left across the box canyon, going off to tell Pie of his news. “Idiot.”



Sniper Country was a barren, desolate place. They say that when God was making the Earth all those years ago, Sniper Country was one of the last places He made. In fact, God was so thoroughly tired of making things by this time that He just said, “Screw it.” And thus Sniper Country was born: Miles upon miles of God-forsaken desert, with two gigantic mesas stretching up on either side. Blue had carved out one mesa and converted it into a system of tunnels which functioned as a base for the Blue team, the reds the other. Each side existed only because the other side was there (like most places in this damn war), and both sides constantly had snipers just sitting there, watching the broad expanse of desert and waiting for someone wearing different armor to venture out of their hole.

Naturally, according to standard naming procedure, both divisions were given the designation of “S” division, meaning “Sniper”. The usefulness of not naming divisions based off of their purpose had been lost over the years.
There was a common saying about sniper country, a proverb of sorts: “Like trying to bring a shotgun to Sniper Country.” In accordance with the saying, Bob and Pie each arrived at the place where the red team’s fag was to be held armed only with their shotguns.
Bob thought this was a grand idea.

The Warthog jeep they were in paused for just a moment in the middle of the broad expanse of desert. A seemingly random bridge just was… There, in the middle of the desert, and Pie directed his full concentration on the bridge, as if he were going to destroy it with only his mind.
After a long silence, Pie finally spoke. “I think I see a red.”
Bob quickly stared at the bridge as well. “I don’t see anything.”
“Keep looking.” Both of them stared at the bridge even more intently than before, as if focusing all their destructive energies upon that bridge itself. “Bob, get out and check.”
Bob whined like a ten-year-old who had just been asked to clean his room. “But whhhhhhhhhhyyyyy?”
Pie’s unflinching gaze was directed fully onto Bob. “That’s an order.”

Bob sighed as he slowly climbed out, the same ten-year-old angst put into each one of his movements. He began to scan the area and advance towards where Pie ordered him to when fifty separate sniper bullets hit his chest from all angles.
Somehow, his body survived intact and he fell to the floor.

Pie finally stopped staring off into the distance. “I guess that it was just a fox. C’mon, Bob, get up, stop being such a lazy bum and get back in.”
“I can’t.” Bob groaned.
“Why not?”
“My legs don’t work anymore.”
Pie sighed in frustration. “Don’t be stupid. You got shot in the chest, not your legs. Your legs should work fine.”
“Did you SEE the number of bullets that hit me? It’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

Pie was taken aback; Bob was actually using logic for one time in his life. “Alright,” he said reluctantly, “I’ll go get you some help.”
In a cloud of dust, the Warthog spun its tires and headed off into the distance.


Back at Blood Gulch, the Red team received a knock on their door. Nate opened the door slowly to reveal a mercenary, clad from head to toe in midnight black armor (midnight blue was sold out), with the only slight variation coming from the silver shine of the helmet’s visor.
“Inferno here, at your service,” said the mercenary, “Pyromaniac and heavy weapons specialist.”
Nate was most pleased that the mercenary he had ordered off of ineedaweapon.com had arrived.

“Did you bring the mech?”
“The Mythos is parked out back, as per your request. We are loaded up with 700 high-energy anti-matter charges and ready to go.”
“Good,” Nate said, smiling, “Warm her up. I have our first target.”

A lone Warthog once again tore through the barren wastelands of Sniper Country. Once again, it was only occupied by two people: Pie in the driver’s seat and Flyboy in the passenger. Torn was left back home to watch over the base.
“And so, after the flying monkeys attacked us, we-“
“SHUT UP AND TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO BOB!”
“Fine, fine. He’s over there, by that funny and pointless bridge to nowhere.” Pie said, stopping the ‘Hog next to Bob’s body.

Flyboy rushed out and felt for a pulse. “It’s no use. Bob’s dead. Kaput. Gone. Poof.”
“That-”
“Missing. Gone forever.”
“Tha-”
“On the other side. No longer with us.”
“Th-”
“Slaughtered by the many bullets of an angry and wrathful God, never again to walk among the living!” Flyboy screamed, voice rising in intensity as he did so.
Pie stared at him. “Are you quite finished?”
“Yes.”
“Good. AS I WAS SAYING, that sucks. Poor Bob, he will be missed.” Pie paused for a moment. “Oh well, time to send in another recrui-”
Pie was once again interrupted by a huge explosion behind him. He slowly turned around to view it in its majesty, as it glowed a bright blue, slowly dimming along the edges, the mark of a bolt made out of pure high-energy anti-matter charges. The explosion left a distinctive smell in the air, not unlike the smell of poop from a newborn baby. The smell of this newborn baby poop lingered as the explosion faded away, leaving a massive 100-meter diameter crater behind the Warthog.
“Well.”

Flyboy quickly leaned over the center console of the ‘Hog, putting his elbows in Pie’s lap and grabbing the steering wheel of the Warthog. “GAS IT!” he cried, “GO, GO, GO!”
Pie didn’t gas it, but instead stared at Flyboy. After a moment, he slapped Flyboy across the face. “That was gay,” he said, “Get out of my lap, and never, ever, touch me again.”
Flyboy slowly took his hands off the wheel and put them back where they belonged as Pie hit the gas and took off. Another explosion marked the place where they just were, hitting the bridge where Bob’s body lay.

“Well, he’s dead for sure, now.” Pie remarked.
Flyboy was quiet for a moment as the smell of baby poop permeated the air, before he finally said, “Ever think that we’re just two fictional characters in a story written by some random guy who have just experienced an elaborate plot device?”
Pie shrugged.

The Warthog darted behind into the “Blue” mesa of Sniper Country. It tore past many surprised snipers and finally parked itself in a hangar full of bombers.
“Speaking of elaborate plot devices…” Pie said, leaving his sentence unfinished and pulling out a set of car keys. He causally hit a button on the keys and one of the Longsword bombers in the hangar bay chirped.


“Well, it is a jolly good game of hide-and-go-seek, isn’t it, old bean?” Inferno asked, turning around in the pilot’s chair of the Mythos walker. “I expect we’ll kill Pie and Flyboy soon enough. Then you just have that last imbecile to take care of.”
Nate gave him a cold, hard stare.
Inferno had a giddy sense of happiness in his voice. “I just wish I could see the terror on their faces!” he said with glee. When Nate didn’t break his stare, he turned around and resumed operation of the Mythos.
“Just shoot another random antimatter charge and pray we hit them.” Nate said. There was a large, light-blue explosion and the thick smell of newborn baby poop as Nate slowly let a smile sneak across his face and closed his eyes for a nap.


Flyboy was finally in control of his dream plane: The Longsword-class bomber. “She’s slow,” he said, casually caressing the bomber’s control console, “but she can blow the hell out of anything she wants to. Virtually limitless missile supply, bay full of mini-nukes…” He sighed in ecstasy. “I love you, Longsword.”
The onboard computer let out a single beep.
Flyboy smiled. “Aww… That’s so sweet!” He attempted to give the plane a hug, rather unsuccessfully.
Pie’s voice rang out from the galley. “I just restocked this damn thing with food, where the hell did all of it go?”
Flyboy got more pissed than an angsty teenager going through puberty. “SHUT UP! You don’t know what she and I have been through! We love each other, and we always will! You wouldn’t understand; you CAN’T understand! YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”
Pie simply stared back at him.

After a lengthy staring contest, Flyboy went back to caressing the Longsword’s control panel. He was running his finger up, down, and around the buttons, giggling as he did so, when a large explosion rocked the Longsword. Flyboy’s romance with the plane was lost and he jumped to full alert.
“They missed us, but it’s only a matter of time until that thing brings my baby down.” Flyboy said, “Distance to target is 1 kilometer. Missiles will be in range in twenty seconds.”
The overwhelming smell of baby poop went through the Longsword’s cabin as the entire view through the main viewscreen was obscured by bright blue. Flyboy simply flew straight through the explosion. “We’re in missile range.”
“Fire.”
The Longsword launched a sudden hail of missiles at the Mythos.

Inferno finally finished getting the Mythos’ built-in Macintosh to boot up iTunes and begin to play some heavy metal. “Nothing like the classic stuff for an epic battle.”
Nate groaned. “Inferno, that stuff is almost 600 years old now. Can’t you change it to something a little more… Recent?”
“No.”
The Mythos’ hull was suddenly riddled with explosions.
“Hull integrity at 62%. Antimatter charge ready.” Inferno reported.
“Fire.” Nate replied, half-asleep.
The Mythos trembled as another shot raced out of its cannon. The heavy metal music continued to blare. Inferno leaned back in his chair and turned it up some, much to Nate’s chagrin.
“Damn, they dodged it.” Inferno said.
“Inferno, it’s a giant damn bomber. How the hell could you miss it?”
Inferno leapt up and pulled a pistol out of his belt. “What the hell did you just say?” he said menacingly, leveling his pistol with Nate’s unprotected head.
“You wouldn’t, Inferno.”
“I’m warning you, friend. I am a dangerously insane individual.” He let a slight smile crawl across his face. “The worst psychopaths are the ones that know they’re insane.” Inferno said, laughing.
“If you do it, you won’t get paid.”
Inferno slowly lowered his pistol, face scowling behind the visor. The Macintosh behind him paused the music suddenly and let out a cheery beep.
“Hull integrity at critical levels.” it said, before resuming the music.
“Hell.” Inferno said. He grabbed Nate by the collar. “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here.” Inferno dragged Nate out of the Mythos, pausing to retrieve his sniper and flamethrower. He threw Nate into a nearby sand dune, jumping out of the door and going into a combat roll himself.
The Mythos exploded in an epic blue explosion in the background.
Nate pulled himself up and dusted himself off. “That wasn’t so bad.”
Multiple sniper shots suddenly ripped through his legs and sent him tumbling to the floor. “Never mind.”

Chapter III:
Improbability

Inferno was back in Blood Gulch, aiding the remainder of the reds in preparation to strike and kill the weakened blue team.
The fact that they blew up his Mythos didn’t matter; he had several of the walkers back home and as such getting one blown up was merely nothing more than a minor inconvenience while he got a new one.
His whole affair with this team seemed to be a string of minor inconveniences.
Inferno’s mouth opened and closed a couple times while his mind was suddenly filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Nate being consumed with fire, then running around in terror with the tips of several large and pointy spoons protruding from him.
He smiled; these visions were common and quite pleasant.
It was just too bad that Nate was currently in a medical facility getting his legs replaced with cyborg implants.
It must be a terribly painful procedure; he hoped that they forgot to use antiseptic.
He closed his eyes and saw himself holding his trusty flamethrower, igniting the hospital that Nate was staying in. Nate, legless, was helpless as the flames slowly consumed him. His screams of pain only delighted Inferno further.
Inferno sighed in pleasure and leaned back in his chair further in preparation for a short nap.


Nate found himself sitting on an operating table, surrounded by medics. He couldn’t feel the lower half of his body; looking down, he noticed it had been chopped completely off.
“Great.” He told himself.
One of the medics turned to his cohorts. “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.” He paused for a moment and then said, quietly, “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
Nate sighed. “Great. My life is in the hands of even more idiots than usual.”
One of the doctors stuck a needle into his arm. Slowly, his thought processes grew cloudy until eventually he fell into a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was making a mental note of how much antiseptic seemed to be going into his arm and a voice with a thick German accent saying, “Vhoops.”


Inferno finally was ready. Pie and Flyboy had returned, he had his flamethrower, and nothing would stop him this time.
Except perhaps the team of idiots he was stuck with.

Puma was the only remotely competent member of the team, he had a carefully-organized battle plan drawn out, just in case.
Cake and Inferno would flank the base from opposing angles. Inferno would create a diversion using his flamethrower while Cake hid with a sniper.
When the blues come running from the base to attack Inferno, Cake would pick off who he could with the sniper, then they would use attack plan bravo, go into delta six formation, then follow-up with a well-timed grenade.
If none of that worked, then Puma would be on the base’s computer and would simply launch an orbital and precise MAC (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon) strike on blue base. When questioned as to why they didn’t try that now, Puma said that it would be “too easy.”

While Inferno felt that Puma’s plan might work, it was still far too orthodox for his tastes. Rushing the base, each armed with flamethrowers and using the fire contained within to set the entire region ablaze was the best tactic, he felt.
He voiced this opinion with Puma at gunpoint. Puma was only too happy to agree with him on all accounts.

Meanwhile, Ducky had shown himself to be dreadfully incompetent within the first few minutes of his arrival. He tried simply relegating Ducky to unimportant medial jobs, but in response to Ducky’s increasingly annoying cries for Inferno to remove the helmet, Inferno had Ducky bound and gagged, a task the other members of red team seemed all too happy to carry out.
It wasn’t Ducky’s stupidity that annoyed him; he could deal with stupidity. No, rather, it was the sheer persistence with which he was trying to be stupid.
Simply put, Inferno simply didn’t like him.

Cake seemed to be as incompetent as Ducky was, until the subject of Blue team’s Commander Pie was brought up, at which point he turned bloodthirsty and ruthless.
Inferno became most pleased with him past that point.

Nate had no idea how long he slept, although it felt like forever and fifteen days. As soon as he was once again self-aware, he looked down and suddenly noticed that his lower body was once again intact. He stood up, slowly and carefully.
His legs seemed to be a lot stronger than he remembered, and he walked around some, admiring his newfound leg prowess. His time alone with his new legs was brought to a sudden end when one of the doctors entered the E.R.
He looked ethnically German, with tiny spectacles and oversized gloves complementing his long surgeon’s gown.
“Ah, you’re avake!”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Good, good. You had quite ze procedure!”
“I can imagine.”
“Yes, you should ve clear to exit ze hospital now, I vink we accidentally overdozed you with ze antizeptic, you slept for dayz.”
“That would explain a lot.” Nate said, already bored to death with this conversation.
The doctor laughed. “Vould it, now?” He turned to the door. “Iv you feel you can handle ze outside vorld again, veel free to leave.” There was another small chuckle as he continued, “I vould imagine you vould be able to handle it by now.”
Nate nodded and proceeded out back into the outside world.

At long last, Pie and Flyboy had returned to Blue base.
“So how’s Bob?” Torn asked as Pie walked into the room.
“He’s dead. No one really cared.”
“That’s always pleasant.”
“Isn’t it?”
Pie walked into his cabin, grabbing the latest issue of Playboy magazine as he closed his door. Flyboy sat in his usual chair, which creaked like a creaky chair. Torn sat on the base’s tattered couch.
“Kinda boring without Bob here, eh?” Torn asked.
Flyboy nodded.
There was silence for a few moments as absolutely nothing particularly interesting at all happened. Then Torn spoke again.
“We should start a band.”
Flyboy nodded, bored to death already.
“No, really! I’ll be bass, you’ll be drummer, and Pie could be lead guitar.”
Flyboy glanced over at him. “None of us can sing.”
“We’ll all sing together!”
“Something tells me that’s not going to happen, Torn.”
“Alright, then Pie can sing.”
“Pie can’t sing.”
“We’ll be a rock and roll band. You don’t need to be able to sing.”
Flyboy considered this for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said finally before reclining in his chair once more.
There was a few more moments of silence.
“You know, the planets in this solar system are completely aligned tonight under the constellation Scorpio. Happens once every thousand years or so.” Torn said.
“Are they, now?”
“Yep. They say that very improbable things happen when they align under Scorpio.”
“If they only align once every thousand years, how can there be any reliable records of improbable events occurring? That would mean they haven’t aligned since the 1500s, and back then they were obsessed over finding this new place called ‘America’ and weren’t really too keen on determining probabilities.”
Torn shrugged. “Kinda boring without Bob here.”
“You said that already.”
“Did I?”
Flyboy sighed.

Nate walked in the door of red base to see the Reds all lined up for battle, save Ducky, who was tied up in a corner, struggling as Inferno put more duct tape over his mouth.
“What’s going on here?”
Inferno quickly flipped completely around and hid the duct tape behind his back. “Nothing, good ‘ol friend of mine. Nope. Nada. Nothing at all.”
“You guys were about to attack the blues without me?”
“Well…” Inferno started.
“Good idea. You all ready?”
Cake nodded feverishly, violent rage in his eyes, as if he would like to do nothing more than laugh as the blues died in anguish. This remotely disturbed Nate.
Inferno glanced around and dropped the duct tape, with nothing being particularly interesting about his expression due to the concealing mask of his ever-present helmet. “I guess so, ‘ol bean.”
“Good. We attack in an hour.”
Cake seemed disappointed. “Can’t we do it NOW?”
Nate was surprised at Cake’s enthusiasm; normally he couldn’t even get the soldier to pick up a rifle unless he promised not to force them to do push-ups until their arms fell off. He glanced at Inferno.
“Don’t look at me; I just had been talking to him about his family.”
Nate’s glance turned into a stare.
“Well, the subject of Pie was brought up, and he told me about how they had been rivals since birth…”
Nate continued his icy-cold stare.
“…And then he talked about how Pie stole his fiancé from him and married her before he was conscripted…”
It felt as if the temperature of the room had dropped a couple degrees.
“…And then he joined the other side just for vengeance, and… Well…” Inferno shrugged. “I only encouraged him a little tiny bit.”

An hour later the reds began their march. There were many things they expected to see when they arrived at the blue base: the blues waving a white flag, or maybe Pie dressed up in war paint and .50 caliber machine turrets set up around the perimeter, or maybe, just possibly, the base somehow becoming completely replaced by a pot of petunias and an unlucky sperm whale.
Of all the increasingly-unlikely things the various members of red team were expecting, seeing the blues holding musical instruments on the roof of blue base was not one of them. For some reason.

Nate halted their advance. “What. The HELL. Are you doing up there?”
Torn took a tiny glance at the reds and turned to Pie.
“Pie,” he said, “the red team’s here.”
“Good. Everyone in tune?”
The blues nodded.
“Hit it.”
Flyboy, in the far back, banged his drum sticks together a few times and began to pound away.
The reds simply stared at the blues and dropped their weapons. Inferno himself immediately seemed to be lost in the beat and lost his normal homicidal edge.
Torn added a bass line to Flyboy’s beat, and soon enough Pie began to shred on his electric guitar.
Nate stared at the (admittedly pretty good) band in stunned disbelief. The music got louder, and Pie was about to start screaming into the mike when sirens began to wail, followed by flashing red and blue lights. The band immediately stopped.
“Ok, this entire thing is getting ridiculous.” Puma said, above the roar of the police sirens. “Why are there police in an active warzone?”
“I wouldn’t call this warzone exactly active.” Nate added. “Although this whole scenario seems pretty unlikely. Personally, I think the whole world’s simply gone to hell and back.”
Puma nodded as the police began to surround the area.
One of the officers pulled out a megaphone and shouted into it, “HANDS UP. THIS IS THE MILITARY POLICE; WE RECEIVED A REPORT THAT THERE ARE WEAPONS IN THIS VICINITY.” The megaphone was completely unnecessary, as the police cars had turned off their sirens.
As soon as one of the members of blue team opened his mouth, the sirens began to wail again.
“This is an active warzone, us having weapons is the entire reason why we’re here!” Flyboy tried to yell back at him, but to no avail.
The officer had, in fact, heard him and thought that Flyboy made a legitimate point, but he was also having a particularly nasty day: his tea this morning spilled all over his lap when he was about to take a sip, sometimes he felt as if the world secretly was out to get him, he thought his cohorts were constantly trying to aim at him in hopes of “accidentally” shooting him, and it had been a while since he got a paycheck. He was in a sour mood in general, and arresting people, he thought, would be the best way to lighten his day.
A few moments later, every member of both teams was in handcuffs and was being escorted to the nearest police station.
He didn’t feel any better.



They weren’t the first in line at the station; they had to wait in line for a little bit while 3 other convicts had their mugshots taken.
“What’s your name?” The officer asked the first one.
“Larry.”
“What are you in for?”
“Blowing bubbles.”
The officer shrugged and sent Larry on his way. “What’s your name?” he asked the next person in line.
“Curly.”
“What are you in for?”
“Blowing bubbles.”
After Curly went on his way, the third convict walked up.
“Let me guess. You’re name’s Moe.”
“No. My name’s Bubbles.”

After they had gone through the tape of the penal system, the reds and the blues were all crammed into what seemed was the world’s smallest jail cell. The bars were thick, there were little to no gaps inbetween, the floor was cold, and the toilet was clogged. Everyone save Inferno was shoved into bright orange jumpsuits.
Inferno was in a bright orange jumpsuit as well, but he got to hold on to his helmet, explaining to the officers that the helmet was a defect as part of a super-soldier experiment gone wrong and thus couldn’t be removed.
The officers seemed to buy this story and allowed him to retain the helmet, quite improbably. His success was only temporary: Once inside, Ducky gave Inferno a rather forceful hug, and Inferno’s helmet fell off, revealing quite feminine features and red hair cropped to the shoulder. Her face was dotted with freckles and her green eyes had the slightest tinge of insanity to them when admired closely, although not quite enough to detract from her overall beauty. Inferno’s sex appeal went from “Ew, gross, I would never do it with a guy” to “HolycrapholycrapholycrapIwanther”.
Inferno was a girl.
After this revelation, everyone was largely quiet inside the cell. Torn’s jaw dropped open. Puma closed it for him.

Pie was the first to speak. “Well, hello there, Madame Cleavage.”
Inferno responded by punching him in the face. “Yes, I’m a chick. Get used to it.”
Nate opened his mouth to speak, but Inferno cut him off. “No, I will not go out with you.”
Nate glared at her and flipped her off. Inferno pretended to cut off Nate’s head by making a slicing motion with her fingers. Slowly, the members of both teams adjusted to the newfound double-x chromosome among their ranks.
Cake and Pie alternated between staring at each other in disgust and staring at Inferno lustfully. Nate and Inferno were bonding by means of demonstrating how each would kill the other. Their gestures grew increasingly obscene, almost to the point where one would think they were flirting with one another. Torn was busy tattering up his jumpsuit. Flyboy and Puma began to discuss philosophy. Ducky, whom everyone had assumed would become Bob’s replacement as a source of humor, was busy doing a terrifically bad job at generating humor, pumping out cringe-worthy joke after cringe-worthy joke.
A lot of people assumed that Ducky was related to the sick and twisted narrator of this story.
They were only half-right; Ducky was only related to me through a brother’s sister’s cousin’s aunt’s second marriage. As such, he was thus only my stepbrother and was therefore not directly blood-related to me.
Mother sent me off to narrating school (a horrifyingly boring experience overall) and Ducky off to the army; we haven’t talked since, although I have become omniscient as a result of my experiences, while he is still delegated to having a first-person limited view of things.
A conversation was struck up among the captives in the prison cell about how the increasingly improbable events they have been going through, and eventually they arrived at the conclusion that this story was getting completely ridiculous and they were all fictional characters. Soon after, they began to discuss often they should try to break the fourth wall in their story.
Little did they know that an event was about to happen which not only was completely ridiculous (and what some believe to be irrefutable proof that everything in the world is actually 100% fictional and made up in some sick, twisted person’s mind), but also was about to save their hides.
Almost everyone on the planet was planning for this moment. Each had come up with a plan should it actually happen. Entire websites were set up devoted to strategies should it happen. For over five hundred years, man had been devising new ways of holding out should something like it happen. Few believed that it would actually happen.

A single zombie suddenly mindlessly wandered into the door of the police station.

The smell of human waste filled the air. The police guarding the jail cell immediately gained new underwear stains and ran out of the station. As one particularly fat and unlucky officer ran, yellow liquid streaked down his leg and left a wet trail on the floor.
That poor officer’s day had just achieved the impossible and had gotten worse.

Bob wandered up to the jail cell and waved at the familiar cowering figures on the other side. “Hi!”
Pie looked at him in stunned disbelief. “Fly, slap me.”
Flyboy immediately obliged. The slap didn’t help any, and Pie stared incredulously at Bob. “How did you…”
“Military super-soldier experiment using dead bodies, etc, etc, you know the typical zombie origin stories.” Bob shrugged. “I guess this time they just decided to use someone who didn’t have a brain to begin with.”
Puma’s jaw dropped open. Torn closed it for him.
“All who agree that we have officially jumped the shark, say ‘Aye!’”
Everyone murmured in agreement.
“Who’s the boobies?” Bob asked.
“Inferno. She was trying to kill you the other day.” Nate said. He paused, before adding, “In the sexiest manner imaginable.”
Inferno kicked him in the nuts, and Nate fell over onto the ground.
“The past few hours have been the most improbable thing I have ever experienced.” Puma said.
Flyboy glanced at Inferno, then Bob, and nodded.
“Any other zombies out there?” Torn asked.
Bob shrugged once more. “I don’t think so. I haven’t gotten hungry yet.”
“Are we dead?” Nate asked, cringing still. “I think I took one too many sniper shots the other day. Maybe we’re all dead and this insanity is what happens to someone after they die.”
Flyboy looked at him. “No, I’m pretty sure we’re all still alive.”
Little did Nate know that the events which transpire after someone dies were only slightly more insane than the events which were currently unfolding within the teams’ small jail cell.
“Open the gate. Press the big red button over there.” Pie said impatiently.
“OK!” Bob began to wander over there, but suddenly stopped. “Wait a second, I know better now than to press big shiny red buttons! They promise you donuts but never give you any. Instead, all they give you lies. LIES.”
“Please?”
“Alright, fine, I’ll press the button.”
The gate to the jail cell finally went up and both teams slowly wandered out.
“We’ve got to get to a vehicle.” Pie said. Both teams (and Bob) nodded and slowly walked out of the police station. Bob wandered into the street, scaring the hell out of a limousine driver and thus granting the teams an improbable means of transport.
Cake turned to Torn. “Lots of exposition in this chapter, eh?”
Torn nodded.


Chapter IV:
Coldsnap
The N Companies of both Red and Blue teams were now on the run from the law.
In an extremely short time, they had gone from being two opposing teams on just one small front of a multi-front war to escapees from a random prison. In that same time, they also found out that their badass mercenary was actually a girl with a bunch of now-irreparably-damaged voice-changing equipment built into her helmet, and they had managed to escape from a prison in the Colorado Desert by virtue of a well-timed (but minor) zombie invasion. Now they were headed north, to Canada. Flyboy had some contacts up there, he said, and they could continue their skirmishes in peace.
Overall, it was a pretty uneventful day.

The trip to Canada itself was quite a long one. To spare my dear readers the pain of having to read pages upon pages of Bob asking if they were they yet, penetrated only by narrow escapes from epic battles with comic relief scattered about liberally, I will simply say that it was awesome, yet needlessly long. A quick summary is as follows:
The limousine that they had stolen to “travel in style” only got them to the former United States-Canadian border. From there, the limo broke down, so they were forced to send Bob after the border patrol agents to scare them off. From there, they wound up coming into possession of some military-grade Warthogs formerly owned by the terrified border patrol.
Inferno and Nate had chosen to ride alone with each other in their own private Warthog. Even though they gave the outward appearance of hating each other’s guts, you couldn’t help but think that they really liked one another.
In short, both teams meet up with Flyboy’s contact. After a gun battle and several missions which would be quite annoying in a video game, they get the coordinates to a base in the middle of nowhere, codenamed “Coldsnap”. The journey to those coordinates was long and hard, and both of the teams finally came to a massive icy canyon, kilometers wide and long, with a big chasm running down the center, much like your mother. The entire place felt and looked eerily similar to Sniper Country with a snow theme (you see, God had made this place SECOND to last), and, as such, there were massive bases built into both of the hills for no readily apparent reason. However, this time, there were no teams of snipers populating them, and both of the bases were up for grabs for the two teams.
Flyboy, however, was becoming very uncomfortable around Bob, who had been getting increasingly hungry. He unceremoniously kicked the poor zombie out near an ice cave to fend for himself. Pie protested, but it was far too late, as Bob said that he was perfectly content with this cave and had already begun to fashion himself a new home out of it.
That is the story so far, boring and needlessly-long parts removed.
If you had wanted to read an epic tale about a long journey somewhere that really, honestly, wasn’t all that important, you would be reading Lord of the Rings, much as if you wanted to learn about the nature of life, the universe, and everything, you would be reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Over the course of the journey, Inferno and Nate fell in love with one another, and a beautiful (albeit boring) love story blossomed. However, love is the stickiest and least funny subject one can possibly imagine, and so the majority of this story tries to shy away from it.
The remainder of this chapter is what happens once both teams had finally gotten to their dream bases which had been promised to them by Flyboy’s contacts.



Inferno finally emerged from the base’s one restroom wearing her new Winterized Armor. She wasn’t wearing her helmet. Instead, she went helmetless, giving her helmet a very special home in her cabin, high up on a shelf for all to see and for her to stare at every night. It seemed to idolize something for her, as if it meant something profoundly special. Nate thought about this for a moment before jumping to the conclusion that it was just a strange personality quirk which most smugglers, bounty hunters, and mercenaries seemed to have.
“Took you long enough, damn,” he said, frustrated.
Inferno stared at him, her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry?”
“Girls take forever to do everything, it seems.”
“Oh, so things are different now that I’m a girl now, huh? Are we becoming a tad SEXIST?” A violently insane tone began to appear in her voice the way violently insane tones tend to do that from time to time before going back about their business.
Nate realized he was about to get into deep trouble. “I love you,” he said cautiously, with a nervous smile on his face. Inferno seemed to tower over him; the situation, overall, was not one that he enjoyed particularly much.
“Uh-huh. Even though we’re in a relationship, I’m still not above shooting you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.” She indicated to the shotgun she had docked away nearby.
“I can see that the love is mutual.” Nate’s voice was sheepish.
Inferno nodded and turned her back to Nate. “So it is.”
Nate tried to change the subject. “I noticed your armor is a different color now.”
“Yes, that would be because it’s winterized. It’s cyan.” She stopped being angry at Nate for a moment and turned around so Nate could admire her new armor.
“I don’t really like it too much, honestly. I liked the darker armor better.”
She gave him one of those signature looks which girls are experts at, and then her anger returned to her. “Seriously? You SERIOUSLY don’t like the armor which I had spent A LOT of money to buy and upgrade?”
“Y… Yes…” Nate said squeamishly.
Inferno was disgusted with him. “You really are an imbecile, aren’t you? This armor is state-of-the-art, designed to withstand the cold and can take pretty much anything up to a point-blank shotgun blast, in which there is only a SLIGHT chance that I’ll be mortally wounded.”
“So, wait…” Nate felt as if he was a gigantic target in the middle of a firing range, and that Inferno had a sniper rifle and was aiming for the bulls-eye.
“Isn’t that what I just TOLD YOU? You’re dating me, and you tell me flat-out that think this armor doesn’t look very good on me, just to hurt my feelings. That’s sad.” Nate opened his mouth, but Inferno stuck out her left hand. “Shut up. Don’t talk to me.”
Puma interrupted the tense exchange with an announcement: “The base now has wi-fi. We are now in the future.” His voice was totally devoid of enthusiasm. “Woop-de-doo.”
“Good. Now get off the damn computer, I need to play my video games and check my daily webcomic strips.”
Puma stared at him. “So that’s all I’m good for, huh? Setting up every little piece of technology in this entire damn base so you could play your video games?”
“Yep.” Nate said. “If it was so hard, why didn’t you have Ducky help you? I’m your boss, and what I say goes. Now don’t talk back to your superiors.”
“You’re an ignoramus and Ducky’s an idiot.”
“So is mostly everyone here, it seems.” Infeno said bitterly.
Puma let out a cheer. “FINALLY, SOMEONE THAT AGREES WITH ME.”
Inferno and Puma gave one another a high-five.

Meanwhile, in the opposite end of the red base, Cake was busy putting giant posters of Pie with his eyes gouged out everywhere in his cabin, muttering cruel cruelties and obscene obscenities violently under his breath. Ducky knocked on his door.
“WHAT?”
“I heard that there’s an indoor pool in our base. Wanna come along?”
Cake sighed. “Should’ve expected you to ask something of this nature, Ducky, after the ‘pool fiasco’ in basic training. I don’t see any reason why I should go with you, it’s almost guaranteed to end badly, and I simply don’t want to get stuck in a situation where it is, more than likely, not going to end well on my end.”
“It’s either you go with me to the pool, or Nate makes you work. Would you rather be lazy, or be productive?”
Cake considered this piece of logic for a moment. “Sure, I’ll go with you, I guess. I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t.” There was a minor pause before he added under his breath, “except if I go, I won’t be able to finish hanging up posters of this imbecile…” Cake sighed as he grabbed his swimming trunks, opened the door and walked with Ducky to their new indoor pool.
The pool was large and clear and blue, looking quite serene and pleasant. It had its own private section of the main base building, located right next to the main hangar. Flight suits were draped on the walls, just in case a contingent of pilots who were caught unawares in the pool could run and put on a flight suit fast enough to grab one of the nearby jets and launch a counterattack.
“I didn’t get my nickname in basic training, you know. No, there’s much more beyond that; it was a mere coincidence that they gave me the same nickname that I had gotten growing up. Wanna know how I got this nickname?” Ducky asked once they arrived.
Cake looked at him in the way that one looks at another when they really don’t want to hear the story that they’re about to say, but they’ll listen to it anyway.
Ducky began his anecdote. “My father… Was a drinker. And a fiend.
“One night, he goes off… Crazier than usual. Mommy gets out our pet duck to defend herself. He doesn’t like that. Not. One. Bit.”
Ducky’s voice grew slightly more sinister. “So, me watching, he takes the rabid duck to her, laughing as he does it.”
A violently insane tone began to appear in his voice the way violently insane tones tend to do that from time to time before going back about their business. “He turns to me, and he says, ‘WHY SO WET?’ He comes at ME with the duck, ‘WHY SO WET?’
“He puts the duck up to my mouth. ‘LET’S PUT A SMILE ON THAT FACE.’”
Cake winced.
“Aaaaannnnnnd… Why so wet?” Ducky grabbed Cake, pushed him into the pool, and ran away, laughing maniacally.



Pie and the Blues had finally arrived at their new base and began to set up shop.
“Hey,” said Pie enthusiastically as he unpacked a pile of boxes, “I just got an idea as for what we could call our band.”
“What?” Flyboy asked.
“Pie and the Blues!” Pie threw up his hands in excitement as if one were to cry on another’s birthday, “SURPRISE!” and then reveal that the birthday gift he had gotten her was that he forgot to wear a condom the other night and that she now needed to get herself checked for a number of STDs.
“You got that from Sky Voice, didn’t you?” Flyboy said, unamused.
“Who?”
“Sky Voice. He’s been narrating our entire story so far.”
“You mean the guy who’s been talking about girls and STDs and such?”
“Yes.”
“How long has he been there?”
“Oh, he showed up and has been narrating the entire course of the story so far; from about when Bob showed up at our doorstep and everything went to hell to now.”
“How come I wasn’t aware of this?”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
Pie considered this, figured it would explain a lot, and thus went along with it.
One could explain away the majority of the world’s problems with the simple explanation that each and every one of us human beings, deep down, are all idiots. Christians have been using this fact as evidence proving that their religion is the one true religion as of late, arguing that if we were all created in another being’s image, and if we all are idiots, than those facts coupled together would explain a lot about our universe. Atheists, meanwhile, believe because the Christians have come up with this explanation, it is only further, conclusive proof of the world’s idiocy.
On a completely unrelated note, Pie added, “Fly, how much programming skill do you have?”
Flyboy thought about this for a little bit. “I like to think I have quite a bit of programming skill,” he finally said.
“Enough to build a robot which could replace Bob as a source of comic relief while at the same time becoming actually useful?”
“No.”
“Can you do it anyway?”
“I guess so.”
“That’s a good Flyboy. Torn, how’s the flag?”
“Still tattered as ever, Pie,” Torn replied.
“Good. Bob, how’s the… Oh, right.”



Cake had finally managed to pull himself out of the pool and was beginning to dry himself off when he heard a knock on his cabin door. He sighed and got up, half-dressed. He was expecting Ducky to come by and gloat about how he had just been pushed into the pool, but instead, he was unexpectedly approached by Inferno. He invited her in and she took a sat in a nearby chair, staring at the pictures of Pie with his eyes scratched out on the walls. She smiled slightly, seeming to enjoy the chain reaction she had caused in Cake’s mind, but quickly became engrossed in her thoughts.
“Cake,” she said after a few moments, “I need your advice.”
The suddenness of this statement took Cake completely by surprise. “Really, now? You need my advice? What about?”
“Nate.”
“I thought you were Ms. Tough-Girl, with the whole ‘I could really care less if I kill you’ sort of thing going on?”
“That…” She sighed. “That’s a cover. I’m really not sure if I’m as tough as I seem. I didn’t use to be; I wasn’t always like this. A lot of… things happened to me, so I was forced to toughen up and became a mercenary right as this stupid war was beginning. I’m not sure if it’s a part of me or now. I’m not sure if I can even go back. I’m not sure who or what I am, anymore”
“Why? What happened?”
“It’s not something I like to talk about. I need your advice, Cake, will you hear me out? While I don’t trust you any more than I do any other members of this team… You seem like you’re the most competent one here.”
“Shoot.”
“I like Nate, and he likes me. But he likes me in a way that I… really don’t like him. Simply put, I don’t love him. My heart belongs to someone else, someone I lost long ago.”
“Shouldn’t you have gotten over him by now?”
“I did… For a while. But on the trip here… I thought I discovered him again. I thought I found the one who I had been missing for some time. I’m not sure; he’s… changed significantly, at least physically, but his personality and name match up with how I remember him.”
“Who is it?”
“I’m… I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
“Do I know him?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid. He isn’t around with us anymore; I lost contact him a short while ago.”
“Is it someone on the Blue team?”
“I wouldn’t know exactly what to call him. He just seems… Out of place with the Blues.”
“Is it Flyboy?”
“I already told you, I’m not at liberty to tell you. But I need your help. I need you to help me tell Nate.”
Cake nearly fell over. “Tell Nate that you don’t love him? He’d kill you!”
Inferno broke down into tears. “I know. That’s why I need your help… Or at the very least tell me how I should handle it.”
“Well… What I would do is try to convince him to break up with you.”
“And how would you do that?” Inferno asked, tears still in her eyes.
“I don’t know. I can’t help you there. You’re going to have to just wing it.”
“Thanks, Cake.” She began to leave his room. “Sorry for losing my composure like that… I don’t like to do it, and I don’t do it often. It never happened, got that?”
“It’s alright, I got it. Good luck with Nate.” Cake said, waving her good-bye.


There was a long moment of silence as Nate and Inferno stood alone in the Red’s hangar bay. Nate was quietly surveying the new equipment that the Reds had gotten their hands on, preparing his ultimate battle plan for the attack on the Blues. There was nearly total silence except for Nate’s frantic muttering.
“We need a new plan.” Inferno said finally.
“What was wrong with the old plan?” Nate asked.
“Well, back then, we didn’t have access to this incredible array of nukes,” said Inferno, her arm sweeping around behind her to show him all of their newly-acquired Longsword bombers, each loaded to the brim with missiles and nukes.
“Do we really need to use those things? I say we just charge the base and lay the place under siege like we were going to back in Blood Gulch. If we put up a strong enough stranglehold on the blues, eventually they’ll be forced into submission.”
“Nukes are ALWAYS the answer, Nate. I thought you knew that.”
“Not this time. Nukes are not always the answer. Those nukes are too valuable to waste; you and I both know that.”
Inferno sighed like she would if she was arguing with an idiot on the internet that wouldn’t see things her way out of sheer stupidity. “No, I don’t ‘know that’. These nukes should be fine to use. As long as it hits something, no nuke is a wasted nuke. I feel that killing members of the Blue team is always a good purpose for a nuclear weapon. Of course, I feel that killing anything is a good use of a nuclear weapon, but by virtue of the fact that you’re still paying me, I’m just going to use the Blue team as an example.”
“You’re using the Death Star approach to problems. That never works out too well, especially not for the team using it.”
“And what are YOU using? The Empire Strikes Back approach?”
“Yes, I am, in fact. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire won. When it comes to using the Death Star approach on something, it never ends too well for anyone at all.”
“But the Death Star killed billions more than the Battle of Hoth did.”
“Yes, that IS true, but which battle do people like better? Which one is more covered in-depth with panoramas and video game levels and has become a part of pop culture in general? The Battle of Hoth, or the Death Star battle?”
“That depends. Which Death Star battle are we talking about here?”
“The first one.”
“I think fan opinion is pretty split on the matter when it comes to that one, Nate. You have just as many Trench Run recreations as you do Battle of Hoth recreations, and you quite possibly have even more parodies of the Trench Run than you do the Battle of Hoth.”
“No, I’m sure people would rather watch the Battle of Hoth over the first Death Star. The Battle of Hoth just seems cooler, for some reason. More people like it.”
“But some people might want to watch the Battle of Endor over the Battle of Hoth. Who wouldn’t want to hear Ackbar scream that it’s a trap?”
“The Battle of Endor is irrelevant.”
“But it had a Death Sta-”
“It remains irrelevant, and irrelevant never forgets. Get ready, for we attack tomorrow.”

Chapter V:
The Red Team Strikes Back
There was a cool Canadian breeze flowing as the Red team got ready for the siege.
As this was the northernmost, less-inhabited part of Canada, where the permafrost was very frosty and was very permanently attached to the soil, all breezes were cold, so it being a cool breeze was a given.
Even calling it a “cool breeze” might have been an understatement, as the breeze was actually more of a “blisteringly cold” breeze.
The Reds’ plan was to use several Warthogs full of missile launchers to surround the base and negate any escape attempts by the team trapped within.
Nate himself was armed with a sniper rifle, and his job was to kill any Blue which stupidly wandered out of the base without a vehicle.
If he were playing a videogame, one might consider this “camping” tactic unfair, and thus would get very mad at him for even considering to “camp”.
Nate didn’t call it “camping”. He called it “a legitimate strategy”. He looked back to the cargo compartment of his Warthog to ensure that the sniper rifle was still tucked safely away. He looked to his left and saw that his shotgun was still safely mounted to the drivers’ side door.
The Red team had a bloodlust, and they were more than willing for a fight. It had been too long since they had last gotten the adrenaline rush of battle, and the Warthogs carrying the team raced across the snow with a purpose.

Once he was sure that all of his stuff was in order, Nate began conducting his final systems check with the rest of the Reds, who were listening to everything that one another said via communications devices implanted within each one of their helmets,
“Are all of your sniper rifles ready?”
“Affirmative,” Cake answered.
“Missiles loaded?”
“Enough to stay on the attack for quite some time,” confirmed Puma.
“What about our special toaster?”
“Toaster? Right here,” Ducky replied. He fiddled around with something or another, and pulled out a toaster from somewhere in his Warthog. He lifted it up into the air to show Nate that he, in fact, had remembered the special toaster. However, as he did so, the Warthog ran over a particularly nasty snowdrift and a combination of wind resistance and the bump itself caused the toaster to fly out of Ducky’s hand and embed itself in the snow.
Ducky decided to remain quiet on the matter and hope no one would notice that he had just lost their special toaster.
“Good. Systems check finished; we have everything we need.”
Inferno had a serious look on her face and glanced over at Nate, who was driving.
“Nate… I have something to tell you.”
Nate stopped the Warthog. The other members of red team all sighed in unison.
Inferno went on, visibly nervous. “Nate… You’re really great and all… But I think we should just be friends, partners on a professional level only.”
Nate grew visibly depressed. “You’re telling me this now, in mid-mission?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but I never had any other opportunity to tell you.”
“Inferno, I have something to ask you.”
“What?”
“Would you take a bullet for me?”
“…I suppose I still would.”
“Good.” Nate pulled out the shotgun from the drivers’ side door and shot Inferno at near point-blank range. She tumbled out of the Jeep into the snow, and Nate drove off without looking back at her body. “Some women,” he said to himself as he raced across the snow once again.


There was near-total silence in the Blue base. A human-like silhouette stood still as a statue in the center of the room, draped with a cloth. Flyboy stood next to it; the other two blues both watched as the unveiling was about to begin.
“I’ve finally perfected it.” Flyboy said. He was attempting to majestically unveil a robot which looked almost (but not quite) identical to him, but kept getting the cloth stuck on the silhouette’s head. He took a great tug at the cloth. It finally came loose and the figure began to totter, causing Flyboy to rush to steady it. The armor plating composing its body was a bright sunshine yellow, but its face was a mass of grey, filled to the brim with sharp angles and seemingly designed to look menacing in every possible way. Red lights lit up where its eyes should be. “I’ve made my robot. I call him ‘Flybot’. He has my devilishly good looks and all the charm to absolutely KILL the ladies. And he’s yellow. Yellow is a pimp’s color.”
“You programmed it to kill the ladies?” Pie asked quizzically.
“Well, and the guys, too, but I’m hoping he’ll prefer to be a lady killer, much like his creator. They’ll be all over him, I swear.” Flyboy grinned, yet Pie had a largely skeptical expression on his face.
“And having multiple ladies around is a good thing why?”
“It gives us more chances to get some?” Flyboy tried to drive this point home with a playful elbow to Pie’s ribs. Unfortunately, this didn’t solve many of Flyboy’s problems, as he had elbowed Pie a little too hard and now was getting a sharp, hard, and unappreciative stare from his Commander.
“Fly, I’m married.”
Flyboy knew he was stumbling and falling, but desperately tried to salvage his argument much as one might try to salvage a burning plane which is falling from the sky with no tail, one wing, and half of an engine. “It gives me more chances to get some?”
“Something tells me you aren’t going to ‘get’ anything. Since when is having more ladies around such a good thing?”
“You’re saying that having Inferno around isn’t a good thing?”
“Not when she’s trying to kill us.”
“And how many times has she tried to kill us?”
“She killed Bob.”
Flyboy finally found a flaw in Pie’s argument and tried to exploit it as a way to land his plane crash of an argument. “No, snipers killed Bob.”
“OK, yes, snipers did kill Bob,” Pie conceded, “but then she tried to kill us when you were caressing your Longsword. Remember?”
“But she was doing it in the sexiest way possible.”
“Sexy or not, Fly, she was trying to kill us. That is a fact. You know that is a fact. You are denying the fact that IT IS A FACT.”
“I swear, it’s not a fact. Just because she was shooting really big anti-matter charges at us doesn’t mean…” Flyboy was at a loss for words. Even his flying skills were no help when it came to this plane crash, and the half of an engine he had left just fell off.
“Doesn’t mean what?” Pie inquired.
Flyboy shrugged. “Maybe she was trying to kill someone else?”
“Like who?”
“You?”
Pie considered this. “OK, you got me there.”
Flyboy cheered. “AND KYLE ANDROSS LANDS THE PLANE AGAIN!”
Pie and Torn stared at him, confused as to where this remark came from. Flyboy felt himself grow pink and tried to wave the embarrassing outburst away as fast as he could.
Pie dropped the subject and turned to Flybot. “Are you going to turn that thing on?”
“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Thanks.” Flyboy hit a switch and the robot came to life. The yellow body of the robot jumped to life and began to move about freely, its photoreceptors taking in the new environment which it shall take over and dominate sooner rather than later.
“Hello there, humans. My name is FLYBoT: Fierce, Lying, Yellow Bot of Terror.” A violently insane tone began to appear in his voice the way violently insane tones tend to do that from time to time before going back about their business.
“Something tells me that isn’t quite right, Flyboy.” Torn said.
“Nonsense, I wouldn’t make a robot which would actually try to kill anything but the red team.”
“You sure?”
“I sure hope so.”
Pie shrugged and turned to the robot. “Well, robot, what do you predict the reds are going to do?”
“Kill you all.”
“Before that.”
“I’ll kill you myself before they get here.”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing, meatbag.” Pie was pretty sure that if the faceless robot had the ability to convey expressions, it would be scowling in disgust at the Blues. “I’ve analyzed the red’s strategies, and I would guess that they’re going to try to lay your base under siege. I recommend walking outside and simply telling them to stop.”
“Very sound advice, Flybot, but I don’t think it will be necessary. We have all the food and provisions we need right here.”
“How many missile strikes can this base take?” Flybot asked.
“I wouldn’t know, mayb-”
“Never mind, I’ve already done the math, you idiot human. The kind of firepower they’ll be bringing will cripple the base, but not destroy it.” It paused. “Pray they don’t use any nukes.”
“So wait… They’ll shut off the electricity?” Flyboy asked, worried.
“Yes. No internet and no porn until the siege is over and you’re all dead. You guys are screwed. Good luck.”
Pie sighed as the first of many missile blasts rocked the base.



Inferno lay on the ground for what felt like an eternity. She was betrayed by the one she thought that she had trusted the most in a moment of weakness, and she was uncertain whether she could ever trust anyone again. Her physical wounds alone were mortal unless she received some medical care, and quickly, and her mental wounds were only worsening her declining condition. But there she lay, mortally wounded and alone in the freezing snow, no human in sight.
However, a figure lumbered towards her which wasn’t exactly human.
Becoming a zombie, she considered, was better than becoming dead.


Bob carried Inferno back to his ice cave. She was in bad, bad shape, and the outlook for the length of the rest of her life didn’t look good. She made a slight groaning noise as Bob hoisted her up onto the makeshift table he had made for her.
He may have been an idiot, but he knew when someone wasn’t going to make it through this life for too much longer. It pained him to think of her possibly and quite probably dying, as she and Bob have had a long history together…


It was four years before Bob got assigned to “N” company, and only a few months before he was forced into the military. Humanity had just recovered from a major war, but Bob was at home, happy and in a relationship with who he considered an awesome redhead.
She did it all for him: she cooked, she cleaned, and she did everything for him… All in return for his love, and nothing more. Bob knew that he wasn’t the best or the brightest of people, but he was happy that she had chosen him as her boyfriend, against all odds. He tried to prove this to her with his love, but he seemed to be his own worst enemy. Any plans he tried to make with her always seemed to fall flat on their face, sometimes quite literally.
But every time they did, she giggled. And every time she giggled, he wanted to do more for her, causing the plans he made to fall flat on their face once more.
And so the cycle repeated itself.

Her name was Cyan, and they had been together since high school. They were high school sweethearts, young, crazy, and in love. Bob brought home the money while Cyan did the work. The economy was entering an economic boom, things were happy, and the general public had no idea how close a revolution was.
Then the day came. It was a Wednesday, and he knew it was a Wednesday primarily because he never particularly liked Wednesdays. They dragged on for too long, they had a funny name, and they just were unpleasant in general, so it came as no surprise to Bob the Wednesday that the men from the government knocked on the door. When he answered, they dragged Bob from his home and away from Cyan for what he thought would be forever.

They knew Bob wasn’t the smartest, smartest, or luckiest of the candidates. Instead, he lay at the other end of the spectrum, and as such he was considered “expendable”. He was to be operated on non-stop as a testing bed for the latest in military procedures and experiments, as the doctors screwed with his brain and only managed to lower his IQ even further from what it already was. He began hearing voices from the sky which narrated what he did. They came and went, occasionally leaving him alone, but it began to drive him crazy because they were particularly annoying voices.
The men from the government promised him a pet turtle. He got it and named it “Speedy”. One day, as part of his testing, they took Speedy from him to see how he would react.
As it would turn out, Speedy’s disappearance affected Bob profoundly. He began to search everywhere for him, until the men from the government told him that Speedy had run away and had been shot by a giant superheated laser blast.
He never was the same again.
Bob returned to Cyan a changed man. He still loved her, but he knew that he wasn’t the man who she fell in love with. He was a man who had been altered by the government in ways that she couldn’t possibly imagine. Bob was changed, and he knew it.
The worst part was he wasn’t sure if it was going to happen again. He tried to be there for Cyan, he tried to carry on life as it was before they took him, he tried to make her laugh, smile, love and giggle again… But he knew that she couldn’t love him anymore.

In reality, things were quite the opposite. Cyan still loved him dearly… But she wasn’t sure what they had done to him. She wasn’t sure if he was now secretly a spy for the government or quite possibly something even worse, and as she was the brains (of a sort) in the relationship, she knew that Bob himself couldn’t know, either.
By now it was only a month before the war. Tensions were beginning to rise, and Cyan feared that Bob would be taken away, drafted by the government and forced to fight on their side. She tried to be there for him, but her attempts failed worse than Bob’s own attempts to do things earlier on in their relationship.
She had predicted correctly, as it wasn’t long until the men from the government arrived again, this time armed with guns. They forcibly made Bob sign a form which drafted him into the army until at least war’s end, if not longer.
Cyan was heartbroken; she loved him, and now there was a very good chance that she would never see him again. In desperation, she tried to join the army as well, but the fascist government had put restrictions on women and did not allow them to fight in their army.
She tried to join the other side’s forces, the Communist Red Army, but she was again denied as she was a female and thus not allowed to join their army, either.

In a fit of desperation, Cyan decided to become a mercenary. She attempted to buy a midnight blue suit of armor in remembrance of Bob’s favorite color, but she wound up having to purchase midnight black armor, as the midnight blue was sold out.
She hid her identity behind Bob’s old helmet that he had bought for her old pastime of paintballing, upgraded the armor plating protecting it, and equipped it with a voice changer to disguise her voice.
Then she adopted a new name: “Inferno”.
To any casual onlooker, she was a man when she was wearing her armor. And so she masqueraded as a man, joining mercenary websites and looking for work, always hoping to meet Bob once again, even if it was on the field of battle. Once she had met him, she was going to remove her helmet and show him who she really was. The plan from then on was to desert and run far away from the military, possibly getting off-planet if they could secure a ride and hitch a way to one of the Outer Colonies to start a new life together.
It was four long years without him. Four years of murdering innocents for money, putting on a tough face whilst also constantly searching for the love of her life. It had hardened her, changed her, and it had made her ruthless and quite possibly insane. In fact, she knew it had, for it had been four years of heartbreak. But she knew Bob as well. Even if they were both changed for the worse, she knew he would take her back and they would make it work.
She knew that they would find a way, no matter what.


Bob sat there in his ice cave, reflecting on this. A tear formed in his eye as Inferno’s breaths grew shallower and shallower. He looked at her and instantly remembered why she had looked so familiar in the past.
“I’m sorry I have to do this, Cyan.” Bob said, and he took a soft bite of her shoulder, infecting her with the zombification virus which would make her into someone just like him.
Looking back, Bob thought, maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he always made himself out to be. Maybe he deserves more than just being “comic relief”. But that wasn’t the point.
He didn’t need to be funny to be loved. He had Cyan.
As adored as he was by the people who have read his antics in this story so far, maybe he did have some brains after all.
He certainly was hungry for them.

[English Mobster]

The Smoke and the Dust
Sergeant Daniel Jacobs, ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper) serial number 98784-41102-DJ, pounded on the bulkhead door next to his HEV (Human Entry Vehicle), signaling he was ready. He sealed the air lock on the HEV and began the final pre-drop check. He and his team of six other tough-as-nails ODSTs, nicknamed "Helljumpers", were supposed to launch from the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) frigate Before Sundown in about 30 seconds to aid the fight against the Covenant, an alien race who had just landed on Earth. Already on the ground was an elite fighter codenamed Sierra 117, who, rumor has it, was part of the elite Spartan-II project. The Spartan IIs were biologically-enhanced super soldiers, who fought against any enemy of the UNSC. They had a near-flawless record, until the Covenant invaded Reach, the UNSC's main military base. Every available Spartan fought against the Covenant. Almost all of them died.

Now, the remaining super-soldiers should be on the ground, defending their home planet. He checked his countdown timer.

10 seconds until his HEV was jettisoned from Earth orbit into space.

Jacobs turned on his comm and got in touch with his squad. "10 seconds to drop. The weather in Mombassa is sunny, with a 100 percent chance of Helljumpers kicking ass." He checked the countdown timer.
"Drop in 3... 2..."

Seven HEVs were launched from the belly of Before Sundown and into the void of space, beginning their free-fall into Earth's atmosphere.

Jacobs monitored his squad's vital signs. Everyone was doing fine. The heart rates of three members of his squad were riding high due to nervousness, but otherwise, everyone was fine. He wished he could use radio built into his helmet (his comm) to contact his squad mates to calm them down, but they had to maintain comm silence in order to preserve the secrecy of their mission.

Jacobs ran an overview of the mission in his head. Once they landed, they were to clear the landing zone (LZ) of any Covenant and immediately set up a base camp. From there, they were supposed to clear the area of all Covenant until they reached the Mombassa Space Elevator. From there, they were supposed to retrieve the Smart AIs. Smart AI were AI which were adapted for special purposes, like keeping track of the activities of New Mombassa's massive port, utilizing the cities' defenses, and, in space, performing complex calculations to jump to Slipspace, faster-than-light travel, and just making sure the ship ran as well as it should. There were two in Mombassa, and they were supposed to be retrieved from the Elevator, as well as the Superintendent, another AI who managed New Mombassa and whose databanks held critical information, and then the team was supposed to comm the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) for further instructions.

The HEVs were in the upper atmosphere and things were running hot. Jacobs immediately initiated the cooling cycles in all of his squads' HEVs to keep the temperatures in the non-heat-shielded pods under a bearable 105 degrees. If these pods were not cooled down, the heat inside could reach over 300 degrees: not a pleasant experience.

Now the heart rates quickened in two more marines. Only he and Corporal Lopez kept their cool. Their fears were justified, as a HEV was not the safest vehicle to enter into an atmosphere, with a 50/50 chance of survival. However, that's why they were the Helljumpers, jumping feet first into hell.

The LZ seemed remotely clear. There were several cannon-fodder Grunts and maybe two or three Elites. The Grunts, while five feet tall and very strong, were easily scared and had to rely on methane breathers, as they could not breathe oxygen. Overall, they would be no problem. The Elites, however, were seven feet tall, had energy shields which could absorb gunfire, and were as strong as any Spartan-II. The grunts were fanatically loyal to them, but they would panic once their leaders were gone. The Elites were the first target, and he relayed the info to his squad via their computer screens.

His screen gave him the projected time until landing, 45 seconds, approximately. He set the computers to deploy the air brakes in 5 seconds and began to brace for impact.

Jacobs surveyed the LZ again. This time, however, he caught glimpse of Brutes working alongside the Elites. He swore. Brutes were tough-as-nails, and while they were unshielded, they "berserked" easily and turned into near-invincible bullet sponges. Moreover, these ones weren't just any Brutes; they had the Brutes' new power armor, which made them even more deadly. He began to relay the information to his squad when the screen turned a bright red. His airbrakes had failed.

He immediately began to compensate, trying to deploy them manually. Another failure. They weren't going to deploy. Jacobs began to panic; the pod wasn't going to slow down enough.

He was about to open his comm and tell his team, but he was under strict comm silence. Their drop had to be secret. He was to die silently. The power in his HEV began to flicker.

His HEV impacted with tremendous force. Jacobs was slammed to the ground. He tried to move, but his body wouldn't let him. Immediately the Covenant ran over to his pod. The circuitry in his HEV flickered and went out as darkness overcame him. The door of his HEV popped open and fell to the ground. The last thing in this universe that he saw was the Grunt that ran into his pod and smashed in his face.



Corporal Lopez monitored her teammate's vitals closely as they went down on their drop. All HEVs were functioning normally, and, aside from some normal drop nervousness (Falling from space in what is essentially a lightly armored tin can is nerve-racking, even for the toughest of people), everyone was doing fine. Her computer relayed to her the situation: 14 Grunts, 2 Elites. Seven Grunts per Elite. Take out the Elites and the Grunts go down easy. While it will be tough to kill the Elites, it isn't impossible. There were a total of seven people in the squad, each armed with an Assault Rifle, SMG, or a Battle Rifle like the one she had. It would be easy work.

Her airbrakes deployed on time, slowing her descent. She checked her vitals again, and she noticed her Commander, Sergeant Jacobs, was panicking. His HEV had an error: his airbrakes had failed catastrophically. Her computer plotted his chances of survival at 3.1459%. She took the intiative and began to transfer command over to herself. Even if he lived, the Covenant would get to him long before they could, and the ODSTs had a mission to accomplish

Her HEV touched down hard. She checked everyone's vital signs. Her Sergeant's vitals were declining. She knew he wasn't going to make it. Everyone else's vitals were fine. She issued the command to pop their hatches. The HEV's doors on all the Helljumpers popped off and fell to the ground.



The LZ was hot. Immediately, her squad was under fire from all directions. "Spread out and return fire!" She barked to her squad.

They were in a city, from the looks of the buildings, Old Mombassa in Kenya. Nearly every sign on the buildings told the residents of Old Mombassa to evacuate, save a couple of billboards. The HEVs had crashed through three separate buildings in their descent, before landing in a mostly empty courtyard surrounded by buildings. In the center of the courtyard was a statue of a man on a horse holding a sword high, next to a fairly large lake. Lopez also noticed that the Helljumpers, in their descent, had smashed through a sign advertising the new Warthog jeep, formerly a military vehicle, but was now adapted for civilian use. The sign flickered a few times, and sparks flew in all directions.

She ran behind her HEV and began to return fire. Her late Sergeant was correct, 14 Grunts, 2 Elites. She began to fire on the right Elite. He ducked behind cover and barked something to the Grunts, who immediately charged toward her. She shot three of the Grunts in the head and dove away from her HEV when she saw one of the Grunts holding a blue sphere. A plasma grenade.

Plasma grenades are unlike human fragmentation grenades because they stick to things and blow up. Once armed, they will stick to any object emanating heat and light a three-second fuse, and Grunts are notoriously good aimers.

The plasma grenade flew over her HEV and landed where she was less than three seconds ago. Lopez curled up behind her Sergeant's HEV and took aim at the Elite again. However, this time, there was a new enemy alongside the Elite, three Brutes, in full power armor with another team of seven Grunts. She swore. This fight just got a lot harder.

The last time that Corporal Lopez crossed paths with a Brute, it wiped out all of her squad mates. She took it out at the very last second, completed her mission, and got out.

She hid behind the HEV and checked her teammate's vitals.

Private Jones was doing okay. By far, he was the most panicked of the marines, but he wasn't hit.

Private Hicks was on a combat high. He exchanged fire just to her right with a pair of Grunts. "Cover me!" She yelled. Jones shot a burst from his Battle Rifle over her shoulder and pegged a Grunt in the head, making it fall to the ground.

Private Peterson had taken a hit, but he was still breathing and fighting to the best of his abilities.

Private McCormick, the Irishman of the squad, was sneaking up ahead, trying to flank the Covenant. They had not noticed him yet, but as soon as he made any sort of sound, they would.

Corporal Lance, whose HEV had landed farther away behind the Covenant, was accompanying Private McCormick in flanking the Covenant. Corporal Lopez stuck her head out from behind the HEV and watched as the two attacked the left Elite from behind.

The Elite was taken by total surprise. Immediately, he began firing at the two. However, McCormick and Lance overpowered him and brought him to the ground. A quick battle rifle 3-shot burst finished him off.

However, there was still the other Elite to worry about, as well as the Brutes.

"All squads! Redirect fire on those Brutes!" Lopez screamed.

The Helljumpers cut loose on the Brutes who were just getting in formation. Lance's accuracy on the Assault Rifle hit a critical system on one of the Brutes' power armors and caused it to fail and fracture. The Brutes weren't too happy. Three of them pulled out the Brutes' equivalent to a grenade launcher, the Brute Shot. The leader of the Brutes, the Chieftain, pulled out a very large hammer from his back and charged.

The ODSTs all opened fire on the hammer-wielding Brute. The bullets bounced off the Brute like nothing, and it kept coming. It swung the hammer, missing the Helljumpers, but the impact from the hammer sent anything within a two-foot radius flying.

Hicks separated from the rest of the Helljumpers, trying to flank the Brute. Unfortunately, her plan backfired, as it decided to come after her.
Hicks panicked. She shot wildly and managed to shoot off the Brute's headress. This just proceeded to make the Brute angrier. She tried to fire at the Brute, but her gun was jammed. She dropped her SMG in favor of a Covenant Plasma Rifle she found on the ground. She sent off several more bullets at the Brute as the other ODSTs tried to back her up. She narrowly dodged a blast from the Brute's hammer, and a blue sphere flew towards where she just was and tagged the Brute in the chest.
A grunt had just accidentally stuck its leader, the Brute Chieftan. The Brute roared with rage as the Plasma Grenade detonated, killing the Brute. Immediately, every Covenant soldier in the area turned against the Grunt, and it was overwhelmed and killed by a combination of Covenant and Human forces. The ODSTs focused more on the Brutes. There were still three Brutes remaining, one of which lacked power armor.

The ODSTs kept up their fire on the Brutes. Another set of power armor failed and fractured. The Helljumpers had to keep on their toes to dodge the continual stream of Brute Shot grenades. Eventually, the third Brute's power armor failed, and the three of them berserked. They charged recklessly at incredible speed towards the ODSTs, but they were all gunned down before they were close enough to wipe out the entire squad of Marines.

Finally, the Helljumpers could focus on the Elite. Peterson lobbed a grenade at the Elite's feet, and the Elite attempted to dodge out of the way.

However, the Elite was just a tiny bit too late, as the grenade brought down the energy shields protecting it. Battle rifle bullets from Lopez shot it in the chest a few times, and it roared at the ODSTs. It attempted to charge them, but the coordination of the squad of Helljumpers brought down the Elite before it could get too close.



Lopez reloaded, took off her helmet and held it over her heart to mourn the late Sergeant Jacobs. The sickening and all-too-familiar stench of a mix of gunpowder and plasma filled the air. She replaced her helmet and checked her squad using her heads-up display (HUD). There were no major injuries from the skirmish, Peterson had been nicked by a plasma blast, but was healing it with one of the squad's medkits. The Helljumpers were functional.

Lopez checked for any stragglers hiding nearby, then she ducked behind a crate and commed the nearest Commander in the area.
"This is Helljumper Omega squad. LZ is secure, all Covenant forces have been neutralized," she said, looking around and staring at all the scorch marks and the sign the HEVs blasted through in their landing, "and the city's not going to be happy about the paycheck for the damage we caused. Sergeant Jacobs is no longer with us. This is Corporal Lopez assuming the position of CO. We are requesting a Pelican dropship for supply drop-off."

Commander Miranda Keyes' voice blared over the comm. "Roger that, Omega Squad. A Pelican will drop supplies shortly."

"Thank you, Commander." Lopez turned off her comm and spoke to her squad. "Everyone, assume defensive position beta. We need to hold out until supplies can arrive."

Corporal Lance pointed to the sky and spoke up. "Ma'am!"

A shadow fell over the LZ, and the Helljumpers shifted their gazes skyward. A large Covenant Assault Carrier was dropping off Covenant drop pods. Eight of them.

Lopez assessed the situation and barked out orders. "Everyone find cover! Move, move, move!"

The Helljumpers made dashes for cover. Lopez ran behind her crate to an abandoned and scorched bus.

As the shadow from the Covenant carrier lifted, the eight Covenant drop pods slammed into the ground. Eight Elites walked out.

The Helljumpers opened fire.

One of the Elites jumped back, just narrowly avoiding the spray of bullets. It roared at the Helljumpers before it pressed a button its wrist and disappeared.

The seven other Elites did the same.

"They've got active camo!" Lance yelled.

The ODSTs shot at where the Elites were before they engaged their active camouflage cloaking devices, but to no avail.

"Keep yer eyes peeled." McCormick said gruffly.

There was a slight shimmer behind Private Jones in the corner of McCormick's eye.

"Aye, bonnie lad, behind ya!"

The ODSTs all opened fire on where the shimmer was. The Elite's active camouflage flickered and failed, revealing the gold armor of an Elite Zealot. It held its chest and emitted a guttural roar before igniting its energy sword.

The ODSTs slowly started to back away. The energy sword would be able to penetrate through the thickest of armors without hesitation, and would surely be able to cut any one of them in half.

Suddenly, seven other energy swords materialized out of thin air, hissing as if they were a thousand snakes. The ODSTs were surrounded.

"OPEN FIRE!" Lopez screamed.

The decloaked Zealot made a lunge for McCormick. McCormick sidestepped out of the charging Elite's path and put a clip of SMG bullets into the Elite's back, bringing down its shields.

The Zealot turned around and growled at McCormick. It was pissed.

McCormick didn't even bother to reload. He tossed aside his SMG and went fist-to-fist with the Elite.

That was a foolish mistake. The Zealot pushed McCormick to the ground. It held its energy sword high and advanced slowly for the killing blow.

McCormick looked up at the Elite with fiery determination in his eyes. It came closer. Closer. Close-

A three-shot battle rifle burst from Jones flew through the Zealot's head, killing it.

McCormick got up and picked up his SMG, reloading it and targeting one of the shimmering energy swords that were now charging at them. He opened fire, but the Elite continued its advance.

"SCATTER!" Lopez commanded.

The ODSTs ran out from their now-compromised cover in different directions from the Elites. A couple ODSTs took potshots at the Elites as they ran.

Jones took cover behind a ruined sign advertising the new Warthog jeep to the west of the courtyard where they were fighting the Elites. He had hoped the sparks flying off the sign would mask him. He hid in the sign's shadow.

A pale purplish glow bounced off the wall to Jones' right. One of the Elites was coming to investigate. A lone energy sword, seemingly floating in mid-air with only a faint shimmer around its wielder, appeared behind the sign. It slowly appeared in front of Jones and advanced, searching for the humans it knew were nearby. Jones stayed perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.

The Elite looked around in the sign's shadow. Jones took a step back and accidentally kicked a rock.

The Energy Sword turned towards him. It slowly crept forward, investigating the cause of the noise.

It inched closer and closer to his location. The tip of the blade was a few inches to Jones' left. If it turned its head, the light from the sword would bounce off Jones' armor and it would see him.

Suddenly, in the Covenant tongue, "WORT WORT WORT!"

Thankfully, it didn't come from the Elite that was now almost breathing on Jones. That Elite turned around and ran off towards their new leader, who had made the call of discovery.

Jones poked his head out from the wall and watched as the Elites all gathered in one corner of the courtyard and seemingly advanced towards an unknown object, likely an ODST. Jones shot at the back of the Elite that was breathing on him just moments before. It turned and barked the same shout of discovery as the other Elite did.

Jones swore and took off running. The crackling noise of more gunshots penetrated the group of Elites in that was gathering in the corner of the courtyard. Jones saw three ODSTs who were fighting valiantly against the Elites. One of the swords fell to the ground, accompanied by the now dead Elite that was holding it. Jones took more potshots at the Elites as he joined the group of ODSTs. A sudden pain ran through his back as an Energy Sword sliced through the rear of his armor.
"Jones!" Private Hicks cried.

Assault Rifle bullets flew out from behind Jones and killed the Elite that just was about to sever Jones' spine. Jones turned and saw that Lance was the source of the bullets. Jones smiled at Lance from behind his helmet and fell to the ground.

Lopez and Lance joined the group of ODSTs that was still shooting at the Elites, and the group moved to cover Jones. Aside from Jones' injury, the squad had taken no hits in their short time apart.

There were still three Elites, and there were five Helljumpers, plus an injured comrade. This was going to be a long fight, unless supplies arrived soon-
The voice of a female Pelican pilot came over the radio. "Delta 77, on approach."
Lopez, amid the gunshots all around her, turned on her comm. "Roger that, Delta 77. We're in a bit of a situation here."
A ghostly whirring noise developed in the distance.

Echo 77's voice came over the radio. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

The ghostly whirring noise grew closer. It sounded like it was coming from the spiritual realm, almost like a spirit or a-
"BANSHEE!" Lopez yelled.

The whirring noise flew right over their heads, as a Covenant Banshee fighter flew above them and circled in the courtyard. The main Banshee fighter was shaped like a duck's bill, with two V-shaped extrusions emerging from both sides of the belly. It was armed with dual plasma cannons and an explosive fuel rod gun. It found the ODSTs, cornered by Elites, and screamed towards them.

Plasma peppered the Helljumpers' position, turning the aspalt under their feet into glass. The Helljumpers ran for cover, keeping suppressive fire up on the Elites still pestering them. Lopez dove behind a nearby dumpster. A green burst from the fuel rod hit the garbage container, melting a hole through it and causing the entire dumpster to become white-hot. Lopez ran from her cover and got behind a pillar.

Lance scurried to find something to destroy the damn thing. Blisters formed up and down his back as the plasma impacted all around him. A blue sphere was on the ground nearby. He snatched it and dove out in front of the Banshee. The twin anti-gravity boosters on each side glowed a bright purple as the 'Shee accelerated, hoping to earn a kill by splattering him all over the front end of the craft.

His timing had to be just right.

As the demon flyer got ever closer, Lance armed and threw his plasma grenade.

The sphere lumbered through the air, heading straight for the Banshee… But then the 'Shee made an evasive roll to the right. It was a clean miss, and Lance watched as the grenade exploded in the distance.

But there was always Plan B.

The Banshee roared towards him. Lance faced it down, waiting for an opportune moment. The pilot was caught unaware as Lance sidestepped the incoming Banshee, grabbing ahold of its wing and using it to hoist himself on top. The pilot, surprised, pulled up as Lance took aim and fired at the Elite inside. There was a flash as the pilot's shields failed, before a sudden loop threw Lance from the Banshee. Lance tumbled into the lake in the center of the Helljumpers' battle arena.

The Banshee looped up over the buildings and out of sight. The sounds of SMGs still rang across the arena as two of the Helljumpers kept the Elites at bay. Ripples formed in the lake as Lance dragged himself out from its center and lumbered over to where the Helljumpers were making their stand.

A Pelican dropship flew out from over the tops of the buildings and into the courtyard. As if it had sensed a new and more important target, the Banshee flew out from behind the buildings above them and targeted it. Dual blasts of plasma hit the dropship in the engines. The right engine ignited.

The dropship began to spin wildly out of control. The military-grade Warthog Jeeps it carried came out of the drop ship and smashed into the ground. The Pelican smashed into the Banshee with full force, and the heat of the fire and the force of the impact forged the two metals into one. The wreckage tumbled over and over in the air before slamming into the ground. Metal began to grind against rock as the remains of the Pelican skid towards the Elites and the Helljumpers at a blistering pace. The Elites, stunned, momentarily stopped their advance and turned towards the wreckage.

The wreckage landed and skidded at high speed towards the Helljumpers. It mowed down the Elites, who attempted to dodge the wreckage, but were just a fraction of a second too late. The Helljumpers stood still in the face of the oncoming malestorm of wreckage, and the sound of grinding metal slowed and came to a halt a meter in front of Corporal Lopez, who was the closest ODST to the wreckage.

Lopez took off her helmet and held it over her heart at the loss of the Pelican pilot. She then replaced it and picked through the wreckage for anything salvageable. Two medpacks were on the ground from the wreckage, but overall, the Pelican was a total loss. She turned towards the Warthogs that fell from the Pelican when it spun out of control.

The two 'Hogs were both still there, and, aside from a few dents from tumbling through the air, were both intact. With each jeep holding three soldiers each, it was just enough.

Lopez's HUD flickered and came back again. Checking her armor readout, critical components had taken heavy damage and were beginning to fail. She began to take off her ODST uniform, exposing the typical UNSC soldier's uniform underneath. Jones, whose armor was at a total loss when the Elite attacked him, had already done the same. Currently, he also was using a medpack to heal his injuries as he began getting back up from where he fell.

"Everyone in the 'Hogs" Lopez said.

She took the driver seat of one of the 'Hogs, Lance took the driver seat of the other. McCormick got in the Gunner seat as Jones got in the side seat, opting to ride shotgun as the medpack he used took full effect. Privates Hicks and Peterson got in the gunner and side seats of Lance's 'Hog, respectively. Lopez gassed the Warthog jeep and took off down the narrow street, followed closely by Lance.



NopYap the Grunt didn't want to be here. He had been eating from his food nipple in the Covenant Cruiser quite peacefully when the big mean Brutes ripped him off it and stuffed him inside a Covenant Phantom dropship.

Now he was assigned to guard duty on this backwater planet with a group of Brutes and Jackals. Hopefully the Demon, spoken of in human tongues as "Spartan", wouldn't come.

In the distance, he heard the noise of human jeeps. He poked his head up and sniffed the air. There was no denying it. The humans were coming.
"RUN!" Nopyap screamed.

The two human jeeps broke through the Covenant blockade and the humans on the chaingun started shooting whatever the drivers of the jeeps hadn't splattered. Luckily, the Brutes weren't wearing power armor and went down without too much trouble.

"To the space elevator to finish our mission. Move out." Lopez said.

A pink beam flew through the air and hit McCormick in the head. His head exploded and his body toppled off the chaingun turret of Lopez's 'Hog.
"SNIPERS! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!" Lopez said. Lopez and Lance gunned the Warthog's engines and took off down the street. They skidded to a stop. Blocking their path was two hulking pieces of armor, each equipped with a gigantic blade offering further protection to the fragile worm colonies which are contained within the armor.

Lopez cursed under her breath.

They had found Hunters. Hunters are by far the strongest and most resilient species in the Covenant, and these ones stood thirteen feet tall.
A powerful fuel rod laser is integrated directly into the Hunter's armor, capable of incenerating anything in their path after a short charge. For close range, they carry an enormous and nearly-impervious metal shield. This shield protects them from almost every form of plasma-based or ballistic weaponry available to Covenant and Human infantry alike, and is also a powerful melee tool capable of crushing anything in its path. The Hunter also has a surprising burst of speed when it moves in for the kill, making them the deadly walking tanks of the Covenant armada. And the worst part: they always fought in pairs.

Lopez quickly gunned the 'Hog's powerful engine and made a sharp left down a side street to dodge the Hunters. Lance was close on her heels doing the same. The Hunters took a quick shot at the moving 'Hogs, but both the Warthogs evaded the potshots and made their escape and headed towards the bridge connecting Old and New Mombassa, from which they would head to their final destination, the space elevator.


Finally, they reached the lengthy suspension bridge which separate Old Mombasa from New Mombasa. There was a tremendous shaking behind the Warthogs, as if successive earthquakes were continuously trembling the ground under their feet. The five Helljumpers turned to witness the appearance of a large, mechanical purple spider. Its single "eye" fired a bright green beam at a Scorpion tank, one of the most powerful and heavily armored vehicles in their arsenal. In a sea of wreckage and flames, the tank was obliterated. The wreckage flew away from the spider as if someone had flicked a paper football across the room. The burning wreckage flew over the Helljumper's heads and landed in the water under the New Mombassa Bridge.
It was a Marine's worst nightmare. The Covenant's deadly Scarab tank was here.

Lopez jumped out of the driver seat and opened fire on the approaching Scarab with her Warthog's .50 caliber bullets. The bullets did nothing to the Scarab as the giant spider continued its slow advance. Jones grabbed the Sniper Rifle found in the glove compartment of Lopez's Warthog and hopped out. He got in position and began to take shots at the Scarab.
"GET THE ROCKETS!" Lopez ordered, panic slowly creeping into her voice.

"Yes Ma'am!" Lance's trembling voice replied replied over the roar of the two Warthogs' chainguns. He started to get out-
Then the Scarab's giant green laser beam hit his 'Hog. Lance and all the Helljumpers in Lance's Warthog were killed instantly. Jones, who was lying prone nearby, was tossed away as if he were a toy.

"LANCE!" Lopez yelled.

Lopez dismounted the 'Hog and dove towards the rocket launcher, which was now scattered on the ground. She picked up the rocket launcher and began to unload every single last rocket in every one of the remaining clips they had as the Scarab passed over the remaining Helljumpers. She watched as each rocket impacted with enough force to devestate a Warthog or obliberate a Ghost. There wasn't even a scratch on the Scarab's armor.

She tossed aside the rockets and picked up Jones' sniper rifle. She kept up her fire on the Scarab, but the sniper proved useless. She turned to Jones, who was unconscious. She quickly searched her medkit and revived Jones. Slowly, the marine came back to consciousness.
"You hit?" Lopez asked.

"No."

"Good. Stay here. You and I are the last Helljumpers in our squad. Unless we find help… Looks like our mission's over." Lopez walked over to a toll booth and began to watch the Scarab as it crossed the bridge.



Private Jones was on the ground, breathing erratically.

He watched as Sierra 117, the "Master Chief" himself, a living legend and one of the very last Spartan IIs, stepped over him towards Corporal Lopez.

Corporal Lopez explained the situation to the Master Chief.
"It blew right through us. 50-cal, rockets, didn't do a thing." She and the Chief watched as the Scarab disappeared over the bridge and out of sight.

Suddenly, a Pelican appeared and dropped off a tank. The Chief must have sent for it. A black marine appeared, emblazoned with the rank of Sergeant Major on his armor.
"Where's the rest of your platoon?"

"Wasted, Sarge." Lopez replied.

Jones butted in, still in a panic.
"And we will be, too, sir, if we don't get the hell outta here!"

The Sergeant put his hand on Jones' shoulder.
"You hit, Marine?" He asked.

"N-no, Sir."

"Then, listen up! When I joined the Corps, we didn't have any fancy-shmancy tanks. We had sticks! Two sticks, and a rock for the whole platoon - and we had to share the rock! Buck up, boy, you're one very lucky Marine!"

"What about that Scarab?" Lopez inquired.

"We've all run the simulations, they're tough, but they ain't invincible. Stay with the Master Chief, he'll know what to do."

"Yes, sir, Sergeant!"

Suddenly, the almost-human voice of an AI came over the speakers. The Chief had a Smart AI with him, the same type of AI that the marine's mission was to retrieve.
"Thanks for the tank. He never gets me anything."

The Sergeant replied with a smirk, and said coolly, "Oh, I know what the ladies like."

Lopez sighed deeply and jumped on the side of the tank as the Master Chief climbed into the cockpit.

[English Mobster]

Omega Squad: New Harvest (Honorable Mention in HBO's Fic-Pick of the Week! (http://hboff.bungie.org/viewtopic.php?t=6256))
Subject 990108 finally awoke. He was adrift inside a small tube, floating in some kind of tasteless, colorless liquid.
What was he doing here?
He looked around at the world outside his tube's glass walls. All around him was a sterile world, a world which was filled with a contrast of white walls and dark floors and which was decorated with all kinds of peculiar beeping instruments from floor to ceiling. Nearby was a computer mounted on a wall, running some kind of program consisting of many different wavering lines. On the bottom corner of the screen, it displayed the date: March 24, 2510. 13:05, military time. Everything in here, it all looked familiar to him; as if he were locked in an everlasting dream and was just now being reawakened, reintroduced into the outside world. What had happened?
What had happened? That… That was the question. He thought long and hard about it. The hours ticked by on the computer screen, and all he could remember was… Was…
No matter how long and hard he concentrated, he couldn't remember anything at all about his past. Not his name, not his family, not his purpose was for being here, trapped in this confining tube. The only thing he could remember was the number 990108, a number which was tattooed onto his chest. His ID number.
Who was he? Why was he trapped here? What IS this place?
Just outside his tube, a door opened. A slender female stepped through it, in a white lab coat and glasses. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, and looked as if she was the kind of woman who could keep secrets. Many secrets. She approached his tube.
"Hello there little ones," she said.
Little ones? Plural?
She continued. "My name is Lucia, and welcome to the lab facility of the Office of Naval Intelligence's Section Zero. This facility is going to be your new home. You will learn here, grow here, train here. You will become one of the best; elite among elites; a commando among commandos. You will become strong. You will be who we need you to be.
"But something is coming. Something the human race has never had to deal with before. And you have been..." She paused. "'Selected' to fight it.
"We don't know when this threat will arrive, exactly, but we know they're out there, plotting our demise. They will mean us harm, and they will exterminate us, colony by colony. Once they reach Earth… We won't stand a chance. We need something to save us from that fate. And you, little ones, will be our saviors.
"You won't seem to be anything other than a casual ODST, not from the outside. The public won't know you're any different. They can't know.
"But you are. You have been specially picked to take the fight to this new threat coming our way. Your minds are wiped, your bodies are cloned. The other subjects in this room are going to be your brothers and sisters on the battlefield. Your only family. The people in this room will be your closest compatriots. And I will train you, teach you what we know about the threat to our race, mold you into our saviors, our messiahs."
Cloned? ODST?
"As your young bodies grow and learn, you will be dispatched into combat together, forever sealing your bonds with the blood of battle. You are going to be the elite of the ODST squads: pure, dedicated commandos, with an inhuman willingness to serve and fight. It will be all you have ever known. Welcome to the 77th Helljumper Division, Omega squad."
And, with that, Lucia left the room. Subject 990108 turned around. Behind him were thirty-one identical tubes, each with a small human body in them. He wanted to call out, to cry to them, ask them if they knew what had happened, if they could fill in the horrible void in his mind… As he was about to bang on the glass, a black substance leaked into the liquid in his tube. He found himself growing sleepy… His eyes were heavy… Darkness overcame his vision as project OEDIPUS test subject number 990108 fell into a deep sleep.

2517
Sep 23
0537 hours
Pelican dropship over Reach
Seven years had passed since Subject 990108 had begun his training. Five years ago, he had been given a "proper" name, Dimitri Valdez. And just the other day, Section Zero had analyzed the seven-year-old bodies of the ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) and determined that they were finally able to handle the stresses of live-fire combat.
Their Pelican soared high above the surface of Reach, the base of military operations for the UNSC (United Nations Space Command). He gazed out onto the ground below, admiring the planet's beauty. Dawn was breaking, giving everything a pink glow as the Pelican passed Reach's military bases. The kids aboard were watching as the soldiers began their early morning exercises. Suddenly, he saw something strange. Dimitri spotted a group of kids, not much older than 6, being given push-ups and all manner of military warm-ups. It was an odd sight watching recruits so young; Dimitri was confident that Omega squad was the only squad of specially-trained ODSTs. They were the test bed for the program; it was their duty to be on the front lines, to prove to ONI that they were the best fighting force available. It was their purpose. Could it be that Section Zero had "selected" OTHER ODSTs to do THEIR job? No. It was impossible. They must be much older. He watched as one of the young trainees on the ground threw up, and Dimitri looked off into the trees beyond.
The girl next to him tapped his shoulder.
"Dimitri, you alright?"
Dimitri finally broke away from gazing at the outside world and looked at his comrades inside the Pelican, all of which were getting ready for battle. "Yeah, Colleen, I'm fine. Thanks."
He had made some friends over the last seven years. Of the original thirty-two trainees, only sixteen made it through the harsh initial incubation phase of their training.
Once that ordeal was over, Colleen was the first one of his fellow squadmates he had talked to, and the pair became the best of friends. She had always had a peculiar beauty about her, one which was not normally seen in a girl her age, and she was famous for having the ability to give people piercing glares straight through her helmet.
Her combat ID number was C26. Dimitri's was P13. While the UNSC mandated that they use their combat IDs during battle, it was a mandate often ignored by Omega squad, even during simulations. The bonds between the soldiers were too close to use anything less than their real names.
The Pelican finally hovered above a small box canyon. It was a very peculiar place; two strange facilities stood at either end of the canyon, and a stream and a large natural bridge divided it in two. It looked both natural and unnatural at the same time, as if someone - or something - had created it. It was unlike anything Dimitri had seen before.

Lucia gave them their orders over the roar of the Pelican's engines.
"Welcome to a place we call 'Beaver Creek', Omega squad. Today's live-fire exercise is 'Capture the Flag'. You will be split up into two teams of eight members each, and each team will start in these mock-ups of structures we have discovered all over UNSC space. It seems that the extra-galactic threat will do anything for these structures, so you must learn to attack and defend them.
"Your mission today is to get the other teams' flag by any means necessary. We will have a medic on-station who will revive anyone who has been incapacitated by gunfire, but I promise that you won't be getting back into the fight today if you go down." She paused. "Oh, and Dimitri, please don't shoot the medic this time."
Dimitri grew red as he felt the glares of all his squadmates looming down on him. Lucia continued.
"The first team to capture the flag one time wins. Colleen, you lead Blue team. Ian, you lead Red. Team leaders, please pick your teammates."
Colleen's first choice was Dimitri. The two quickly snatched up the other most promising Helljumpers in their squad: Dimitri grabbed May as Colleen got Alex and Brandon, the best sniper/spotter pair in the squad. It wasn't long before both teams were prepping their gear and getting ready to jump out of a perfectly good Pelican.
"Alright, teams set?" Lucia asked. Ian and Colleen nodded. "Let's go!"
Dimitri bailed from the Pelican first. He pulled his chute and landed just outside the structure designated for blue. Colleen landed next to him and handed him his helmet.
"You forgot this," she said.
"Oh. Thanks." Dimitri put the helmet over his head and linked up with Colleen. The HUD immediately came to life, detecting his teammates and squad leader. The grey digital camouflage normally found on his ODST combat uniform changed to a "Blue Tiger" style. Taking out the prototype MA5BX Assault Rifle he had been given to test, he followed Colleen deep into the bowels of the structure.

Colleen got right to work. "Alright. Let's put together a plan. We'll split up into 2 squads.
"Squad A will consist of Dimitri, Alex, Brandon, and I. We will search for weapons while Ian's busy talking and then find a way to infiltrate their facility.
"Squad B will consist of everyone I didn't call and will be led by May. Your job is to form a defensive perimeter around the structure. Keep any attempt to capture our flag out of the picture. Try to find every entrance, make sure it's covered. Let's move!"
"Short and simple. I like it!" Brandon said.
Colleen glared at him from behind her helmet. "Cut the chatter. We need to keep this quiet. Let's get out of here, time is of the essence."
Dimitri scaled the middle structure as Brandon climbed a rock off on the side of the cliff. Alex and Colleen watched the entrance to the red base, taking cover in the shadows of rocks. Brandon's voice came over the comm.
"Brandon here. I found a sniper rifle. I'll pick them off from here and keep them from getting into our base."
"Roger that, Brandon. But remember to aim for body shots. We just want to keep them out of the fight, they're still our squadmates," Colleen replied.
"I copy."
Alex cut in. "I'll be your spotter. Link up with me on a private channel."
"Roger that, Alex."
"Colleen, this is Dimitri. I found a rocket launcher up top here. It could cause a LOT of noise. Only 2 shots though. Also, I can see a hole in their bases' roof from up here; it would make for a nice way in."
"Copy that Dimitri. Get down here with Alex and I. We'll go in through the roof."
Dimitri slid down the side of the cliff before rejoining Alex and Colleen.
Colleen opened a public comm channel to her team. "All set?"
There were seven affirmatives.
Colleen smiled under her helmet. "Let's move in."
Alex began seeking targets to identify for Brandon as Dimitri and Colleen climbed up to the roof of the facility. The pair peered through the hole in the roof. Ian had just finished laying out his plan, and every member of red team charged out the opening.
Colleen laughed. "He must have laid out a simple plan. That took him five minutes less than usual." She opened a comm to Alex. "They're headed your way, Alex."
"Yeah, thanks."
"I'll keep them distracted for you." Dimitri said, firing the first shot from his rocket launcher. It impacted meters from the Ian's feet. Their entire team turned around, each one of them scanning the horizon, trying to find the source of the rocket. They were easy pickings for Brandon as Colleen and Dimitri dropped through the hole.
Chaos reigned as the Reds tried to determine where the sniper bullets were coming from. In no time at all, Brandon fired four shots, dropping four Reds. The rest charged at the Blue base. Brandon fired a few shots into the base, hoping to get lucky, but it was too late.
He swore and turned on his comm. "They're in the base. Half their members went down to my fire, but they managed to punch through anyway."
"Roger that, Brandon, this is Colleen. I have the flag, Dimitri's guarding my back. How are things going in there, squad B?"
There was a pause, and then May's strained voice was inside their helmets. "We're holding out. Two of them are down; we've taken a couple hits as well. I think Ian has the flag, but we can't find them. Possible they snuck out."
Colleen swore. "Find them. We can't capture this thing unless our flag is at home. Search the base, but watch for traps, got it?"
"I copy, Colleen. May out."
Colleen and Dimitri escaped from the Red base and made a dash for Blue. The duo froze as they heard a scream.
"Who's down?"
Alex responded. "Brandon's unresponsive, it was probably him. They have a sniper now, so get to cover and watch for Reds! I'll distract them, you get the cap!"
Dimitri emptied his last rocket in the general direction of Brandon's position before darting inside with Colleen
The two ran to where the Blue flag should be.
She swore. It was missing.
Brandon took out his MA5BX and began to patrol the base, searching for a target.
Colleen turned on her comm. "Alex, have you found them?"
No response.
"Alex? Do you copy?"
Nothing.
"Alex?"
Dimitri saw something move in the shadows. He shot at it. "Oi," he called, "there's no use hiding in here if you have the flag, Ian. You might as well just give up, even if you took Alex down, you're still outnumbered."
The shadow moved away. Dimitri inched closer. "Come on, Ian. Drop the flag and give up. It's a lost cause, mate."
Silence.
"Alright. I guess we'll just sit here then. It'll only be a matter of time before you lose, AGAIN."
"NEVER!" Ian cried as he charged from the corner of the base, flag in hand. Calmly, Dimitri kicked Ian into a wall and shot him a few times in the chest.
"That was a stupid move, comrade. You were outnumbered and outgunned. You really just should have just run, you know." Dimitri picked up the flag and put it back where it belonged. An electronic sensor in the Red flag detected that the two flags had been brought together and signaled the end of the game.
Lucia broadcast on an open channel. "Congrats, Dimitri and Colleen. You've won… Barely."
"Huh? Barely? What do you mean, we had superior numbers! There were at LEAST two others on our team, right?"
"Nope. You two were the only ones who made it through that, save Fred on the Red team, who had managed to take out your entire defense single-handedly."
Colleen was confused. "How the HELL did he manage that one?"
There was a crackling noise as Fred's comm joined in on the conversation. "You had your defense anticipating a frontal attack. Ian led a kamikaze charge to distract them while I snuck in behind and took out your defense without a fight."
"Smart." Dimitri said, and Colleen shot him one of her signature looks.
"Back to base, Marines," Lucia said, "Food's waiting for you."

2517
Sep 24
1515 hours
ONI Facility Alpha Conference Room B, Reach
Dr. Hasley was furious. "Lucia, you sent seven-year olds on a LIVE-FIRE exercise?"
"Section Zero determined that the test subjects of operation OEDIPUS could handle it. It won't be much different than what your pet SPARTAN project will be going through soon enough, anyway, and they're a year younger."
"I guarantee you my Spartans will be MUCH older than seven when I send them on their first live-fire! It's bad enough Ackerson ripped off the research which went into the SPARTAN project for your own uses-"
"There are a number of errors in your logic, Doctor." Lucia's tone grew gradually more condescending. "First off, this is actually their THIRD live-fire. Second, we have every safety precaution in place."
"You had a rocket launcher."
"THIRD, this project is much different than your precious SPARTAN project, Doctor. We didn't kidnap to get our subjects, we didn't lie about their fates to their parents. We didn't replace ours with the flash-clones which died over the course of a couple weeks like you did, no. We just took their DNA and used it to grow real clones, without harming any of the original children. And these clone commandos, these super-ODSTs have a much greater destiny than any of your Spartans. This project won't be fighting Rebels."
"Then who are they going to be fighting?"
"I'm sorry, but that information is classified high above your permissions, Doctor."
"Classified my ass. I'll find out, trust me."
"I doubt it."
"How will your project be different from my Spartans? How can our similar projects working off the same research –MY research- be so different?"
"I'll tell you how: First, they won't be looked upon by the public as monsters. On the exterior, they look like casual soldiers, unlike your Spartan… monstrosities. Second, they haven't been kidnapped from their former lives to serve our purposes. They have no real family, no loved ones or anything resembling a normal life to slow them down. Fighting will be all they've ever known." Dr. Hasley opened her mouth to speak, but Lucia cut her off. "AND, they won't have any dangerous and DEADLY augmentations added to them. They'll be a new breed of ODSTs. They may seem like typical soldiers to the common eye, but they have the advantage of being brought up especially to fight the coming threat."
"Just because they're clones doesn't mean that they're expendable, Lucia. It doesn't mean you can toss their lives away in a live-fire. Clone or not, they're human."
"And just because they're kidnapped means that the children involved in YOUR project are expendable? Do you have any IDEA how dangerous your plans for augmenting your kids are? At least for our clones, we can heal any normally-fatal injuries with a cloned organ. 'Spare parts', they call them."
"And where did you get your clones from?"
"Individuals who showed that they were the best of the best, just like your Spartans. Except for the sources of our clones don't have a family in mourning right now, unlike the candidates for your SPARTAN project."
"Even if they ARE cloned, you should still treat them like humans. Don't butcher them at this young age with dangerous things like live-fire exercises!"
"And you should consider the same advice, Doctor. Good day."

2526
Feb 19
1900 hours
UNSC Barracks, Reach
The interior of the UNSC Reach barracks was a wreck. Crew and equipment were being rushed every which way, creating a tangled mess of chaos and confusion.
Colleen searched everywhere, and eventually found Dimitri in the commotion. She pulled him aside to one of the few quiet corridors in the barracks.
"What's all the commotion about? Are we under attack by those aliens?" Colleen asked Dimitri.
"No, it's something about Admiral Cole. I think we're being sent to fight them, to retake Harvest."
"This'll be fun." Colleen said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
"I know. But it's our destiny, Colleen. It's what we were born to do. ONI had known this day was coming for years now, they just didn't know when. And now, after fifteen years of training… It all comes down to this."
"A suicide mission against an enemy we know nothing about?"
"I wouldn't call it a suicide mission… But I know we'll get through it, with your wit and strategy… It won't be an issue. We're commandos! The best of the best, remember? We're even better than those elitists in the 105th!"
Colleen looked unsure. Dimitri looked around, made sure no one was watching, and embraced her. "It'll be all right. We'll get through this. I promise."

2526
Mar 1
0800 hours
UNSC Sacramento Cryo Room A
"Omega squad, rise and shine!" Lucia said.
Defrosting procedures on the sixteen cryo pods began. Colleen was first on her feet, followed by Alex and Dimitri. The ODSTs lined up, single-file.
"Today is the day you finally put your training to the test. In a matter of moments, we will exit Slipspace and enter hostile territory. We're with Admiral Cole at the former human colony of Harvest, which, as you know, has been taken over by a new threat that we're calling 'The Covenant'.
"You've run the simulations on Reach. You know what to do. While Admiral Cole distracts the Covenant fleet, you and the 105th will drop to the surface.
"We have identified some of the different types of the aliens, arranged in a medieval, caste-like structure. So far, we have identified a tall, leader type, which we are calling 'Elites'; below them in rank is a bird-like type used for sniping and patrols, called 'Jackals', and at the bottom is a small, easily-scared class which the other classes use in great numbers to wear down an enemy, named 'Grunts'. There are records of another class, named 'Brutes'. However, we know very little about these Brutes, and it appears the upper ranks of the Covenant hierarchy have had them pulled off of Harvest for an unknown reason.
"Helljumpers, your mission is to scout the area, rendezvous with the other marines in the capital city, and begin the campaign to retake Harvest. Report any kind of hostile activity and keep it quiet.
"One final thing: I am promoting Colleen to the rank of Master Chief Petty Officer and Dimitri to the rank of Chief Petty Officer due to their extraordinary performance during simulated combat exercises."
The ODSTs clapped as Colleen and Dimitri smiled.
"We will be entering normal space in five minutes. I expect you ALL to be planet-side within ten. We need to get the Covenant off of this planet ASAP. The UNSC needs a victory. The sooner, the better."
"Yes ma'am!" the ODSTs replied.

Collision alarms blared as the Sacramento entered normal space. The ODSTs quickly loaded their HEVs (Human Entry Vehicles). The Sacramento shook as her hull took the initial blasts from the aliens' laser weaponry.
"I don't think she's going to hold! Launch!" Colleen cried.
Sixteen points of fire flashed for a second along the Sacramento's bottom hull, followed closely by the thirty-two points of fire from the 105th.
Omega squad finally got a good look at the Covenant battlegroup.
"A single ship? Really?" Colleen said. "This'll be easy."
"I wouldn't underestimate it, Colleen. I just hope it doesn't find us." Ian replied.
As the ODSTs soared towards the surface of Harvest, they watched as the hull integrity of the Sacramento failed catastrophically from hit after hit from the lone craft's weaponry. Finally, the ship erupted into a series of massive fireballs, being fueled by the ship's vented atmosphere.
"Brace for shockwave!" an ODST yelled. The shockwaves from Sacramento's destruction tore through space, sending Colleen and Dimitri tumbling out of control.

2526
Mar 1
1847 hours
It was sunset on Harvest. Colleen finally awoke and kicked out the door to her HEV. She took out her experimental battle rifle, the BRX-55, and scanned the area. The ground had been melted into a kind of yellow glass, which crunched and cracked under her boots. She remembered seeing footage of a similar effect in the old film reels Lucia showed the ODSTs when they were kids, demonstrating the chaos of what had happened to the ground when the first atomic bombs were tested - except this time, the effect was on a massive, planet-wide scale. It was a kind of vertigo.
She heard a faint banging noise and raised her BRX-55, scanning the horizon. Far off into the distance, she spotted another HEV and rushed towards it.
Upon inspection, she learned that the door had failed to blow when the HEV landed, sealing the occupant inside. The banging continued, and Colleen pulled the emergency release, popping open the door. A familiar-looking ODST stumbled out and fell into her arms.
"Welcome to hell," Colleen said to Dimitri with a smile, "Enjoy your stay."

Covenant activity was scarce around the area the two had dropped in. The ground was scarred and blasted from the Covenant's destruction of Harvest and the "glassing" of the planet. Craters and fractures in the glass from made by the laser weapons used by the Covenant made the landscape look like a yellow moonscape. Atomic winter had set in, and a light snow began to fall over the barren landscape.
"How long have we been out?" Dimitri asked.
"Three hours, give or take. It seems like we landed about ten miles off-course. Pretty good, considering the hit our pods took."
Dimitri nodded. "So, what do you think we should do now?"
"Regroup with the others. Head north. There should be a small area which isn't glassed, according to ONI's findings. We're supposed to meet up there."
A ghostly noise grew louder overhead. Looking up, the three craft approaching the ODSTs didn't look human. That noise definitely wasn't human. Which could only mean…
"COVENANT!" Dimitri cried. Colleen and Dimitri dashed for cover in the barren wasteland. The two dove into a nearby crater, waiting for the Covenant Banshee flyer patrol to pass overhead. Once the Covenant patrol was out of sight, the duo began their march to the north.

The ten-mile trek was long and hard. It took them a full two hours to make it to the former capital city, now a smoldering ruin. Finally, they saw the ruins of the skyscrapers on the horizon.
"You know, for a Covenant-held planet, there isn't any Covenant, save the occasional Banshee patrol." Colleen said.
"Yeah, tell me about it."
The duo paused to look at the ruins of the skyscrapers off in the distance.
"Why do you think they spared it?" Colleen asked.
"Their lasers must've missed a spot."
"Or do you think that maybe they're looking for something?"
Dimitri just shrugged.

Colleen turned on her comm and listened for chatter from any UNSC forces nearby. The channel was dead. She tried to speak into the comm. "This is Helljumper squad Omega. Any local UNSC forces respond."
The only response was a faint buzzing of static.
Helljumper pods littered the city. Each had the 105th logo on it, but there was no sign of the Helljumpers themselves. A few of the pods had been sealed shut from the heat of re-entry. An occupational hazard. Colleen and Dimitri took off their helmets to pay their respects to their fallen comrades.
Suddenly, the two came across a large crater in the middle of the city, much larger than any of the others they had seen so far. One of the mysterious alien structures they had learned to attack and defend in their live-fire exercises so long ago was peeking out at the bottom.
Colleen was stunned. "So that's why this place wasn't glassed. They were looking for something! We have to report this back to ONI once we're able to get into-"
She was interrupted by a strange, bird-like noise from behind them. Dimitri and Colleen turned around as a green bolt of plasma energy flew between them.
"That must be a Jackal!" Colleen said as she dove for cover.
There was another shrieking noise as the Jackal advanced. Dimitri shot the thing in the head with a single burst from his BRX-55, spraying purple blood everywhere. The limp body fell to the floor.
"Dimitri… I think that was a bad idea."
A high-pitched voice rang out. "Leader! More enemy!"
There was a squad of the smaller aliens, each of them still the size of an average man.
Dimitri swore. "These must be the Grunts!"
A small, blue sphere landed between the two. It began to emit steady pulses of bright blue light.
"Get away!"
Colleen and Dimitri ran down a nearby alleyway as the Grunt's plasma grenade exploded, guns blazing at the murderous demons behind them. They darted down the narrow side passages of the capital city, until eventually the cries of the Grunts were far in the distance.
"We lost them." Dimitri said, panting.
But now, a new sound arose from the distance, a short, staccato cracking sound: the familiar sound of a human sniper rifle.
Dimitri turned on his comm. "This is Chief Petty Officer Dimitri Valdez of the 77th Helljumper Division, Omega Squad to any UNSC forces! ANY forces in the area, respond!"
A familiar voice replied. "Dimitri! Thought you would never make it. Uhh… We're a bit tied up here, we could use a hand or two. Is Colleen with you?"
Colleen's voice piped up on the comm. "I'm right here, Ian."
"Great! So we're all reunited once again. A big, happy family. There are still a few Elites and some Grunts left, just flank them and we'll help you take 'em out."
The Covenant never knew what had hit them. Dimitri and Colleen snuck up on the high-ranking Elites at the back of the pack, pouncing on them. Before they had figured out what was happening, their necks were broken, killing them instantly.
As their leaders fell to the two Helljumpers, chaos ripped through the Covenant ranks as the Grunts panicked. The confused mess of Covenant was then brought down by a hail of sniper fire from the nearby abandoned post office, which the rest of Omega Squad had been using as a temporary base.
Colleen and Dimitri finally rejoined their squad. Ian filled them in on the details.
"It's a mess, guys. Two-thirds of Admiral Cole's fleet was wiped out fighting a single ship. He won, but Covenant are still swarming all over the planet, and it doesn't look like they're going to go into retreat just because their ship is broken. It looks like it will just be us and the 105th retaking this entire planet until things can get sorted out up there."
"What do you mean the entire planet?" Dimitri asked.
"I mean we can't leave until we have killed every Covenant bastard on this rock. Orders straight from the Admiral. The UNSC needs the victory. We have tanks and heavy armor on the way once things get sorted out, so we'll be resupplied often, don't worry about that. But Cole wants us to take this rock back, no matter how long it takes. Best-"
Ian was interrupted by the shattering of glass and a deep rumbling.
"That's not good."
The Helljumpers ran to the window, peering through to see two hulking masses staring at them. The arm cannon on one of them was glowing a light green.
"No, that's not good at all."
The second-story wall next to the Helljumpers vaporized in a cloud of green smoke. The sixteen members of Omega Squad and fourteen survivors of the 105th fired on the hulking masses.
"Lucia never mentioned these!" Alex said.
"They must be a new species. Keep your helmet cams running, ONI would probably like to see this." Colleen replied.
"Yes ma'am!"
Dimitri emptied a clip into the alien's armor. Then another. And another. "It's useless! That armor's too strong for guns!"
"Should we use our harpoons and tow cables?" Alex asked, laughing above the roar of his MA5BX.
"Alex, this isn't the time for jokes! Aim for the orange spots on their stomachs! Maybe the damn armor might be a little bit weaker there." Colleen ordered.
A crack from the Sniper rifle confirmed Colleen's suspicions. A single bullet through the stomach brought down the monster.
"That must be his 'special area'." Alex said.
"Alex! Again, cut the chatter! There's still one left, and he's angry!"
The alien's massive arm ripped through the wall of the building, ripping open an entrance and giving it a path to its prey. The beast stood a full twelve feet tall, and drew an imposing figure onto the Helljumpers.
"Ian! Use your sniper!" Alex cried.
"I'm out of ammo!"
Dimitri looked around. It was do or die. He led a suicide charge on the alien.
"Dimitri!" Colleen cried.
Dimitri got up-close-and-personal with the hulk, cutting around to its back and emptying a clip into the orange mass. The thing tried to bring down its massive shield onto him, but Dimitri slipped out from underneath it and emptied another clip into its behind, killing the monster.
"I never, EVER want to see one of those again." Colleen said, relief in her voice.
"Agreed." Dimitri panted.

2531
Feb 4
1230 hours
UNSC Alpha Base, North Pole of Harvest
It had been 5 long years since the Helljumpers made their insertion, and Omega Squad had been fighting long and hard ever since.
The Covenant had focused their attention on the northern pole of Harvest, and so the Helljumpers had taken the fight to them. It was time to mop up the last of the pockets of Covenant resistance near the poles, and soon the UNSC would have Harvest back.
"A new Commanding Officer is on the next Pelican." Colleen said to Dimitri.
"Really? What's his name?"
"Sergeant Forge, from the UNSC Spirit of Fire. He's here to help us mop up the last bit of resistance here, and he has a scientist of some sort who's here to see why the Covenant are so interested in the poles."
"Bah. As long as it gets us off this hell-hole soon, I'll be happy."
"It's our destiny, Dimitri. You know that. It's what we were born to do. You said those same words to me five years ago, remember?"
"Yeah, but I still want to get off of here. The Outer Colonies are falling faster and faster! We need to take the fight to them once more, not waste our time on this lost cause."
"Dimitri, we need the victory. We need the morale."
Alex came through the door to the base. "Pelican's here, ma'am. Forge is offloading his Warthog now."
There was a familiar ghostly noise and an explosion in the distance.
"Alex, I don't think that Forge is our only visitor." Colleen replied. She ran to the base's communications suite. "All squads, get to your battle stations! Covenant inbound!"
The ODSTs rushed outside to defend their base. Forge was already on the ground, using his Warthog's Gauss cannon to eliminate the pursuing Banshee aircraft in a single hit. Colleen and Dimitri were on the turrets, chewing through the Banshee's armor.
"Sarge… We have an issue." Colleen said.
Over the horizon, three Covenant Vampires were on approach.
"Vampires. This isn't going to be good." Forge said. Vampires were bad news. They were especially hard to take down, and little could withstand the onslaught of three of them. Closely behind them were Spirits, the Covenant dropships, and those were guarded by a squadron of Banshees.
"Let's get out of here, NOW." Forge said over the comm. Plasma impacted all over the base as the ODSTs fell back. Dimitri kept the fire on the Vampires until the Covenant were all over him, bailing just as the turret was destroyed by plasma.
Colleen had barely gotten outside the base perimeter when she turned on her comm. "Omega Squad will hold them off from here, sir. You guys make a dash for it, we'll keep them off your heels!"
"Copy." Forge patched through to the Spirit of Fire. "Capitan, Alpha is toast. Nothing for me to pull back to. Suggest you hold that backup for now." He paused for a second while his Captain replied. "Roger that, we'll round up any and all survivors and get Alpha back." He looked over at the ODSTs. "You guys try to keep the Covenant from getting any farther. I'm going to get the others and take this base back." And with that, Forge drove off into the distance.
The ODSTs fought long and hard to keep the Covenant away from the Alpha base survivors. Just as the final troops were evacuating, the Covenant finally got a base shield online and working. The ODSTs watched in helpless horror as the final marines were butchered by the Covenant on the other side of the shield.
One final Marine made it outside of the shield alive. "Get over here!" May cried.
The lone Marine dashed for the ODST's cover, but a Covenant Elite, in pure gold armor, emerged from the shield. The ODSTs opened fire as the Elite ran at twice the speed of a normal human, picking up the helpless marine.
"Hold your fire. We don't want to hit the marine." Colleen said.
The Elite let out a laugh and held the marine up high. His mandibles spoke, in the human language, "You are vermin, and will be exterminated as such. Filthy creatures, not worthy of the structures left behind by the Great Ones, those who have taken the Great Journey!"
The marine began to squirm in the grasp of the Elite. The Elite tightened his grip, and there was the snapping of bones as the marine cringed and yelped in pain. The Elite then ignited a sword of pure, surging energy and buried its pink blade deep into the helpless Marine before letting him drop to the ground.
The marine crawled on the ground and smiled. "You think that's all it'll take to kill me?" He asked. He spit on the Elite's armor. The Elite responded with a roar, picked up his massive hoof of a foot, and stepped on the marine's head, crushing it as if it were an ant.
The Elite was now no longer alone. All around him were the legions of his Covenant armada, who had come to their leader's defense. He issued a roar of attack while he fell back to the ruins of Alpha base. Legions of Grunts and Elites charged the Helljumpers positions, only to fall from the might of the ODSTs.
Jackal snipers were killed as they were setting up, Grunts were falling by the dozens, the methane in their breathing gear exploding in deadly blasts. But, little by little, the legions of Covenant were swarming and overtaking their position.
Finally, the sheer number of Covenant surrounding them was too great. The Helljumpers' position was simply being overwhelmed by legions of Covenant. May came over the comm in a desperate cry.
"We need backup, NOW! We can't hold them!"
At that exact moment, a Warthog flew over the nearby hill, splattering a group of Covenant and bringing its mighty gauss cannon to bear on the stragglers. The firepower of every surviving troop from Alpha base was hot on his heels, mopping up the remains. "Come on! Let's get this shield down! Marines, get in there, take it down!" In no time, the marines had destroyed the shield and quickly went to work assaulting the ruins of Alpha base. However, a bright blue explosion cut their advance short.
"They have Wraiths!" Brandon said, diving for cover, "Requesting air support, NOW!"
The reply to Brandon's plea was music to the Helljumper's ears. "Shortsword inbound."
The sound of jet engines screamed overhead. A series of carpet bombs ripped through the Covenant camp, destroying all of the Covenant armor.
Colleen turned to Dimitri.
"Dimitri, you remember that Elite?" She asked.
"Yeah, I know. He survived."
"Let's rip that bastard to shreds."
The two ODSTs searched the ruins of Alpha base, looking for the Elite commander, the Covenant's "Zealot". It wasn't long before they found him, sitting in the ruins of the base's command center. The Elite was alone in a corner, praying.
Colleen broke his concentration. "Hey, asshole! Eat lead!" She opened fire with her MA5BX. The Elite looked up and roared.
"Colleen… I think that was a bad idea."
"Duly noted."
Dimitri opened fire with his MA5BX, aiming to take down its shields. The alien charged towards Colleen, who was struggling with her weapon.
"Crap! My gun's jammed!" Colleen cried.
Dimitri dove in front of Colleen, taking out his combat knife and jamming it into the Elite's neck. The Elite roared and tossed Dimitri aside like a child's toy.
Dimitri was only able to watch in horror as the Elite slammed its energy sword into Colleen's midsection. It removed the sword and laughed callously as Colleen's limp body fell to the floor.

No… That couldn't have just happened… It was impossible. That bastard just plowed his sword into her, no remorse, no saving grace… He had just lost a sister. Dimitri was overcome with rage. "NO!"
The lone ODST jumped onto the alien's back and slammed it into the ground. The Elite responded with a loud growl and readied up its sword. Dimitri punched the Elite's armor and shot its sword-wielding hand. The Elite howled, punching Dimitri in the face. Dimitri's helmet shot off and tumbled into the corner of the room. Dimitri responded by emptying a full round of clips into its face.

Dimitri ran towards Colleen. She was still alive, but breathing erratically. He took out a medpack.
"This is going to sting a little bit, but then you'll be alright for now."
Colleen nodded and winced in pain as Dimitri applied the medpack.
"That'll hold for now, but we need to get you to a doctor."
Dimitri picked up Colleen and took her to a safe corner near the entrance to the base.
"I'm going to go find Sergeant Forge and get help, alright?"

Sergeant Forge finally dispatched the last of the Covenant and drove up to the other ODSTs.
"You did a good job. Thanks for getting Alpha base back."
Dimitri ran up to Forge, panicked and worried.
"Sir, Collee- Err, C26 is down and badly injured. We need evac ASAP." Dimitri said, worry in his voice.
"Well, then I have good news for you. There's a Pelican on the way. It'll take you to a UNSC Prowler in orbit; aboard they have medical facilities and a way for you to get home. Congratulations guys. You did well."
"Thank you, sir." Dimitri said.

Dimitri ran towards Colleen and kneeled next to her. He slowly took off her helmet, setting her head down carefully on the survival blanket he had taken from his backpack.
"Dimitri… It hurts. I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out."
"I'll get you to a doctor, I swear. There's a Pelican on the way. Just hold on, Colleen."
"Dimitri… There's something I need to tell you. Something I've wanted to say since the day we got on board the Sacramento. Since I pulled you aside and we hugged in the barracks."
"What is it?"
"I… I've always wanted to say… I… I love you. And I always have."
Dimitri was stunned. He had known it was coming; it was a cliché moment. But actually hearing it from her was something completely different, something somehow… Unexpected.
"Colleen… I love you, too. You'll be alright, I swear."
"P… Promise?"
"Promise."
Colleen smiled.
Dimitri made sure no one was watching, and then the two locked in a kiss. Their lips were locked for what seemed like an eternity before Dimitri finally pulled off.
They both turned red and put their helmets back on. What they had done was strictly against regulation. But at least they were still alive. They would live to fight another day, and when that day comes, they would get through it together.

[Trulife8342]

Good stuff mate, I really enjoyed reading through all that. To all those who are turned off by "gasp" actually reading, I have to say his stuff is worth it.

Once again good job!
And your art work is also very nice.

[Dwood]

Take pics of the current trains. nao plskthx

[English Mobster]

Oh yes, in due time.
I gave my camera to my friend, I should have it back this weekend. Pics will be provided then.

[English Mobster]

New Gridlock-y things:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/escalators-4.jpg
Not a fan of the tiling at the top there, but it's something I'll have to fix.
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/gridlock_render_1-6.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/trainstation-5.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/westgate-4.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarks-1.jpg

[BobtheGreatII]

Why are your street lights not facing the street? At least make them double sided or something, that doesn't make sense.

[English Mobster]

Well, 3/4 of the lights in the pictures are, although you DO have a good point. Fixing.

[English Mobster]

Oh, hello there.
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091437.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091437a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091437b.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091439.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1018091439a.jpg
Sorry the pics took longer than I promised, I had a few... snags. Wound up using my cell phone camera to take pictures.
I have a complete circuit going, and I've actually completed the coal yard, although it's unfinished in these pictures. Things have been coming along smoothly, though I've come across financial snags which have kept me from progressing as far as I would have liked nearly 6 months into the project.

[BobtheGreatII]

That AT-AT doesn't belong there!

[Sever]

That AT-AT doesn't belong there!Bullshit.

AT-ATs belong EVERYWHERE.

[English Mobster]

I was going to have the AT-AT attacking Black Mesa, with a bunch of Stormies fighting a bunch of Combine.
That way, everyone's happy. Yay for Portal Storms!

[paladin]

Hurry up and finish the damn train setup.

[English Mobster]

Money, sir. I have a distinct lack of it.
I'm working as fast as I can on it, but cash is a huge issue.
For 1 meter of track, it costs me about $5. On the main line, I'm running about 120 feet of track, total, so that's approx. 40 meters (for the record, HO scale is 1/86, so IRL that would translate to 10,320 feet of track). That's $200 for the main line alone.
Switches run anywhere from $15 to $25 each. I have probably about 50 or so switches on the layout.
Cork for the roadbed beneath the track (which actually IS necessary, as cork keeps the track from expanding/contracting with the temperature, and all that expansion/contraction will fuck up the track if you aren't careful) runs around $15 for a 3x6 foot piece.
It's an expensive hobby, to say the least.

[English Mobster]

Wrote another chapter for my ongoing "Army of Idiots" story.
Chapter III:
Sniper Country

Sniper Country was a barren, desolate place. They say that when God was making the Earth all those years ago, Sniper Country was one of the last places He made. In fact, God was so thoroughly tired of making things by this time that He just said, “Screw it.” And thus Sniper Country was born: Miles upon miles of God-forsaken desert, with two gigantic mesas stretching up on either side. The UNSC government had carved out one mesa and converted it into a system of tunnels which functioned as a base for the Blue team, the Neo-Communist rebels the other. Each side existed only because the other side was there (like most places in this damn war), and both sides constantly had snipers just sitting there, watching the broad expanse of desert and waiting for someone wearing different armor to venture out of their hole.

Naturally, according to standard naming procedure, both divisions were given the designation of “S” division, meaning “Sniper”. The usefulness of not naming divisions based off of their purpose had been lost over the years.
There was a common saying about sniper country, a proverb of sorts: “Like trying to bring a shotgun to Sniper Country.” In accordance with the saying, Bob and Pie each arrived at the place where the red team’s fag was to be held armed only with their shotguns.
Bob thought this was a grand idea.

The Warthog jeep they were in paused for just a moment in the middle of the broad expanse of desert. A seemingly random bridge just was… There, in the middle of the desert, and Pie directed his full concentration on the bridge, as if he were going to destroy it with only his mind.
After a long silence, Pie finally spoke. “I think I see a red.”
Bob quickly stared at the bridge as well. “I don’t see anything.”
“Keep looking.” Both of them stared at the bridge even more intently than before, as if focusing all their destructive energies upon that bridge itself. “Bob, get out and check.”
Bob whined like a ten-year-old who had just been asked to clean his room. “But whhhhhhhhhhyyyyy?”
Pie’s unflinching gaze was directed fully onto Bob. “That’s an order.”

Bob sighed as he slowly climbed out, the same ten-year-old angst put into each one of his movements. He began to scan the area and advance towards where Pie ordered him to when fifty separate sniper bullets hit his chest from all angles.
Somehow, his body survived intact and he fell to the floor.

Pie finally stopped staring off into the distance. “I guess that it was just a fox. C’mon, Bob, get up, stop being such a lazy bum and get back in.”
“I can’t.” Bob groaned.
“Why not?”
“My legs don’t work anymore.”
Pie sighed in frustration. “Don’t be stupid. You got shot in the chest, not your legs. Your legs should work fine.”
“Did you SEE the number of bullets that hit me? It’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

Pie was taken aback; Bob was actually using logic for one time in his life. “Alright,” he said reluctantly, “I’ll go get you some help.”
In a cloud of dust, the Warthog spun its tires and headed off into the distance.


Back at Blood Gulch, the Red team received a knock on their door. Nate opened the door slowly to reveal a mercenary, clad from head to toe in midnight black armor (midnight blue was sold out), with the only slight variation coming from the silver shine of the helmet’s visor.
“Inferno here, at your service,” said the mercenary, “Pyromaniac and heavy weapons specialist.”
Nate was most pleased that the mercenary he had ordered off of ineedaweapon.com had arrived.

“Did you bring the mech?”
“The Mythos is parked out back, as per your request. We are loaded up with 700 high-energy anti-matter charges and ready to go.”
“Good,” Nate said, smiling, “Warm her up. I have our first target.”

A lone Warthog once again tore through the barren wastelands of Sniper Country. Once again, it was only occupied by two people: Pie in the driver’s seat and Flyboy in the passenger. Torn was left back home to watch over the base.
“And so, after the flying monkeys attacked us, we-“
“SHUT UP AND TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO BOB!”
“Fine, fine. He’s over there, by that funny and pointless bridge to nowhere.” Pie said, stopping the ‘Hog next to Bob’s body.

Flyboy rushed out and felt for a pulse. “It’s no use. Bob’s dead. Kaput. Gone. Poof.”
“That-”
“Missing. Gone forever.”
“Tha-”
“On the other side. No longer with us.”
“Th-”
“Slaughtered by the many bullets of an angry and wrathful God, never again to walk among the living!” Flyboy screamed, voice rising in intensity as he did so.
Pie stared at him. “Are you quite finished?”
“Yes.”
“Good. AS I WAS SAYING, that sucks. Poor Bob, he will be missed.” Pie paused for a moment. “Oh well, time to send in another recrui-”
Pie was once again interrupted by a huge explosion behind him. He slowly turned around to view it in its majesty, as it glowed a bright blue, slowly dimming along the edges, the mark of a bolt made out of pure high-energy anti-matter charges. The explosion left a distinctive smell in the air, not unlike the smell of poop from a newborn baby. The smell of this newborn baby poop lingered as the explosion faded away, leaving a massive 100-meter diameter crater behind the Warthog.
“Well.”

Flyboy quickly leaned over the center console of the ‘Hog, putting his elbows in Pie’s lap and grabbing the steering wheel of the Warthog. “GAS IT!” he cried, “GO, GO, GO!”
Pie didn’t gas it, but instead stared at Flyboy. After a moment, he slapped Flyboy across the face. “That was gay,” he said, “Get out of my lap, and never, ever, touch me again.”
Flyboy slowly took his hands off the wheel and put them back where they belonged as Pie hit the gas and took off. Another explosion marked the place where they just were, hitting the bridge where Bob’s body lay.

“Well, he’s dead for sure, now.” Pie remarked.
Flyboy was quiet for a moment as the smell of baby poop permeated the air, before he finally said, “Ever think that we’re just two fictional characters in a story written by some random guy who have just experienced an elaborate plot device?”
Pie shrugged.

The Warthog darted behind into the “Blue” mesa of Sniper Country. It tore past many surprised snipers and finally parked itself in a hangar full of bombers.
“Speaking of elaborate plot devices…” Pie said, leaving his sentence unfinished and pulling out a set of car keys. He causally hit a button on the keys and one of the Longsword bombers in the hangar bay chirped.


“Well, it is a jolly good game of hide-and-go-seek, isn’t it?” Inferno asked, turning around in the pilot’s chair of the Mythos walker. “I expect we’ll kill Pie and Flyboy soon enough. Then you just have that last imbecile to take care of.”
Nate gave him a cold, hard stare.
Inferno had a giddy sense of happiness in his voice. “I just wish I could see the terror on their faces!” he said with glee. When Nate didn’t break his stare, he turned around and resumed operation of the Mythos.
“Just shoot another random antimatter charge and pray we hit them.” Nate said. There was a large, light-blue explosion and the thick smell of newborn baby poop as Nate slowly let a smile sneak across his face and closed his eyes for a nap.


Flyboy was finally in control of his dream plane: The Longsword-class bomber. “She’s slow,” he said, casually caressing the bomber’s control console, “but she can blow the hell out of anything she wants to. Virtually limitless missile supply, bay full of mini-nukes…” He sighed in ecstasy. “I love you, Longsword.”
The onboard computer let out a single beep.
Flyboy smiled. “Aww… That’s so sweet!” He attempted to give the plane a hug, rather unsuccessfully.
Pie’s voice rang out from the galley. “I just restocked this damn thing with food, where the hell did all of it go?”
Flyboy got more pissed than an angsty teenager going through puberty. “SHUT UP! You don’t know what she and I have been through! We love each other, and we always will! You wouldn’t understand; you CAN’T understand! YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”
Pie simply stared back at him.

After a lengthy staring contest, Flyboy went back to caressing the Longsword’s control panel. He was running his finger up, down, and around the buttons, giggling as he did so, when a large explosion rocked the Longsword. Flyboy’s romance with the plane was lost and he jumped to full alert.
“They missed us, but it’s only a matter of time until that thing brings my baby down.” Flyboy said, “Distance to target is 1 kilometer. Missiles will be in range in twenty seconds.”
The overwhelming smell of baby poop went through the Longsword’s cabin as the entire view through the main viewscreen was obscured by bright blue. Flyboy simply flew straight through the explosion. “We’re in missile range.”
“Fire.”
The Longsword launched a sudden hail of missiles at the Mythos.

Inferno finally finished getting the Mythos’ built-in Macintosh to boot up iTunes and begin to play some heavy metal. “Nothing like the classic stuff for an epic battle.”
Nate groaned. “Inferno, that stuff is almost 600 years old now. Can’t you change it to something a little more… Recent?”
“No.”
The Mythos’ hull was suddenly riddled with explosions.
“Hull integrity at 62%. Antimatter charge ready.” Inferno reported.
“Fire.” Nate replied, half-asleep.
The Mythos trembled as another shot raced out of its cannon. The heavy metal music continued to blare. Inferno leaned back in his chair and turned it up some, much to Nate’s chagrin.
“Damn, they dodged it.” Inferno said.
“Inferno, it’s a giant damn bomber. How the hell could you miss it?”
Inferno leapt up and pulled a pistol out of his belt. “What the hell did you just say?” he said menacingly, leveling his pistol with Nate’s unprotected head.
“You wouldn’t, Inferno.”
“I’m warning you, friend. I am a dangerously insane individual.” He let a slight smile crawl across his face. “The worst psychopaths are the ones that know they’re insane.” Inferno said, laughing.
“If you do it, you won’t get paid.”
Inferno slowly lowered his pistol, face scowling behind the visor. The Macintosh behind him paused the music suddenly and let out a cheery beep.
“Hull integrity at critical levels.” it said, before resuming the music.
“Hell.” Inferno said. He grabbed Nate by the collar. “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here.” Inferno dragged Nate out of the Mythos, pausing to retrieve his sniper and flamethrower. He threw Nate into a nearby sand dune, jumping out of the door and going into a combat roll himself.
The Mythos exploded in an epic blue explosion in the background.
Nate pulled himself up and dusted himself off. “That wasn’t so bad.”
Multiple sniper shots suddenly ripped through his legs and sent him tumbling to the floor. “Never mind.”

[Ganon]

I suggest you take some writing classes

[English Mobster]

EWWW KILL IT WITH FIRE

[English Mobster]

This is, without a doubt, one of the most insane things I've ever had the pleasure to write.
The Army of Idiots Chapter III:
Improbability

Inferno was back in Blood Gulch, aiding the remainder of the reds in preparation to strike and kill the weakened blue team.
The fact that they blew up his Mythos didn’t matter; he had several of the walkers back home and as such getting one blown up was merely nothing more than a minor inconvenience while he got a new one.
His whole affair with this team seemed to be a string of minor inconveniences.
Inferno’s mouth opened and closed a couple times while his mind was suddenly filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Nate being consumed with fire, then running around in terror with the tips of several large and pointy spoons protruding from him.
He smiled; these visions were common and quite pleasant.
It was just too bad that Nate was currently in a medical facility getting his legs replaced with cyborg implants.
It must be a terribly painful procedure; he hoped that they forgot to use antiseptic.
He closed his eyes and saw himself holding his trusty flamethrower, igniting the hospital that Nate was staying in. Nate, legless, was helpless as the flames slowly consumed him. His screams of pain only delighted Inferno further.
Inferno sighed in pleasure and leaned back in his chair further in preparation for a short nap.


Nate found himself sitting on an operating table, surrounded by medics. He couldn’t feel the lower half of his body; looking down, he noticed it had been chopped completely off.
“Great.” He told himself.
One of the medics turned to his cohorts. “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.” He paused for a moment and then said, quietly, “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
Nate sighed. “Great. My life is in the hands of even more idiots than usual.”
One of the doctors stuck a needle into his arm. Slowly, his thought processes grew cloudy until eventually he fell into a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was making a mental note of how much antiseptic seemed to be going into his arm and a voice with a thick German accent saying, “Vhoops.”


Inferno finally was ready. Pie and Flyboy had returned, he had his flamethrower, and nothing would stop him this time.
Except perhaps the team of idiots he was stuck with.

Puma was the only remotely competent member of the team, he had a carefully-organized battle plan drawn out, just in case.
Cake and Inferno would flank the base from opposing angles. Inferno would create a diversion using his flamethrower while Cake hid with a sniper.
When the blues come running from the base to attack Inferno, Cake would pick off who he could with the sniper, then they would use attack plan bravo, go into delta six formation, then follow-up with a well-timed grenade.
If none of that worked, then Puma would be on the base’s computer and would simply launch an orbital and precise MAC (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon) strike on blue base. When questioned as to why they didn’t try that now, Puma said that it would be “too easy.”

While Inferno felt that Puma’s plan might work, it was still far too orthodox for his tastes. Rushing the base, each armed with flamethrowers and using the fire contained within to set the entire region ablaze was the best tactic, he felt.
He voiced this opinion with Puma at gunpoint. Puma was only too happy to agree with him on all accounts.

Meanwhile, Ducky had shown himself to be dreadfully incompetent within the first few minutes of his arrival. He tried simply relegating Ducky to unimportant medial jobs, but in response to Ducky’s increasingly annoying cries for Inferno to remove the helmet, Inferno had Ducky bound and gagged, a task the other members of red team seemed all too happy to carry out.
It wasn’t Ducky’s stupidity that annoyed him; he could deal with stupidity. No, rather, it was the sheer persistence with which he was trying to be stupid.
Simply put, Inferno simply didn’t like him.

Cake seemed to be as incompetent as Ducky was, until the subject of Blue team’s Commander Pie was brought up, at which point he turned bloodthirsty and ruthless.
Inferno became most pleased with him past that point.

Nate had no idea how long he slept, although it felt like forever and fifteen days. As soon as he was once again self-aware, he looked down and suddenly noticed that his lower body was once again intact. He stood up, slowly and carefully.
His legs seemed to be a lot stronger than he remembered, and he walked around some, admiring his newfound leg prowess. His time alone with his new legs was brought to a sudden end when one of the doctors entered the E.R.
He looked ethnically German, with tiny spectacles and oversized gloves complementing his long surgeon’s gown.
“Ah, you’re avake!”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Good, good. You had quite ze procedure!”
“I can imagine.”
“Yes, you should ve clear to exit ze hospital now, I vink we accidentally overdozed you with ze antizeptic, you slept for dayz.”
“That would explain a lot.” Nate said, already bored to death with this conversation.
The doctor laughed. “Vould it, now?” He turned to the door. “Iv you feel you can handle ze outside vorld again, veel free to leave.” There was another small chuckle as he continued, “I vould imagine you vould be able to handle it by now.”
Nate nodded and proceeded out back into the outside world.

At long last, Pie and Flyboy had returned to Blue base.
“So how’s Bob?” Torn asked as Pie walked into the room.
“He’s dead. No one really cared.”
“That’s always pleasant.”
“Isn’t it?”
Pie walked into his cabin, grabbing the latest issue of Playboy magazine as he closed his door. Flyboy sat in his usual chair, which creaked like a creaky chair. Torn sat on the base’s tattered couch.
“Kinda boring without Bob here, eh?” Torn asked.
Flyboy nodded.
There was silence for a few moments as absolutely nothing particularly interesting at all happened. Then Torn spoke again.
“We should start a band.”
Flyboy nodded, bored to death already.
“No, really! I’ll be bass, you’ll be drummer, and Pie could be lead guitar.”
Flyboy glanced over at him. “None of us can sing.”
“We’ll all sing together!”
“Something tells me that’s not going to happen, Torn.”
“Alright, then Pie can sing.”
“Pie can’t sing.”
“We’ll be a rock and roll band. You don’t need to be able to sing.”
Flyboy considered this for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said finally before reclining in his chair once more.
There was a few more moments of silence.
“You know, the planets in this solar system are completely aligned tonight under the constellation Scorpio. Happens once every thousand years or so.” Torn said.
“Are they, now?”
“Yep. They say that very improbable things happen when they align under Scorpio.”
“If they only align once every thousand years, how can there be any reliable records of improbable events occurring? That would mean they haven’t aligned since the 1500s, and back then they were obsessed over finding this new place called ‘America’ and weren’t really too keen on determining probabilities.”
Torn shrugged. “Kinda boring without Bob here.”
“You said that already.”
“Did I?”
Flyboy sighed.

Nate walked in the door of red base to see the Reds all lined up for battle, save Ducky, who was tied up in a corner, struggling as Inferno put more duct tape over his mouth.
“What’s going on here?”
Inferno quickly flipped completely around and hid the duct tape behind his back. “Nothing, good ‘ol friend of mine. Nope. Nada. Nothing at all.”
“You guys were about to attack the blues without me?”
“Well…” Inferno started.
“Good idea. You all ready?”
Cake nodded feverishly, violent rage in his eyes, as if he would like to do nothing more than laugh as the blues died in anguish. This remotely disturbed Nate.
Inferno glanced around and dropped the duct tape, with nothing being particularly interesting about his expression due to the concealing mask of his ever-present helmet. “I guess so, ‘ol bean.”
“Good. We attack in an hour.”
Cake seemed disappointed. “Can’t we do it NOW?”
Nate was surprised at Cake’s enthusiasm; normally he couldn’t even get the soldier to pick up a rifle unless he promised not to force them to do push-ups until their arms fell off. He glanced at Inferno.
“Don’t look at me; I just had been talking to him about his family.”
Nate’s glance turned into a stare.
“Well, the subject of Pie was brought up, and he told me about how they had been rivals since birth…”
Nate continued his icy-cold stare.
“…And then he talked about how Pie stole his fiancé from him and married her before he was conscripted…”
It felt as if the temperature of the room had dropped a couple degrees.
“…And then he joined the other side just for vengeance, and… Well…” Inferno shrugged. “I only encouraged him a little tiny bit.”

An hour later the reds began their march. There were many things they expected to see when they arrived at the blue base: the blues waving a white flag, or maybe Pie dressed up in war paint and .50 caliber machine turrets set up around the perimeter, or maybe, just possibly, the base somehow becoming completely replaced by a pot of petunias and an unlucky sperm whale.
Of all the increasingly-unlikely things the various members of red team were expecting, seeing the blues holding musical instruments on the roof of blue base was not one of them. For some reason.

Nate halted their advance. “What. The HELL. Are you doing up there?”
Torn took a tiny glance at the reds and turned to Pie.
“Pie,” he said, “the red team’s here.”
“Good. Everyone in tune?”
The blues nodded.
“Hit it.”
Flyboy, in the far back, banged his drum sticks together a few times and began to pound away.
The reds simply stared at the blues and dropped their weapons. Inferno himself immediately seemed to be lost in the beat and lost his normal homicidal edge.
Torn added a bass line to Flyboy’s beat, and soon enough Pie began to shred on his electric guitar.
Nate stared at the (admittedly pretty good) band in stunned disbelief. The music got louder, and Pie was about to start screaming into the mike when sirens began to wail, followed by flashing red and blue lights. The band immediately stopped.
“Ok, this entire thing is getting ridiculous.” Puma said, above the roar of the police sirens. “Why are there police in an active warzone?”
“I wouldn’t call this warzone exactly active.” Nate added. “Although this whole scenario seems pretty unlikely. Personally, I think the whole world’s simply gone to hell and back.”
Puma nodded as the police began to surround the area.
One of the officers pulled out a megaphone and shouted into it, “HANDS UP. THIS IS THE MILITARY POLICE; WE RECEIVED A REPORT THAT THERE ARE WEAPONS IN THIS VICINITY.” The megaphone was completely unnecessary, as the police cars had turned off their sirens.
As soon as one of the members of blue team opened his mouth, the sirens began to wail again.
“This is an active warzone, us having weapons is the entire reason why we’re here!” Flyboy tried to yell back at him, but to no avail.
The officer had, in fact, heard him and thought that Flyboy made a legitimate point, but he was also having a particularly nasty day: his tea this morning spilled all over his lap when he was about to take a sip, sometimes he felt as if the world secretly was out to get him, he thought his cohorts were constantly trying to aim at him in hopes of “accidentally” shooting him, and it had been a while since he got a paycheck. He was in a sour mood in general, and arresting people, he thought, would be the best way to lighten his day.
A few moments later, every member of both teams was in handcuffs and was being escorted to the nearest police station.
He didn’t feel any better.



They weren’t the first in line at the station; they had to wait in line for a little bit while 3 other convicts had their mugshots taken.
“What’s your name?” The officer asked the first one.
“Larry.”
“What are you in for?”
“Blowing bubbles.”
The officer shrugged and sent Larry on his way. “What’s your name?” he asked the next person in line.
“Curly.”
“What are you in for?”
“Blowing bubbles.”
After Curly went on his way, the third convict walked up.
“Let me guess. You’re name’s Moe.”
“No. My name’s Bubbles.”

After they had gone through the tape of the penal system, the reds and the blues were all crammed into what seemed was the world’s smallest jail cell. The bars were thick, there were little to no gaps inbetween, the floor was cold, and the toilet was clogged. Everyone save Inferno was shoved into bright orange jumpsuits.
Inferno was in a bright orange jumpsuit as well, but he got to hold on to his helmet, explaining to the officers that the helmet was a defect as part of a super-soldier experiment gone wrong and thus couldn’t be removed.
The officers seemed to buy this story and allowed him to retain the helmet, quite improbably. His success was only temporary: Once inside, Ducky gave Inferno a rather forceful hug, and Inferno’s helmet fell off, revealing quite feminine features and red hair cropped to the shoulder. Her face was dotted with freckles and her green eyes had the slightest tinge of insanity to them when admired closely, although not quite enough to detract from her overall beauty. Inferno’s sex appeal went from “Ew, gross, I would never do it with a guy” to “HolycrapholycrapholycrapIwanther”.
Inferno was a girl.
After this revelation, everyone was largely quiet inside the cell. Torn’s jaw dropped open. Puma closed it for him.

Pie was the first to speak. “Well, hello there, Madame Cleavage.”
Inferno responded by punching him in the face. “Yes, I’m a chick. Get used to it.”
Nate opened his mouth to speak, but Inferno cut him off. “No, I will not go out with you.”
Nate glared at her and flipped her off. Inferno pretended to cut off Nate’s head by making a slicing motion with her fingers. Slowly, the members of both teams adjusted to the newfound double-x chromosome among their ranks.
Cake and Pie alternated between staring at each other in disgust and staring at Inferno lustfully. Nate and Inferno were bonding by means of demonstrating how each would kill the other. Their gestures grew increasingly obscene, almost to the point where one would think they were flirting with one another. Torn was busy tattering up his jumpsuit. Flyboy and Puma began to discuss philosophy. Ducky, whom everyone had assumed would become Bob’s replacement as a source of humor, was busy doing a terrifically bad job at generating humor, pumping out cringe-worthy joke after cringe-worthy joke.
A lot of people assumed that Ducky was related to the sick and twisted narrator of this story.
They were only half-right; Ducky was only related to me through a brother’s sister’s cousin’s aunt’s second marriage. As such, he was thus only my stepbrother and was therefore not directly blood-related to me.
Mother sent me off to narrating school (a horrifyingly boring experience overall) and Ducky off to the army; we haven’t talked since, although I have become omniscient as a result of my experiences, while he is still delegated to having a first-person limited view of things.
A conversation was struck up among the captives in the prison cell about how the increasingly improbable events they have been going through, and eventually they arrived at the conclusion that this story was getting completely ridiculous and they were all fictional characters. Soon after, they began to discuss often they should try to break the fourth wall in their story.
Little did they know that an event was about to happen which not only was completely ridiculous (and what some believe to be irrefutable proof that everything in the world is actually 100% fictional and made up in some sick, twisted person’s mind), but also was about to save their hides.
Almost everyone on the planet was planning for this moment. Each had come up with a plan should it actually happen. Entire websites were set up devoted to strategies should it happen. For over five hundred years, man had been devising new ways of holding out should something like it happen. Few believed that it would actually happen.

A single zombie suddenly mindlessly wandered into the door of the police station.

The smell of human waste filled the air. The police guarding the jail cell immediately gained new underwear stains and ran out of the station. As one particularly fat and unlucky officer ran, yellow liquid streaked down his leg and left a wet trail on the floor.
That poor officer’s day had just achieved the impossible and had gotten worse.

Bob wandered up to the jail cell and waved at the familiar cowering figures on the other side. “Hi!”
Pie looked at him in stunned disbelief. “Fly, slap me.”
Flyboy immediately obliged. The slap didn’t help any, and Pie stared incredulously at Bob. “How did you…”
“Military super-soldier experiment using dead bodies, etc, etc, you know the typical zombie origin stories.” Bob shrugged. “I guess this time they just decided to use someone who didn’t have a brain to begin with.”
Puma’s jaw dropped open. Torn closed it for him.
“All who agree that we have officially jumped the shark, say ‘Aye!’”
Everyone murmured in agreement.
“Who’s the boobies?” Bob asked.
“Inferno. She was trying to kill you the other day.” Nate said. He paused, before adding, “In the sexiest manner imaginable.”
Inferno kicked him in the nuts, and Nate fell over onto the ground.
“The past few hours have been the most improbable thing I have ever experienced.” Puma said.
Flyboy glanced at Inferno, then Bob, and nodded.
“Any other zombies out there?” Torn asked.
Bob shrugged once more. “I don’t think so. I haven’t gotten hungry yet.”
“Are we dead?” Nate asked, cringing still. “I think I took one too many sniper shots the other day. Maybe we’re all dead and this insanity is what happens to someone after they die.”
Flyboy looked at him. “No, I’m pretty sure we’re all still alive.”
Little did Nate know that the events which transpire after someone dies were only slightly more insane than the events which were currently unfolding within the teams’ small jail cell.
“Open the gate. Press the big red button over there.” Pie said impatiently.
“OK!” Bob began to wander over there, but suddenly stopped. “Wait a second, I know better now than to press big shiny red buttons! They promise you donuts but never give you any. Instead, all they give you lies. LIES.”
“Please?”
“Alright, fine, I’ll press the button.”
The gate to the jail cell finally went up and both teams slowly wandered out.
“We’ve got to get to a vehicle.” Pie said. Both teams (and Bob) nodded and slowly walked out of the police station. Bob wandered into the street, scaring the hell out of a limousine driver and thus granting the teams an improbable means of transport.
Cake turned to Torn. “Lots of exposition in this chapter, eh?”
Torn nodded.
In OTHER news, Part I of the AOI won the " (http://hboff.bungie.org/viewtopic.php?t=6301)Douglas Adams Award for Sheer Madness" over at HBO. (http://hboff.bungie.org/viewtopic.php?t=6301)

[Ganon]

i read the first 5 words then was like "yo then i joined and won the game the end"


Inferno was a girl.

i like this story

[English Mobster]

Some new things:
Russian SU-47 Experimental Fighter Jet:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/SU-47-1-nonclay-2.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/SU-47-1-clay.jpg


Some work on the new section of Gridlock:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarksnormal.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarks-3.jpg

For reference, this is what the old version looked like, from the same camera:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/petermarks-4.jpg

[Ganon]

I like how everything is perfectly planar where they need to be

[English Mobster]

I'm not working at odd angles now (the original was turned ~55 degrees, making it hard to model straight), so things turn out much nicer.
E: Oh yes, more Gridlock:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/westgatenormal-1.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/westgateclay-1.jpg

[Ganon]

I honestly don't think you even know how to make things planar when such an error arises. I say this because the older build of gridlock was visually saturated with them, and quick looks at your new work show the same results. Another thing, stop clay rendering, it's obvious that a main reason you do so is to cover up mistakes.

[English Mobster]

I'm posting regular renders alongside clay renders because regular renders don't capture all the detail that clay renders do.

For example, in the regular render directly above, the upper-right hand section of the render is a big blotch, and the clay render reveals that there is detail there.

[Ganon]

Hides more than anything :allears:

[SnaFuBAR]

omni + cast shadows.
stop the goddam clays

also the nose of your jet is really fucked up. wires please.

[Higuy]

http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9328

This is an extremely easy way to render and look good still ^

Follow it. It's easy, and will make your renders 10x better looking.

Also, Clay render's actully hide more detail errors then a regular scan line. Clay renders hides non planers, bumps, and other stuff.

[English Mobster]

http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/su-47wireframe.jpg
Followed the tutorial Higuy linked me to to the letter.

[Higuy]

Try applying an Ray trace material to the object instead of a standard material. Give it some gloss but not to much. Will make it look better. And also, get a better view of the top, and bottom of the plane so we can see other ways to fix it up. I see alot ways were you could reduce polygons and keep detail already.

[SnaFuBAR]

Yeah the mesh of the nose is a disaster. Like, legitimately, it's really fucked up. Bad. If the tutorial told you to do that, never use that tutorial again, ever. Also, airfoils are not fucking blocks dude.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=airfoil&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g7g-m1

I'm going to tell you like I did with your transport thing. If you don't know what you're modeling, YOU CAN'T. Seriously, learn something about what you're attempting to create before you set out to do it. Your mesh is really really bad and you're losing the shapes on literally EVERY surface. Canards, airfoils, cockpit, nose, aft of cockpit, canopy structure, and a severe abuse of bevels and extrudes.

Researching something like this is the key to success, and having a grasp of the tools. With all the non-planars you create, and the problems with the jet, that should be red flags for you. You need to take a step back and really try to understand what you're doing because you don't right now and it shows.

I'm only going hard on you because you respond well to it. You took a big step up from what gridlock was. Keep at it, just get a better grasp of the tools. The best tool isn't what max can calculate to fix your errors, it's knowledge that allows you to avoid those errors in the first place.

[TeeKup]

That Berkut is also very innacurate.

http://pds7.egloos.com/pds/200710/19/66/e0041466_471870bd0463f.jpg
http://quicklink.all.googlepages.com/Sukhoi-Su-47-Berkut-3views.jpg
http://www.airmodel.jp/collection/img/gain_su47_09.jpg
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/aircraft-pictures/2008/07/04/SU-47large.jpg

PLEASE fix it before I'm forced to gut you like a fish.

[t3h m00kz]

p much what everyone else here says. The back part doesn't look too bad (though I don't know the anatomy of the jet in question), but the front, specifically the nose and behind the cockpit looks like you could really cut down on verts and edges.

I'm no professional modeler, but I recall reading in "Modeling a Character in 3DS Max, Second Edition" by Paul Steed, if a vertex or an edge doesn't contribute, get rid of it. I'm sure that applies to more than character models.

[English Mobster]

What's that? MORE of The Army of Idiots? IMPOSSIBLE!
Chapter IV: Coldsnap
The N Companies of both Red and Blue teams were now on the run from the law.
In an extremely short time, they had gone from being two opposing teams on just one small front of a multi-front war to escapees from a random prison. In that same time, they also found out that their badass mercenary was actually a girl with a bunch of now-irreparably-damaged voice-changing equipment built into her helmet, and they had managed to escape from a prison in the Colorado Desert by virtue of a well-timed (but minor) zombie invasion. Now they were headed north, to Canada. Flyboy had some contacts up there, he said, and they could continue their skirmishes in peace.
Overall, it was a pretty uneventful day.

The trip to Canada itself was quite a long one. To spare my dear readers the pain of having to read pages upon pages of Bob asking if they were they yet, penetrated only by narrow escapes from epic battles with comic relief scattered about liberally, I will simply say that it was awesome, yet needlessly long. A quick summary is as follows:
The limousine that they had stolen to “travel in style” only got them to the former United States-Canadian border. From there, the limo broke down, so they were forced to send Bob after the border patrol agents to scare them off. From there, they wound up coming into possession of some military-grade Warthogs formerly owned by the terrified border patrol.
Inferno and Nate had chosen to ride alone with each other in their own private Warthog. Even though they gave the outward appearance of hating each other’s guts, you couldn’t help but think that they really liked one another.
In short, both teams meet up with Flyboy’s contact. After a gun battle and several missions which would be quite annoying in a video game, they get the coordinates to a base in the middle of nowhere, codenamed “Coldsnap”. The journey to those coordinates was long and hard, and both of the teams finally came to a massive icy canyon, kilometers wide and long, with a big chasm running down the center, much like your mother. The entire place felt and looked eerily similar to Sniper Country with a snow theme (you see, God had made this place SECOND to last), and, as such, there were massive bases built into both of the hills for no readily apparent reason. However, this time, there were no teams of snipers populating them, and both of the bases were up for grabs for the two teams.
Flyboy, however, was becoming very uncomfortable around Bob, who had been getting increasingly hungry. He unceremoniously kicked the poor zombie out near an ice cave to fend for himself. Pie protested, but it was far too late, as Bob said that he was perfectly content with this cave and had already begun to fashion himself a new home out of it.
That is the story so far, boring and needlessly-long parts removed.
If you had wanted to read an epic tale about a long journey somewhere that really, honestly, wasn’t all that important, you would be reading Lord of the Rings, much as if you wanted to learn about the nature of life, the universe, and everything, you would be reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Over the course of the journey, Inferno and Nate fell in love with one another, and a beautiful (albeit boring) love story blossomed. However, love is the stickiest and least funny subject one can possibly imagine, and so the majority of this story tries to shy away from it.
The remainder of this chapter is what happens once both teams had finally gotten to their dream bases which had been promised to them by Flyboy’s contacts.



Inferno finally emerged from the base’s one restroom wearing her new Winterized Armor. She wasn’t wearing her helmet. Instead, she went helmetless, giving her helmet a very special home in her cabin, high up on a shelf for all to see and for her to stare at every night. It seemed to idolize something for her, as if it meant something profoundly special. Nate thought about this for a moment before jumping to the conclusion that it was just a strange personality quirk which most smugglers, bounty hunters, and mercenaries seemed to have.
“Took you long enough, damn,” he said, frustrated.
Inferno stared at him, her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry?”
“Girls take forever to do everything, it seems.”
“Oh, so things are different now that I’m a girl now, huh? Are we becoming a tad SEXIST?” A violently insane tone began to appear in her voice the way violently insane tones tend to do that from time to time before going back about their business.
Nate realized he was about to get into deep trouble. “I love you,” he said cautiously, with a nervous smile on his face. Inferno seemed to tower over him; the situation, overall, was not one that he enjoyed particularly much.
“Uh-huh. Even though we’re in a relationship, I’m still not above shooting you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.” She indicated to the shotgun she had docked away nearby.
“I can see that the love is mutual.” Nate’s voice was sheepish.
Inferno nodded and turned her back to Nate. “So it is.”
Nate tried to change the subject. “I noticed your armor is a different color now.”
“Yes, that would be because it’s winterized. It’s cyan.” She stopped being angry at Nate for a moment and turned around so Nate could admire her new armor.
“I don’t really like it too much, honestly. I liked the darker armor better.”
She gave him one of those signature looks which girls are experts at, and then her anger returned to her. “Seriously? You SERIOUSLY don’t like the armor which I had spent A LOT of money to buy and upgrade?”
“Y… Yes…” Nate said squeamishly.
Inferno was disgusted with him. “You really are an imbecile, aren’t you? This armor is state-of-the-art, designed to withstand the cold and can take pretty much anything up to a point-blank shotgun blast, in which there is only a SLIGHT chance that I’ll be mortally wounded.”
“So, wait…” Nate felt as if he was a gigantic target in the middle of a firing range, and that Inferno had a sniper rifle and was aiming for the bulls-eye.
“Isn’t that what I just TOLD YOU? You’re dating me, and you tell me flat-out that think this armor doesn’t look very good on me, just to hurt my feelings. That’s sad.” Nate opened his mouth, but Inferno stuck out her left hand. “Shut up. Don’t talk to me.”
Puma interrupted the tense exchange with an announcement: “The base now has wi-fi. We are now in the future.” His voice was totally devoid of enthusiasm. “Woop-de-doo.”
“Good. Now get off the damn computer, I need to play my video games and check my daily webcomic strips.”
Puma stared at him. “So that’s all I’m good for, huh? Setting up every little piece of technology in this entire damn base so you could play your video games?”
“Yep.” Nate said. “If it was so hard, why didn’t you have Ducky help you? I’m your boss, and what I say goes. Now don’t talk back to your superiors.”
“You’re an ignoramus and Ducky’s an idiot.”
“So is mostly everyone here, it seems.” Infeno said bitterly.
Puma let out a cheer. “FINALLY, SOMEONE THAT AGREES WITH ME.”
Inferno and Puma gave one another a high-five.

Meanwhile, in the opposite end of the red base, Cake was busy putting giant posters of Pie with his eyes gouged out everywhere in his cabin, muttering cruel cruelties and obscene obscenities violently under his breath. Ducky knocked on his door.
“WHAT?”
“I heard that there’s an indoor pool in our base. Wanna come along?”
Cake sighed. “Should’ve expected you to ask something of this nature, Ducky, after the ‘pool fiasco’ in basic training. I don’t see any reason why I should go with you, it’s almost guaranteed to end badly, and I simply don’t want to get stuck in a situation where it is, more than likely, not going to end well on my end.”
“It’s either you go with me to the pool, or Nate makes you work. Would you rather be lazy, or be productive?”
Cake considered this piece of logic for a moment. “Sure, I’ll go with you, I guess. I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t.” There was a minor pause before he added under his breath, “except if I go, I won’t be able to finish hanging up posters of this imbecile…” Cake sighed as he grabbed his swimming trunks, opened the door and walked with Ducky to their new indoor pool.
The pool was large and clear and blue, looking quite serene and pleasant. It had its own private section of the main base building, located right next to the main hangar. Flight suits were draped on the walls, just in case a contingent of pilots who were caught unawares in the pool could run and put on a flight suit fast enough to grab one of the nearby jets and launch a counterattack.
“I didn’t get my nickname in basic training, you know. No, there’s much more beyond that; it was a mere coincidence that they gave me the same nickname that I had gotten growing up. Wanna know how I got this nickname?” Ducky asked once they arrived.
Cake looked at him in the way that one looks at another when they really don’t want to hear the story that they’re about to say, but they’ll listen to it anyway.
Ducky began his anecdote. “My father… Was a drinker. And a fiend.
“One night, he goes off… Crazier than usual. Mommy gets out our pet duck to defend herself. He doesn’t like that. Not. One. Bit.”
Ducky’s voice grew slightly more sinister. “So, me watching, he takes the rabid duck to her, laughing as he does it.”
A violently insane tone began to appear in his voice the way violently insane tones tend to do that from time to time before going back about their business. “He turns to me, and he says, ‘WHY SO WET?’ He comes at ME with the duck, ‘WHY SO WET?’
“He puts the duck up to my mouth. ‘LET’S PUT A SMILE ON THAT FACE.’”
Cake winced.
“Aaaaannnnnnd… Why so wet?” Ducky grabbed Cake, pushed him into the pool, and ran away, laughing maniacally.



Pie and the Blues had finally arrived at their new base and began to set up shop.
“Hey,” said Pie enthusiastically as he unpacked a pile of boxes, “I just got an idea as for what we could call our band.”
“What?” Flyboy asked.
“Pie and the Blues!” Pie threw up his hands in excitement as if one were to cry on another’s birthday, “SURPRISE!” and then reveal that the birthday gift he had gotten her was that he forgot to wear a condom the other night and that she now needed to get herself checked for a number of STDs.
“You got that from Sky Voice, didn’t you?” Flyboy said, unamused.
“Who?”
“Sky Voice. He’s been narrating our entire story so far.”
“You mean the guy who’s been talking about girls and STDs and such?”
“Yes.”
“How long has he been there?”
“Oh, he showed up and has been narrating the entire course of the story so far; from about when Bob showed up at our doorstep and everything went to hell to now.”
“How come I wasn’t aware of this?”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
Pie considered this, figured it would explain a lot, and thus went along with it.
One could explain away the majority of the world’s problems with the simple explanation that each and every one of us human beings, deep down, are all idiots. Christians have been using this fact as evidence proving that their religion is the one true religion as of late, arguing that if we were all created in another being’s image, and if we all are idiots, than those facts coupled together would explain a lot about our universe. Atheists, meanwhile, believe because the Christians have come up with this explanation, it is only further, conclusive proof of the world’s idiocy.
On a completely unrelated note, Pie added, “Fly, how much programming skill do you have?”
Flyboy thought about this for a little bit. “I like to think I have quite a bit of programming skill,” he finally said.
“Enough to build a robot which could replace Bob as a source of comic relief while at the same time becoming actually useful?”
“No.”
“Can you do it anyway?”
“I guess so.”
“That’s a good Flyboy. Torn, how’s the flag?”
“Still tattered as ever, Pie,” Torn replied.
“Good. Bob, how’s the… Oh, right.”



Cake had finally managed to pull himself out of the pool and was beginning to dry himself off when he heard a knock on his cabin door. He sighed and got up, half-dressed. He was expecting Ducky to come by and gloat about how he had just been pushed into the pool, but instead, he was unexpectedly approached by Inferno. He invited her in and she took a sat in a nearby chair, staring at the pictures of Pie with his eyes scratched out on the walls. She smiled slightly, seeming to enjoy the chain reaction she had caused in Cake’s mind, but quickly became engrossed in her thoughts.
“Cake,” she said after a few moments, “I need your advice.”
The suddenness of this statement took Cake completely by surprise. “Really, now? You need my advice? What about?”
“Nate.”
“I thought you were Ms. Tough-Girl, with the whole ‘I could really care less if I kill you’ sort of thing going on?”
“That…” She sighed. “That’s a cover. I’m really not sure if I’m as tough as I seem. I didn’t use to be; I wasn’t always like this. A lot of… things happened to me, so I was forced to toughen up and became a mercenary right as this stupid war was beginning. I’m not sure if it’s a part of me or now. I’m not sure if I can even go back. I’m not sure who or what I am, anymore”
“Why? What happened?”
“It’s not something I like to talk about. I need your advice, Cake, will you hear me out? While I don’t trust you any more than I do any other members of this team… You seem like you’re the most competent one here.”
“Shoot.”
“I like Nate, and he likes me. But he likes me in a way that I… really don’t like him. Simply put, I don’t love him. My heart belongs to someone else, someone I lost long ago.”
“Shouldn’t you have gotten over him by now?”
“I did… For a while. But on the trip here… I thought I discovered him again. I thought I found the one who I had been missing for some time. I’m not sure; he’s… changed significantly, at least physically, but his personality and name match up with how I remember him.”
“Who is it?”
“I’m… I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
“Do I know him?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid. He isn’t around with us anymore; I lost contact him a short while ago.”
“Is it someone on the Blue team?”
“I wouldn’t know exactly what to call him. He just seems… Out of place with the Blues.”
“Is it Flyboy?”
“I already told you, I’m not at liberty to tell you. But I need your help. I need you to help me tell Nate.”
Cake nearly fell over. “Tell Nate that you don’t love him? He’d kill you!”
Inferno broke down into tears. “I know. That’s why I need your help… Or at the very least tell me how I should handle it.”
“Well… What I would do is try to convince him to break up with you.”
“And how would you do that?” Inferno asked, tears still in her eyes.
“I don’t know. I can’t help you there. You’re going to have to just wing it.”
“Thanks, Cake.” She began to leave his room. “Sorry for losing my composure like that… I don’t like to do it, and I don’t do it often. It never happened, got that?”
“It’s alright, I got it. Good luck with Nate.” Cake said, waving her good-bye.


There was a long moment of silence as Nate and Inferno stood alone in the Red’s hangar bay. Nate was quietly surveying the new equipment that the Reds had gotten their hands on, preparing his ultimate battle plan for the attack on the Blues. There was nearly total silence except for Nate’s frantic muttering.
“We need a new plan.” Inferno said finally.
“What was wrong with the old plan?” Nate asked.
“Well, back then, we didn’t have access to this incredible array of nukes,” said Inferno, her arm sweeping around behind her to show him all of their newly-acquired Longsword bombers, each loaded to the brim with missiles and nukes.
“Do we really need to use those things? I say we just charge the base and lay the place under siege like we were going to back in Blood Gulch. If we put up a strong enough stranglehold on the blues, eventually they’ll be forced into submission.”
“Nukes are ALWAYS the answer, Nate. I thought you knew that.”
“Not this time. Nukes are not always the answer. Those nukes are too valuable to waste; you and I both know that.”
Inferno sighed like she would if she was arguing with an idiot on the internet that wouldn’t see things her way out of sheer stupidity. “No, I don’t ‘know that’. These nukes should be fine to use. As long as it hits something, no nuke is a wasted nuke. I feel that killing members of the Blue team is always a good purpose for a nuclear weapon. Of course, I feel that killing anything is a good use of a nuclear weapon, but by virtue of the fact that you’re still paying me, I’m just going to use the Blue team as an example.”
“You’re using the Death Star approach to problems. That never works out too well, especially not for the team using it.”
“And what are YOU using? The Empire Strikes Back approach?”
“Yes, I am, in fact. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire won. When it comes to using the Death Star approach on something, it never ends too well for anyone at all.”
“But the Death Star killed billions more than the Battle of Hoth did.”
“Yes, that IS true, but which battle do people like better? Which one is more covered in-depth with panoramas and video game levels and has become a part of pop culture in general? The Battle of Hoth, or the Death Star battle?”
“That depends. Which Death Star battle are we talking about here?”
“The first one.”
“I think fan opinion is pretty split on the matter when it comes to that one, Nate. You have just as many Trench Run recreations as you do Battle of Hoth recreations, and you quite possibly have even more parodies of the Trench Run than you do the Battle of Hoth.”
“No, I’m sure people would rather watch the Battle of Hoth over the first Death Star. The Battle of Hoth just seems cooler, for some reason. More people like it.”
“But some people might want to watch the Battle of Endor over the Battle of Hoth. Who wouldn’t want to hear Ackbar scream that it’s a trap?”
“The Battle of Endor is irrelevant.”
“But it had a Death Sta-”
“It remains irrelevant, and irrelevant never forgets. Get ready, for we attack tomorrow.”
Chapter V: The Red Team Strikes Back
There was a cool Canadian breeze flowing as the Red team got ready for the siege.
As this was the northernmost, less-inhabited part of Canada, where the permafrost was very frosty and was very permanently attached to the soil, all breezes were cold, so it being a cool breeze was a given.
Even calling it a “cool breeze” might have been an understatement, as the breeze was actually more of a “blisteringly cold” breeze.
The Reds’ plan was to use several Warthogs full of missile launchers to surround the base and negate any escape attempts by the team trapped within.
Nate himself was armed with a sniper rifle, and his job was to kill any Blue which stupidly wandered out of the base without a vehicle.
If he were playing a videogame, one might consider this “camping” tactic unfair, and thus would get very mad at him for even considering to “camp”.
Nate didn’t call it “camping”. He called it “a legitimate strategy”. He looked back to the cargo compartment of his Warthog to ensure that the sniper rifle was still tucked safely away. He looked to his left and saw that his shotgun was still safely mounted to the drivers’ side door.
The Red team had a bloodlust, and they were more than willing for a fight. It had been too long since they had last gotten the adrenaline rush of battle, and the Warthogs carrying the team raced across the snow with a purpose.

Once he was sure that all of his stuff was in order, Nate began conducting his final systems check with the rest of the Reds, who were listening to everything that one another said via communications devices implanted within each one of their helmets,
“Are all of your sniper rifles ready?”
“Affirmative,” Cake answered.
“Missiles loaded?”
“Enough to stay on the attack for quite some time,” confirmed Puma.
“What about our special toaster?”
“Toaster? Right here,” Ducky replied. He fiddled around with something or another, and pulled out a toaster from somewhere in his Warthog. He lifted it up into the air to show Nate that he, in fact, had remembered the special toaster. However, as he did so, the Warthog ran over a particularly nasty snowdrift and a combination of wind resistance and the bump itself caused the toaster to fly out of Ducky’s hand and embed itself in the snow.
Ducky decided to remain quiet on the matter and hope no one would notice that he had just lost their special toaster.
“Good. Systems check finished; we have everything we need.”
Inferno had a serious look on her face and glanced over at Nate, who was driving.
“Nate… I have something to tell you.”
Nate stopped the Warthog. The other members of red team all sighed in unison.
Inferno went on, visibly nervous. “Nate… You’re really great and all… But I think we should just be friends, partners on a professional level only.”
Nate grew visibly depressed. “You’re telling me this now, in mid-mission?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but I never had any other opportunity to tell you.”
“Inferno, I have something to ask you.”
“What?”
“Would you take a bullet for me?”
“…I suppose I still would.”
“Good.” Nate pulled out the shotgun from the drivers’ side door and shot Inferno at near point-blank range. She tumbled out of the Jeep into the snow, and Nate drove off without looking back at her body. “Some women,” he said to himself as he raced across the snow once again.


There was near-total silence in the Blue base. A human-like silhouette stood still as a statue in the center of the room, draped with a cloth. Flyboy stood next to it; the other two blues both watched as the unveiling was about to begin.
“I’ve finally perfected it.” Flyboy said. He was attempting to majestically unveil a robot which looked almost (but not quite) identical to him, but kept getting the cloth stuck on the silhouette’s head. He took a great tug at the cloth. It finally came loose and the figure began to totter, causing Flyboy to rush to steady it. The armor plating composing its body was a bright sunshine yellow, but its face was a mass of grey, filled to the brim with sharp angles and seemingly designed to look menacing in every possible way. Red lights lit up where its eyes should be. “I’ve made my robot. I call him ‘Flybot’. He has my devilishly good looks and all the charm to absolutely KILL the ladies. And he’s yellow. Yellow is a pimp’s color.”
“You programmed it to kill the ladies?” Pie asked quizzically.
“Well, and the guys, too, but I’m hoping he’ll prefer to be a lady killer, much like his creator. They’ll be all over him, I swear.” Flyboy grinned, yet Pie had a largely skeptical expression on his face.
“And having multiple ladies around is a good thing why?”
“It gives us more chances to get some?” Flyboy tried to drive this point home with a playful elbow to Pie’s ribs. Unfortunately, this didn’t solve many of Flyboy’s problems, as he had elbowed Pie a little too hard and now was getting a sharp, hard, and unappreciative stare from his Commander.
“Fly, I’m married.”
Flyboy knew he was stumbling and falling, but desperately tried to salvage his argument much as one might try to salvage a burning plane which is falling from the sky with no tail, one wing, and half of an engine. “It gives me more chances to get some?”
“Something tells me you aren’t going to ‘get’ anything. Since when is having more ladies around such a good thing?”
“You’re saying that having Inferno around isn’t a good thing?”
“Not when she’s trying to kill us.”
“And how many times has she tried to kill us?”
“She killed Bob.”
Flyboy finally found a flaw in Pie’s argument and tried to exploit it as a way to land his plane crash of an argument. “No, snipers killed Bob.”
“OK, yes, snipers did kill Bob,” Pie conceded, “but then she tried to kill us when you were caressing your Longsword. Remember?”
“But she was doing it in the sexiest way possible.”
“Sexy or not, Fly, she was trying to kill us. That is a fact. You know that is a fact. You are denying the fact that IT IS A FACT.”
“I swear, it’s not a fact. Just because she was shooting really big anti-matter charges at us doesn’t mean…” Flyboy was at a loss for words. Even his flying skills were no help when it came to this plane crash, and the half of an engine he had left just fell off.
“Doesn’t mean what?” Pie inquired.
Flyboy shrugged. “Maybe she was trying to kill someone else?”
“Like who?”
“You?”
Pie considered this. “OK, you got me there.”
Flyboy cheered. “AND KYLE ANDROSS LANDS THE PLANE AGAIN!”
Pie and Torn stared at him, confused as to where this remark came from. Flyboy felt himself grow pink and tried to wave the embarrassing outburst away as fast as he could.
Pie dropped the subject and turned to Flybot. “Are you going to turn that thing on?”
“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Thanks.” Flyboy hit a switch and the robot came to life. The yellow body of the robot jumped to life and began to move about freely, its photoreceptors taking in the new environment which it shall take over and dominate sooner rather than later.
“Hello there, humans. My name is FLYBoT: Fierce, Lying, Yellow Bot of Terror.” A violently insane tone began to appear in his voice the way violently insane tones tend to do that from time to time before going back about their business.
“Something tells me that isn’t quite right, Flyboy.” Torn said.
“Nonsense, I wouldn’t make a robot which would actually try to kill anything but the red team.”
“You sure?”
“I sure hope so.”
Pie shrugged and turned to the robot. “Well, robot, what do you predict the reds are going to do?”
“Kill you all.”
“Before that.”
“I’ll kill you myself before they get here.”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing, meatbag.” Pie was pretty sure that if the faceless robot had the ability to convey expressions, it would be scowling in disgust at the Blues. “I’ve analyzed the red’s strategies, and I would guess that they’re going to try to lay your base under siege. I recommend walking outside and simply telling them to stop.”
“Very sound advice, Flybot, but I don’t think it will be necessary. We have all the food and provisions we need right here.”
“How many missile strikes can this base take?” Flybot asked.
“I wouldn’t know, mayb-”
“Never mind, I’ve already done the math, you idiot human. The kind of firepower they’ll be bringing will cripple the base, but not destroy it.” It paused. “Pray they don’t use any nukes.”
“So wait… They’ll shut off the electricity?” Flyboy asked, worried.
“Yes. No internet and no porn until the siege is over and you’re all dead. You guys are screwed. Good luck.”
Pie sighed as the first of many missile blasts rocked the base.



Inferno lay on the ground for what felt like an eternity. She was betrayed by the one she thought that she had trusted the most in a moment of weakness, and she was uncertain whether she could ever trust anyone again. Her physical wounds alone were mortal unless she received some medical care, and quickly, and her mental wounds were only worsening her declining condition. But there she lay, mortally wounded and alone in the freezing snow, no human in sight.
However, a figure lumbered towards her which wasn’t exactly human.
Becoming a zombie, she considered, was better than becoming dead.


Bob carried Inferno back to his ice cave. She was in bad, bad shape, and the outlook for the length of the rest of her life didn’t look good. She made a slight groaning noise as Bob hoisted her up onto the makeshift table he had made for her.
He may have been an idiot, but he knew when someone wasn’t going to make it through this life for too much longer. It pained him to think of her possibly and quite probably dying, as she and Bob have had a long history together…


It was four years before Bob got assigned to “N” company, and only a few months before he was forced into the military. Humanity had just recovered from a major war, but Bob was at home, happy and in a relationship with who he considered an awesome redhead.
She did it all for him: she cooked, she cleaned, and she did everything for him… All in return for his love, and nothing more. Bob knew that he wasn’t the best or the brightest of people, but he was happy that she had chosen him as her boyfriend, against all odds. He tried to prove this to her with his love, but he seemed to be his own worst enemy. Any plans he tried to make with her always seemed to fall flat on their face, sometimes quite literally.
But every time they did, she giggled. And every time she giggled, he wanted to do more for her, causing the plans he made to fall flat on their face once more.
And so the cycle repeated itself.

Her name was Cyan, and they had been together since high school. They were high school sweethearts, young, crazy, and in love. Bob brought home the money while Cyan did the work. The economy was entering an economic boom, things were happy, and the general public had no idea how close a revolution was.
Then the day came. It was a Wednesday, and he knew it was a Wednesday primarily because he never particularly liked Wednesdays. They dragged on for too long, they had a funny name, and they just were unpleasant in general, so it came as no surprise to Bob the Wednesday that the men from the government knocked on the door. When he answered, they dragged Bob from his home and away from Cyan for what he thought would be forever.

They knew Bob wasn’t the smartest, smartest, or luckiest of the candidates. Instead, he lay at the other end of the spectrum, and as such he was considered “expendable”. He was to be operated on non-stop as a testing bed for the latest in military procedures and experiments, as the doctors screwed with his brain and only managed to lower his IQ even further from what it already was. He began hearing voices from the sky which narrated what he did. They came and went, occasionally leaving him alone, but it began to drive him crazy because they were particularly annoying voices.
The men from the government promised him a pet turtle. He got it and named it “Speedy”. One day, as part of his testing, they took Speedy from him to see how he would react.
As it would turn out, Speedy’s disappearance affected Bob profoundly. He began to search everywhere for him, until the men from the government told him that Speedy had run away and had been shot by a giant superheated laser blast.
He never was the same again.
Bob returned to Cyan a changed man. He still loved her, but he knew that he wasn’t the man who she fell in love with. He was a man who had been altered by the government in ways that she couldn’t possibly imagine. Bob was changed, and he knew it.
The worst part was he wasn’t sure if it was going to happen again. He tried to be there for Cyan, he tried to carry on life as it was before they took him, he tried to make her laugh, smile, love and giggle again… But he knew that she couldn’t love him anymore.

In reality, things were quite the opposite. Cyan still loved him dearly… But she wasn’t sure what they had done to him. She wasn’t sure if he was now secretly a spy for the government or quite possibly something even worse, and as she was the brains (of a sort) in the relationship, she knew that Bob himself couldn’t know, either.
By now it was only a month before the war. Tensions were beginning to rise, and Cyan feared that Bob would be taken away, drafted by the government and forced to fight on their side. She tried to be there for him, but her attempts failed worse than Bob’s own attempts to do things earlier on in their relationship.
She had predicted correctly, as it wasn’t long until the men from the government arrived again, this time armed with guns. They forcibly made Bob sign a form which drafted him into the army until at least war’s end, if not longer.
Cyan was heartbroken; she loved him, and now there was a very good chance that she would never see him again. In desperation, she tried to join the army as well, but the fascist government had put restrictions on women and did not allow them to fight in their army.
She tried to join the other side’s forces, the Communist Red Army, but she was again denied as she was a female and thus not allowed to join their army, either.

In a fit of desperation, Cyan decided to become a mercenary. She attempted to buy a midnight blue suit of armor in remembrance of Bob’s favorite color, but she wound up having to purchase midnight black armor, as the midnight blue was sold out.
She hid her identity behind Bob’s old helmet that he had bought for her old pastime of paintballing, upgraded the armor plating protecting it, and equipped it with a voice changer to disguise her voice.
Then she adopted a new name: “Inferno”.
To any casual onlooker, she was a man when she was wearing her armor. And so she masqueraded as a man, joining mercenary websites and looking for work, always hoping to meet Bob once again, even if it was on the field of battle. Once she had met him, she was going to remove her helmet and show him who she really was. The plan from then on was to desert and run far away from the military, possibly getting off-planet if they could secure a ride and hitch a way to one of the Outer Colonies to start a new life together.
It was four long years without him. Four years of murdering innocents for money, putting on a tough face whilst also constantly searching for the love of her life. It had hardened her, changed her, and it had made her ruthless and quite possibly insane. In fact, she knew it had, for it had been four years of heartbreak. But she knew Bob as well. Even if they were both changed for the worse, she knew he would take her back and they would make it work.
She knew that they would find a way, no matter what.


Bob sat there in his ice cave, reflecting on this. A tear formed in his eye as Inferno’s breaths grew shallower and shallower. He looked at her and instantly remembered why she had looked so familiar in the past.
“I’m sorry I have to do this, Cyan.” Bob said, and he took a soft bite of her shoulder, infecting her with the zombification virus which would make her into someone just like him.
Looking back, Bob thought, maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he always made himself out to be. Maybe he deserves more than just being “comic relief”. But that wasn’t the point.
He didn’t need to be funny to be loved. He had Cyan.
As adored as he was by the people who have read his antics in this story so far, maybe he did have some brains after all.
He certainly was hungry for them.
ALSO
TRAINZ:

Oh, hello there.
hr7sqw7cLsM

Some recent news:



I was at what essentially amounts to a model train swap meet in the Ontario Convention Center (in Ontario, CA, the convention center is just a few blocks from my house, actually), from which I acquired 2 new engines: a Santa Fe Dash 8 (the red engine in the video above) and a Santa Fe GP-50 to complement my OTHER Santa Fe SD-40. The GP-50/SD-40 team will eventually be used for light freight duty and switching coal cars at the coal yard; the Dash 8 will be used for heavy jobs like pulling coal or container trains. And yes, I WILL repaint some of the train cars and make them TF2 colors with "Red" and "Blu" on them, just because I'm cool like that. Look at the TF2 train prefabs in Hammer to see what I'm talking about.
Since my last update, I have been working on the technical side of things. This means working out the bugs and working with electricity. Lots of working with electricity. Electricity is fun for your body and for your soul. Electricity loves you.


And I didn't forget pictures.
NEW TRAINZZZZZ:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091621.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091621a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091624a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091638.jpg
(GAAAAAH INSTRUCTIONS)
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091633.jpg
AND TINY PARTS TO WORK WITH :gonk:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091624.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091629.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091629a.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091630.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091638a.jpg
Train car loaded with nails for trackwork on-the-go = :iamafag:

And let's take a look under the hood:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091639.jpg
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/1206091639a.jpg
Every little bit of track is now wired up and ready to go. The train now has very little issues getting to any place on the entire layout; although the switch to the coal yard needs to be replaced (it causes a shitload of derailments).

[Limited]

Could you make them shot tags?

[English Mobster]

Thanks, Laggy.
I think my internet router's going bad, my FIOS connection is having REALLY bad connectivity, most of the time I can't even access the internet and when I can, pages load REALLY slowly and occasionally don't ever load at all.
As such, editing my own posts is a nightmare ATM, lol, especially long ones.
Short ones like this aren't too bad. :p

[English Mobster]

I know you guys are going to yell at me, but I already posted the regular renders in the quick-crit thread (http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?p=500673#post500673).
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/claynosmooth.jpg
With wireframe:
http://i435.photobucket.com/albums/qq80/Mudkipz47/claywireframe.jpg

[Gwunty]

Seriously jay, stop making those worthless and stupid extrudes. They add nothing to your model, and make it look even shittier than it would without them. Furthermore go get some tutorials or something becuase to be honest its been like 5 months of you just modeling something and making the same mistake, over and over again. Your topology is shit, your mesh is riddled with non planers, and your adding more polys than you need to in ALOT of areas.
Look ill even post some for you
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=966646
http://www.fpsbanana.com/tuts/332
And I don't care if you have already seen both of them, becuase if you have you obviously missed the entire gist of the tutorials.