| Doo-doo-doo-duh-duh-duh-doo-dooooooooo. (pathetic attempt at trumpet noises) Here yea, here yea. Come one, come all, for that most glorious of weekly events, the long rambling over what Matt did on Thursday night, also known as LOOPY DAY!!! First of all, to fill you in on our surprise. When the whole loopy day thing began to take off, the first thing I did was go to the local target, Walmart, and Kmart in search of SS's to bolster my armament. To my dismay, I found that ALL of these stores had sold out, and would not be reordering until spring. Not only did this mean that I couldn't get extra guns, it meant that the new initiates to the glory of water war would not be able to pick up guns for themselves. After several scourings of local shops, and many failed attempts to get people to take me to the toys R us in Kansas City (about an hour away) I struck upon yet one more in a long string of my own personal genius ideas:online super soaker purchase. I scouted out several sites, and finally settled on target.com for our supplier. I researched all of the guns they had available( supersoaker.com is a wonderful site) and then opened the order to the rest of the hall, in an attempt to draw in as many new soldiers as possible(and to decrease my personal shipping costs). What follows is a highly complicated and technical break down of the guns we purchased, not to be read by the easily confused or simpleminded *cough,cough,KATIE,cough*. The gun we chose for our basic assault weapon, our m-16 if you will, was the xp-310. It seemed a sturdy design, small and light enough to be easily portable, plus it was an xp, not a crappy cps, which means you can empty the entire tank in one shot if you pump while you fire. It has variable nozzles if the occasion arises that one merely needs maximum drenchage i.e. sniper attacks, and it was a darker color than the other, more fluorescent SS's. Plus it was only $8. The other gun ordered by many, regardless of my urgings to the contrary, was the cps-2700, known to many as the gun that Silas has. I remembered that there were often difficulties with his gun, plus the fact that it was too large for practical hit and run assaults, but several individuals insisted on it, despite it's $20 price tag. Oh well, it was there money anyways. For myself however, I made two different choices. First off, I bought a cps-1200, despite the fact that I am not a big fan of the cps series. I felt that I should have at least one, in case an occasion arose in which I would need it, plus it is a durable gun with few complicated parts to break or malfunction, as opposed to my triple charge. Also, this gun was only $10. For my other purchase, although I have mocked it before, I decided to go with the biggest I could get, yes, that's right, I bought a Monster (I realize there is a bigger Monster XL, however it isn't available on any of the sites I checked, so this was the next best). This gun is three feet long (taller than Merry if you stand it on end) and has six different nozzles, plus a gallon payload. Although not the most amount of water possible, that's quite a bit. And this gargantuan beauty only cost me $30 (in case you are wondering where I got all this money, I have discovered that when you drop classes, they refund your money. In the case of people with scholarships, they still give you the cash because you'll have to pay for those hours down the road. In an unrelated side note, I am no longer enrolled in spanish 104). We made this order last Wednesday, and to ensure its speedy arrival had it sent rush delivery. To be honest with you, I almost cried on Monday when I walked into the mailroom and saw the towering stack of boxes from Target addressed to me. It was a glorious day. Enough girlish chit-chat, on to the events of yesternight. As it approached 11:30 I was in a friends room brooding (for reasons a few of you know) and had good reason to take out my rage that night, so when I realized the time, I quickly sprinted downstairs. Arraying myself in green cargo shorts and a black turtleneck(it's been getting a little nippy lately) I began to rush about the hall, calling the men to arms and kicking them from their slumber. They were for the most part hesitant, saying we had plenty of time, but as I brandished my mallet (an item which I "received" during an instance of respectful looting seeral weeks ago, from a girls schol hall) over my head, they soon complied. I loaded up my backpack with the traditional 5 balloons, and got the Keasby Nights pumping from my stereo. After a quick overview on tactics (spread out when attacking, dodge when they throw stuff at you, follow if someone else charges, don't drink the water in your guns) I select my artillery for the evening. I strapped my triple charge to my backpack as usual, leaving it dangling at my hip for quickdraw, and to put the fear of God into the enemy, slung the Monster out in front of me (although I'm sure it's not as bad as Nathan's, that thing is pretty freakin heavy, I'm definitely going to have to do that Rocky thing). I figured three guns would be ludicrous, so I loaned out my 1200, and began marching the guys out. We skulked in the shadows in front of our hall until Pearson yelled out their traditional greeting, to which this weeks reply was"eat a cunt, Pearson!" (as some of you may have noticed, our replies contain a high level of vulgarity. this is one aspect of LD with which i have nothing to do, and thus cannot be held responsible for. I merely repeat them here in the name of historical accuracy). At this point I lead the guys up into the street, and we began our slow and badass walk to the front of pearson. As we went, a door opened at Battenfeld, someone stepped out and threw something and quickly retreated. A second later an apple exploded on the pavement a good 3 yards away from us, and we let loose with countless jeers and flipped many birds in their general direction. We continued on to the battlefield, and when we got there, they had about 8 guys out front with balloons. We suspected an ambush (later found out almost the entire hall was inside turning out balloons) so we spread up the hill and around them. There were several minutes of deadtime, in which we merely faced off, and then one of my guys fired. We all opened up on them, and they started to throw at us. I was using the Monster, and charged forward into the fray, spraying for all I was worth. I was a bit disappointed, however, because the gun quickly spent itself (possibly due to the 11.5x nozzle it was on) and I was left pumping frantically to get another shot off (that thing takes so many pumps, I'm going to be like popeye after a few weeks. of course, my left arm will be predominantly larger that my other, which should go along way to helping me impress the ladies[insert sarcasm here]) I was unfortunately pelted quite severely before I could retreat to my guys, but they impressed me with their adaptiveness. They quickly formed the strategy of firing at about a middle height when a team member was returning, so that I could duck under their blasts and they got the guys behind me. I swung the Monster around and brought up my triple charge, letting off a couple good long range shots. At this point the guys, running on empty, headed back to the faucet at the hall for a reload. I was following, when suddenly 4 new Pearsonites burst from their front door, ambushing Adam. Now Adam doesn't really dodge much and he usually tries to trade words with his attackers, resulting in graphic insults and horrible comebacks which I usually find quite painful to witness. I ran back over to help him, but at this point the initial Pearsons had reloaded and Adam and I took the full brunt of their attack as they spread out and nailed us. Not my finest hour, as I hauled balls out of there, absolutely drenched. After everyone reloaded and I impressed upon them the importance of making sure everyone one was with them before they left, we prepared a counter attack. Isaac, Brian, and I snuck around the back, while the main force went to engage them out front. As we came around the back corner, their guys on the fire escape began to chuck at us. We dodged easily, and showed them how our new guns could plaster a third floor platform, resulting in their early retreat. We pumped back up, and came around to the front, just in time to meet the main force of Pearson retreating for a reload. Praising our lucky timing, we opened fire, and they were caught in a pincher between us and our other guys. It was bloodbath. As our guns began to sputter I called off the attack and we regrouped at the hall. A quick reload and a ditch of the Monster later (I decided it was too heavy to keep carrying around) we were ready again. There was dissension in the ranks, however, as several of the less tactically sound men wanted to attack KKA, who had as yet not shown. I was completely against it, but a group of about four insisted and left anyways. The rest of us split into two groups, one led by Sleepy Dave for going around Pearson once more, and the other led by myself around front to attempt another hammer and anvil. We were quickly engaged by Pearson, but were not able to suppress them because they were receiving a constant stream of balloons from within their hall. With Sleepy's group nowhere in sight, we could not accomplish anything, so I halted the futile attack. Although we didn't sustain much fire, we also were not able to get close enough to do much to them. When we got back to Stephenson, we found the other half of our assault team, many of whom were dripping profusely. It seems that Pearson had managed to run a hose from their third floor bathroom out to their fire escape, and when our secondary force came out of the ally, they soaked them and bombarded them. Sleepy said the fire was so heavy that they actually could not proceed, and so they were repelled. At this point we saw four Pearsons leave their hall, one of which was carrying a bucket, so we headed back, myself picking up the Monster to try it again. We were once more in a standoff, because they didn't want to charge, and my guys didn't want to get in range of the bucket. To remedy this, I ran forward, giving out a fierce cry of "Spoooon" and managed to dump the bucket back on it's wielder before he could use it. At this point my guys formed a ring around them, and we sprayed and taunted them for about five minutes. The Pearsonites told us that the rest of their hall had given up, and they were the only ones still willing to fight. They convinced several of the stupider guys (most of whom had been on the previous KKA attack) that it would be fun to assault Pearson's fire escape. It appeared empty and a few of my guys rushed up it, only to be greeted by the all to predictable deluge of a 55gallon barrel. They came out with their hose, at which point myself and the other guys with heavy weapons came at them from our maximum range, where the hose couldn't reach us, and sprayed them down. They all ran back inside, not to be seen again that night. After all of this we gathered in front of our hall to revel in our glory and recount our own personally heroics. It was a sweet victory, well earned this time against good opponents, but it was over very soon, and when we realized it was still early and we had water left in our guns, we began a quick everyman for himself skirmish. I sat out along with Isaac and Sleepy to discuss tactics for next week, but I think it was good for the guys to get out some frustration and earn a little extra training. In fact, I am seriously considering running a set of war games before next week. Well, until then, I bid you adieu. matt |