| Hey guess what, I've been procrastinating this for over an hour, and I've come to the conclusion I'm not going to have either a witty subject line or an amusing intro to this LDR. Tough. Deal with it. Tonight did, however, go quite nicely. Enthusiasm was fairly low this week, and I decided not to try anything grand or complicated after last weeks covert-ops. We were simply going to do it old school, walking out with our guns and improving against whatever they sent at us. There was a secret weapon though, but we'll get to that later. We actually ran a bit late, it took a while for everyone to load up and I had to wait for Keasby Nights to finish (kind of like Nicholas Cage with Lowrider) then we marched on out. There were about seven Pearsonites out in front of their hall, and there was the typical retinue of wusses on their fire escape. We made our ring of their forces, and waited for their first move. Like clockwork, a raid came from the front door and we soon fell amongst them to suppress it. The guys on the FE had apparently found the value of throwing balloons OVER the corner of the building to get at us, but they were horribly inaccurate. As the fray died down we noticed that some of the balloons were actually coming from behind us, and soon found out that Battenfeld was on their FE bombarding us. Surprisingly they were actually throwing instead of launching them, but were still pitifully inaccurate.(Note: any of you prospective Jayhawks out there, start practicing your balloon lobbing now, it is a skill with much more practical application than "studying" or "being literate" and will make you an invaluable resource to whatever hall you attend) I sent a triad up and around BF to put a stop to the third party potshots and returned my attention to Pearson. The next 15 minutes consisted of the typical hit and run front door raid and some ill fated assaults on their FE. A bit of background, after last week one of the regular Stephenson warriors, Creepy (he rooms with Sleepy Dave, which has lead to endless "Where's Doc and Dopey?" jokes), felt that he was being underappreciated since he did not get enough action as a decoy, and therefore declared that he wouldn't follow any of our directions and led a vigilante war on his own. This sounds badass, but I couldn't help but notice he was substantially more soaked than previous times (to his credit, this guy is a ninja at dodging balloons, I've actually seen him jump over incoming grenades while firing his gun) so throughout the night he lead his own raids on Pearson emplacements, with a fair amount of success, he definitely ran them low on balloons. Once the outside raiders from Pearson began to die down and the majority congregated on their FE, we brought out our artillery. Isaac and I had been shopping downtown earlier today (not for shoes or dresses like my usual, we were getting comics and cards and happened to run across a certain shop with a large amount of water balloons(including those nifty grenade shaped ones, although i'm still partial to the cannonballs) and wonder of wonders, a launcher. I felt the twenty dollars was worth it(for the record I spent $50 in half an hour, I'm getting worse than when I worked for the theater) and made an instant purchase(to let you know how cool this thing is, here is a quote from the warning label "May cause eye damage and facial fractures. Launches balloons at up to 75 MPH. Do not shoot at people". I was so tempted to use ball bearings). We did some target practice earlier in the evening, and when LD rolled around I had a backpack with ten balloons ready for use. We set up at the edge of their range, with a clear shot at the FE and the building behind them to serve as a backstop. This is your standard slingshot style design, and Caleb and I served as the posts, while Isaac did the aiming and firing. I wore my backpack backwards and unzipped so I could reload and we got the thing going like a finely oiled machine, we could shoot a balloon about every fifteen seconds. It took about three shots for Isaac to get his bearings, and then he was like a friggin sniper with that thing. They were popping all around them; off the rails, on the walls, bursting on their buckets. The pansies were soon turning and heading in. Unfortunately I had only prepared ten, so Isaac and I went back and filled another twenty in about 5 minutes(I think that's a record) and headed back to the front. Pearson was back out on their platform, so we set up and let hell rain on them some more. One semi-intelligent guy had a trashcan lid he used as a shield, and actually blocked a few, until Isaac started testing the 75 mph speed limit, at which point he couldn't follow them. About this time our guys started an assault of their own on the FE, and the guys on top started trying to get them with 50 gallon buckets. One of our best shots actually hit one of these dumpers, cause him to cuss and drop his barrel. We soon ran out of balloons once more, and the guys decided to do a full out attack. I stayed back to serve as rear guard and keep a bit more dry, while about 8 guys rushed up the FE. They were fairly drenched by the big buckets, but they kept going, and the defenders fell back in the face of their concentrated water streams. Soon we were the only ones occupying the FE. We then realized that pearson had run in such hurry that they had left their barrels. I started yelling for the guys to toss'em down, and we soon had a sizable "P.O.W." camp set up on the hill, which we laughed over to no end. One of our guys ran back to the hall with a can and hid it, and I headed back for a magic marker so that we could brand the buckets with SUCIT, but when I returned I found our captives had been liberated by Pearson's less than amused hall director, however, to my knowledge we still have the hidden one. At this point Pearson came back out sporadically to throw small balloons, and we returned fire, but it was evident that we had them scared and had utterly outgunned them. After a few more minutes of triumphantly loitering about, we let out our now traditional "SUCIT" yell and head back to our hall for the booze and hookers at the victory party. Once more we stood as the winners, and let me tell you, it's good to be king. Until next week, ciao. Matt |