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9/13/2007 8:56:41 PM
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The War Of The Matches

Hello there. Well, this is my latest production for you people. War Of The Matches is a semi-spoof of H.G. Well's War Of The Worlds, set on the premise of an invasion of the Halo 2 online system by outisde aggressors. If you're interested at all then you can feel free to PM me on the matter. Most of all I hope you enjoy it... [i]“Let us reply to ambition that it is she herself that gives us a taste for solitude.” –Montaigne.[/i] [b]The Evening of War.[/b] For the uninitiated, an explanation as to what [i]Halo 2[/i] even is should be supplied here. [i]Halo 2[/i] is a First-Person Shooter game, or FPS for short. That means that the game is played through the eyes of (usually) the main character, and the game involves gratuitous violence, big guns and bigger explosions. Released to audiences in 2004, [i]Halo 2[/i] quickly became known as one of the foremost online multiplayer games devised. The phrase “Online” means Players have created an Xbox Live account, and can play matches competitively together on Microsoft’s broadband-only gaming network, Xbox Live. On this system, players communicate vocally through the use of simple headsets known as Xbox Live Communicators, thus “creating a more immersing atmosphere,” or whatever the Microsoft Marketing Department spouts at the time. The golden days of the game lasted for much longer than expected, with hardcore fans and even new Players carrying on at the game long after the advent of newer releases. But no one would have believed in the last update of the [i]Halo 2[/i] system that we were being scrutinised from afar like a man would watch cells or bacteria swarm and multiply through a microscope. So obsessed were we with our own affairs, and so assured of the protective defences the operators of our digital world provided, that we were oblivious to any threat from beyond our tiny realm. At that time, we knew not even of the existence of [i]them[/i]. Even with half a year past after the events I chronicle here, negligible amounts have been learned on the matter. Their true identity, rationales, organisation and methodology are as much a mystery today as they were the moment that the first of their enigmatic kind defiled our game world. Their tactics and strategies have been the subject of much heated debate, yet little has been gleaned. That is to say nothing of their place of origin. If only one facet of their kind has to be plucked from the sea of perplexity for sheer levels of confusion, it would be where these invaders came from. However, the events you will read of sent shockwaves throughout the gaming world, with other companies and organisations scrambling in great haste to prevent an attack of such devastating magnitude befalling their systems. The attack unleashed on the [i]Halo 2[/i] online multiplayer system is, without a shadow of a doubt, the single most staggering event of its kind thus far. And yet, despite all the precautions taken, it still wrought terrible havoc. And so, as we blundered and floundered around in the blissful daydream of ignorance, across the vast gulf of the Internet, cold, calculating minds regarded our online world with envious eyes and instruments we have yet to even fathom. And slowly, yet surely, they drew their plans against us. [Edited on 09.13.2007 1:04 PM PDT]
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  • [b]The Death of the Baptist and the Man in the Building.[/b] I took to exploring the cold metal corridors of the building, knowing I had little else to do now. It was as I explored what I feared to be my tomb that I found another survivor. I turned a corner, and, with an odd feeling of being watched, I noticed another Player. Armed with a shotgun and watching me cautiously. “You one of them?” He asked, his voice hoarse and distinctly American. His MJOLNIR armour was a dark brown, and like all of us he could not quit and reach the menu necessary to change the colour to black in an attempt to at least imitate one of the enemy. “No, you aren’t.” He said, answering for me. “Get over here, you’re in the resistance now, man.” He ordered suddenly. I looked around, making sure he wasn’t talking to someone else. “Yes, I’m talking to you! Just follow me.” He snapped. I followed him as he took several winding turns and pauses, checking for Hackers every step of the way. “Can’t be too sure these days…” He often repeated. It was a refreshing change from the pious Baptist’s prayers, at least. Eventually, we reached a spot in the building that was out of the way, and had no danger of giving us away. “As I said, you’re in the resistance now, so welcome to you, Brother.” Said the man; once he was confident no Hackers were nearby. My silence clearly told him I had no idea on what he was talking about. “It’s all over.” He said grimly. “They’ve lost one-just one. And they utterly wasted us. The death of that one just there was an accident. And this ain’t over. They’ll keep on coming. We’re under! We’re beat!” He exclaimed. I gave no answer. If we were “under” and “beat” then why was there a resistance? “But this ain’t never a war. It was as much a war as a war between us and… Uh. Something not as good as us.” He said, his speech increasing in speed so it was more akin to a rant. “But now they’re finished with us all proper like, they’re going to store us away in cages and things, like. Keep us for target practice and stuff.” I still had no idea, though I said nothing. “But I got a plan. We’re going under their feet. I’ve thought it out. We’re going underground. We’re going to use the drains and subway and all that and we’re going to dig tunnels and all!” At once I realised this person was suffering from a delusion even worse than that of the Baptist. I’d simply traded one near-psychopath for another. Not only had he forgotten that, this being a computer game, we couldn’t dig at all, and that there weren’t any subways or drains to hide in. Someone had clearly been reading too much late nineteenth-century science fiction literature. He continued to babble on, as he did walking along with me in tow. We came to a window and looked out onto the map, but still careful not to be seen. The Baptist offered up yet another quick prayer as he scrambled along a back alley of the Headlong map. The grind and clank of the Hacker Striders still rang deafeningly around him, as did the occasional rattle of gunfire, but it never lasted for long. Down the back alley, two of the Striders had taken up position around the Teleporter and their fallen comrade, with the last hunted around for more victims, scouring the place clean. He had been ground into the dirt earlier when a completely unexpected Warthog smashed into him and his congregation. They were all killed as it barrelled through them, their corpses scattering around like bowling pins. Fortunately, he re-spawned afterward, giving him a second chance. That said he would never get near the escape Teleporter because of the damned Striders. He hurried on down the alley, emerging on a path looking onto a wide, open area. Above, a steel girder and a section of motorway dangled on chains held by cranes high above. But his eyes were drawn to the Teleporter that the Hackers had come through, the huge black portal that had spelt the doom of hundreds of innocent Players. Unexpectedly, two more Striders emerged through the Teleporter, along with a sizeable host of black-armoured Hackers on foot following. They moved on to the two Striders waiting directly opposite them, mercifully not noticing them. With that, he crept along, keeping to the shadows. He planned to head to the other side of the map, and to do so he would have to cross the open, but he was confident he could make it. There were places he could hide over there, but the Hacker force was too close to him here for his tastes, so movement was the only option to his mind. With the enormous Hacker Teleporter to his right, and a high road barrier shielding him to his left, the Baptist tried his best to sneak along unnoticed. Crouched low, he felt he was making excellent progress, muttering fervent prayers as he went. Unfortunately for him, he had forgotten to turn his Xbox Live Communicator off. Which meant that his prayers were quite audible for those on the map nearby, including the Hackers. The Baptist pulled up short suddenly, hearing a noise he found synonymous with trouble. It was the chilling clank, grind, clank, grind of Strider mechanics, and it was getting louder. Frozen to the spot, the Baptist’s eyes widened in fear as a Strider sauntered into view, planted its feet with firm stamps, and lowered the black bulk of the central body down to his height, almost as if a man would stoop down to inquisitively inspect a bug. The Baptist’s eyes fearfully strayed to the multitude of writhing, metallic tentacles hanging from the main body, then started running the way he came. The Strider bounced back up to its usual height, tentacles flailing around like whips, and howled its machine roar as it lashed out a tentacle that wrapped around the Baptist, threw him up into the air like an unwanted toy and fired a single shot from the Deletion Gun, picking him off even before he hit the peak of his flight. “See! Target practice! Like I said!” The man exclaimed. We’d both been watching the demise of the Baptist from our overlooking window. “Come on, let’s keep moving before we go out like him.” The man advised, and led me across a gantry leading from our current building to another one, with some walls only partially complete and all others were plastered with a company logo of a cheerfully smiling Hippo. I couldn’t help but notice the contrast. Not the yellow background on which the black lettering was stamped, but the happy visage of the Hippo against this final defeat of us Players. We were doomed now, and in a sudden fit of despondency I felt that we would never survive, cursed to run around in the shadows until the hackers finally honed their sharp shooting skills on us as well. “This way.” The man said, then taking me to an empty stairway lit by a single fluorescent light bulb. Stitching, erratic lines of bullet holes and plasma burns decorated the concrete walls. He span around several times, check this way and that then looked down the stairs and back the way we came before speaking. “Look, a resistance can’t operate if it ain’t got no troops. You go down them stairs and check out the lower spots and I’ll check out the rest of the building.” With that, he promptly went the way we came, but crouching as if it were some invisibility cloak. Crouching would only make you a slower moving target when the Hackers came. My mind was made up. Even if I found anyone not wearing black armour or piloting a Strider, I wasn’t going to baby-sit them or pass them on to this moron. They would do as I was going to: Slog it out on their own. I crept away to the darkest corners of the map, my familiarity with it helping greatly. I only passed from building to building by the longest routes to avoid detection, hiding, then moving on, hiding, and then moving on. I never met the man with such high ambitions again, nor did I see anyone else, though on the rarest of occasions there was a brief staccato rattle of gunfire. During this game of cat and mouse, I witnessed many interesting things that, at the time, first motivated me to document my findings. Not least of which was the repair of the fallen Strider. Some time after my departure from the idealistic man, I was taking stock of the situation from a perch overlooking the map. The Striders seemed dormant for now, with only one stomping around in a search for living Players and a few more Hackers on foot accompanying it.

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