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“The six of spades? What’s so significant about the six of spades?”
Grix was sitting at a table, Fogmaster was dressed in a fortunetellers outfit on the other side of the table holding a pack of playing cards.
“Ah, this one means that you must never give up on your ideas…”
Grix stared at the black and white card in disbelief.
“You really need to save up to buy some proper tarot cards…”
Grix stood up and joined the rest of the group. They were about to walk off when Fogmaster called to them.
“You can also see your future in my crystal ball…”
Sniper laughed.
“Now this I have to see! How much?”
“Two pounds fifty!”
“Oh… forget it then.”
Ant turned round.
“I’ll give it a go.”
He paid FM the money who took the group into a closed tent. Inside there was a table with a crystal ball. They all crowded round it.
“You must be quiet for it to work. See for your selves what will happen to Ant in a years time…”
The mist in the ball slowly cleared. Inside they could see Ant, playing on his PS2 in the bedroom…
___________________ _____________________
Ant was bored. He was playing through Metal Gear Solid 2 for the fifty third time. It had been the best game ever the first time, still brilliant the 5th time, still fun the 15th time but now it was just boring. The PS2’s releases had dried up a bit. He hadn’t bought a new game for ages and even then, it wasn’t spectacular.
Games just weren’t what they used to be. They weren’t exiting any more. Sure, people were getting exited about this new Gamecube but how long was it going to be before they realised it was no better, just a few PS2 style adult games and a host of boring kiddie games. Gaming just wasn’t fun anymore…
The phone rang. It was Ant’s friend, Dan Buckley from down the road offering if he would like to come round and try out the Gamecube. Ant accepted. The Gamecube wasn’t going to be that good, but it might be slightly entertaining for 10 minutes or so – something to do.
________________ ________________________
Inside Ant’s head a war was raging. Three colonies of Ants, Red, White and Black were fighting to become the dominant species. The white Ants had dominated for years for years but all three were dwindling in size. The Blue ants had died a few years ago, just after the black ants had come in. None of the other colonies wanted to go the same way.
The White Ant commander was receiving bad news from a messenger.
“Sir, the Metal Gear Weapon has finally run out of ammunition.”
“Damn, that was our best one!!”
“Sir, what are we going to do? All our best weapons are out of ammo and our numbers are said to be dwindling! What’s more, the red colony seems to be growing faster than ever and it’s rumoured that they have some of the best weapons around.”
“If they had some decent weapons then they’d have used them by now! The truth is, the assault we made with the MGS2 cannon left them almost dead and they’ve barely recovered! They’re hardly going to launch an offensive!!”
“I hope you’re right commander…”
_________________ _______________________
Ant rang the Buckley door bell, Darkness opened the door and let him in and took him up to the bed room. Ant saw the golden cube under the TV.
“So you went for the golden one. I’ve heard that Grix had to get a pink one because there were no others in stock. That was hilarious!!”
“He was only joking. It turned out that he didn’t have enough money to buy all the great GC games out there so he made that joke as a desperate Gameaday attempt to win some more. So, what do you want to play?”
Ant looked at the collection. Dan uk had been telling him for years how unique Smash Brothers was. Time to see what all the fuss was about.
The game loaded up instantly. This surprised Ant at first. Most PS2 games had a short loading time but never this fast.
‘Of course’ he thought ‘It’s a Nintendo kiddie game. There’s nothing much to it to load.’
As they got playing Ant smiled, it was nothing more then a 2D game. This was meant to be the almighty game cube. Just doing 16bit 2D games…
But still, the more they played, the more Ant found himself liking it. He’d never played anything like this. It was tricky and challenging yet easy to get into and… fun…
______________________ __________________
Inside Ants head, the 2 white ants dived for cover.
“WHAT WAS THAT??”
“I think that it was Smash Brothers weapon by the red ants.”
“At least it’s finally out of ammo. It’s been going for half an hour… such fire power too”
“Err, Sir… It wasn’t an attack and it’s not out of ammo… they just fired one round to test it out…”
“Don’t be so silly! Weapons that powerful don’t exist! Anyway, it’ll take more than one weapon to dominate. The red ants tried this last time remember? Did it work then? I THINK NOT!”
“But Sir, back then we had hundreds of weapons with lots of ammunition back then…”
“SHUT UP! No one can beat us! Understand?”
The messenger ant weakly nodded.
__________________ ______________________
Ant and Darkness went back into the bedroom. Ant looked at his friend.
“That’s it! Time for a rematch, I’d have had you if it hadn’t been time to dinner!”
“Nah, I want to play something different now. It’s 6 o clock in 20 minutes. That’s about enough time to train you before we go online.”
Darkness took the Smash Brothers disk out and put After Dark in.
___________________ _____________________
“What was that?”
“A different weapon Sir!”
“I know that it’s a different weapon! And I suppose that they’re just testing that one out too?”
“Yes Sir!”
The commander of the white ants laughed. The red ants had run out of ammo of one gun and moved onto another. They wouldn’t be able to keep it up. The white ants would rule supreme…
___________________ _____________________
Darkness put on his headset with the microphone.
“Hey, PB, Meka, we have an extra team member today, Ant!”
From the TV speakers Ant heard the voices of 2 of his SR friends…
“Hey Ant good to see you.”
“Welcome on board.”
Darkness used his pad to select the Swordspines game from the list of the games running on the Nintendo server. He put in the password that Grix had set and went in. The teams were quickly set. Dan uk and Grix (Team Swordspines) against Meka, Ant, Darkness, and PB. It was normally 2 on 2 but because Ant was new to the game and an easy target, his team was allowed an extra player to make up.
The game started. Because Ant and Darkness were using the same screen, they found it really easy to stick together and use some great team work. The battle went on. As PB took his PB position, Darkness and Ant went about their tactics on leading the Swordspines duo into the open to be targeted. There had been multiplayer FPS games on the PS2 but they’d never been anything like this…
___________________ _____________________
“WHAT THE HELL NOW?”
“It seems Sir, that they are firing the same weapon again but this time using more of it’s guns, not all of them but most of them.”
The white commander’s jaw dropped. Sure, he’d used multi gun weapons but they tended to be the weaker guns, and they never had as many as this before…
___________________ _____________________
Ant, Meka, PB and Darkness all stood behind the crates, holding the biggest weapons they had and holding the R button to keep the cross hair up. They were in the lead. Grix and Dan would have to come into their trap in they were to have a chance of winning and that wasn’t a chance that they were going to miss. Grix ran in, followed by Dan. The 4 opened fire on them, the powerful machine guns blasted taking down Grix. While they reloaded, Dan had found cover behind a corner but he only had double pistols, he was going to be no match for 4 assault rifles. Dan spun round the corner and fired his 2 pistols. Meka took a several bullets to the head and went down. The other 3 opened fire and PB hit Dan. Dan disappeared. He was dead surely. No one could have survived all that fire…
Dan reappeared, guns blazing and PB went down. It was just Ant and Darkness left. They had shot Dan again who was clearly low on health. Dan’s voice was heard through the TV.
“There is no way I am jumping into your trap with this health! If you want the points then you can come out you cowards!”
Darkness turned to Ant,
“Stay and cover me. If Dan pops out then shoot him.”
Darkness moved towards the corner that Dan was behind, picking up the weapons that Grix had dropped…
There was an explosion. One of the weapons there was a booby trap. Darkness’s screen went red. Ant was alone and the scores were even. Next point won. Dan spun round from the corner and fired. Each shot went into Ant’s head. Ant moved the analogue stick and pulled the trigger, his energy draining away. A shot from Ant’s assault rifle hit Dan in the head. Dan went down. Ant had won the game.
Using the microphone headsets, the 6 of the players talked about the game.
“Nice going there Ant.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let us down”
“That was close”
“You were, lucky this time Ant! I’ll get you next time!”
Then came Grix’s voice.
“It’s a pity you don’t have a Gamecube, you could join our clan…”
It went silent…
___________________ _____________________
Later that day, Ant picked up the phone. This deathmatching was fun and worth doing, even if his PS2 was better than the Gamecube…
“Hello, SR? Can I order a Gamecube with Smash Brothers and After Dark?”
“Ok, and you are…”
“Ant.”
“OH! I’ll put you through to Tony…”
“NO! I don’t want him to kno…”
“Hi Ant!”
“Hey Tony.”
“Are you actually ordering a Gamecube?”
“It’s only for 2 games.”
“Lol, that’s what Bonus said. And Wookie, and SSX pro and Turbonutter too…”
“They’ve all ordered a Gamecube too?”
“Yeah. Even Goatboy. He actually bought the Star Fox games believe it or not. They refused to admit that it’s better than the PS2”
“It’s not! I’m only buying it while I wait for the next decent PS2 game to be released”
“Really? You wouldn’t believe how many people have said that…”
___________________ _____________________
Ant put down the phone. Of course the PS2 was better. Ant was only buying the Cube for one or 2 games. The rest wasn’t even worth playing so he wasn’t even going to try them, let alone buy them. Little did he know that a secret weapon was inside the Gamecube package, one that had never appeared on the Nintendo system before – A demo disk!! One giving tastes of several must have games…
___________________ _____________________
The white ants looked at the big box. It was just like the boxes that their weapons came in, only bigger. It was right next to the colonies place, next to the TV.
“You see! What did I tell you about us getting a big new weapon!”
“I think that it’s a Trojan Horse sir.”
“You think that it’s full of red ants with fully operational versions of those weapons they tested against us?”
The messenger ant nodded The commander laughed.
“You’ll see. When we open this box, a certain colony of ants won’t know what hit them…”
___________________ _____________________
The crystal ball became misty again. Sniper looked perplexed.
“Where was I?”
Fogmaster grinned
“Well that’s fairly obvious isn’t it. I a grave.”
The group went silent, shocked but not surprised.
Ant suddenly broke out in laughter.
“This is what you get from a fortune teller who uses playing cards to tell the future!”
The rest of the group also laughed and left the tent. Only one stayed. Grix waited until the rest of them had gone.
“Team Swordspines? I thought I fired Dan uk ages ago.”
“You did, but one day you will rehire him again, you’ll see”
Fogmaster winked and disappeared.
Grix frowned and left the tent. He looked at the tent again. The crystal ball of FOG. He checked the program of the fair. There was no FOG tent in it, no fortune teller at all infact…
Grix looked from the program back to the tent. It had disappeared…
Grix was sitting at a table, Fogmaster was dressed in a fortunetellers outfit on the other side of the table holding a pack of playing cards.
“Ah, this one means that you must never give up on your ideas…”
Grix stared at the black and white card in disbelief.
“You really need to save up to buy some proper tarot cards…”
Grix stood up and joined the rest of the group. They were about to walk off when Fogmaster called to them.
“You can also see your future in my crystal ball…”
Sniper laughed.
“Now this I have to see! How much?”
“Two pounds fifty!”
“Oh… forget it then.”
Ant turned round.
“I’ll give it a go.”
He paid FM the money who took the group into a closed tent. Inside there was a table with a crystal ball. They all crowded round it.
“You must be quiet for it to work. See for your selves what will happen to Ant in a years time…”
The mist in the ball slowly cleared. Inside they could see Ant, playing on his PS2 in the bedroom…
___________________ _____________________
Ant was bored. He was playing through Metal Gear Solid 2 for the fifty third time. It had been the best game ever the first time, still brilliant the 5th time, still fun the 15th time but now it was just boring. The PS2’s releases had dried up a bit. He hadn’t bought a new game for ages and even then, it wasn’t spectacular.
Games just weren’t what they used to be. They weren’t exiting any more. Sure, people were getting exited about this new Gamecube but how long was it going to be before they realised it was no better, just a few PS2 style adult games and a host of boring kiddie games. Gaming just wasn’t fun anymore…
The phone rang. It was Ant’s friend, Dan Buckley from down the road offering if he would like to come round and try out the Gamecube. Ant accepted. The Gamecube wasn’t going to be that good, but it might be slightly entertaining for 10 minutes or so – something to do.
________________ ________________________
Inside Ant’s head a war was raging. Three colonies of Ants, Red, White and Black were fighting to become the dominant species. The white Ants had dominated for years for years but all three were dwindling in size. The Blue ants had died a few years ago, just after the black ants had come in. None of the other colonies wanted to go the same way.
The White Ant commander was receiving bad news from a messenger.
“Sir, the Metal Gear Weapon has finally run out of ammunition.”
“Damn, that was our best one!!”
“Sir, what are we going to do? All our best weapons are out of ammo and our numbers are said to be dwindling! What’s more, the red colony seems to be growing faster than ever and it’s rumoured that they have some of the best weapons around.”
“If they had some decent weapons then they’d have used them by now! The truth is, the assault we made with the MGS2 cannon left them almost dead and they’ve barely recovered! They’re hardly going to launch an offensive!!”
“I hope you’re right commander…”
_________________ _______________________
Ant rang the Buckley door bell, Darkness opened the door and let him in and took him up to the bed room. Ant saw the golden cube under the TV.
“So you went for the golden one. I’ve heard that Grix had to get a pink one because there were no others in stock. That was hilarious!!”
“He was only joking. It turned out that he didn’t have enough money to buy all the great GC games out there so he made that joke as a desperate Gameaday attempt to win some more. So, what do you want to play?”
Ant looked at the collection. Dan uk had been telling him for years how unique Smash Brothers was. Time to see what all the fuss was about.
The game loaded up instantly. This surprised Ant at first. Most PS2 games had a short loading time but never this fast.
‘Of course’ he thought ‘It’s a Nintendo kiddie game. There’s nothing much to it to load.’
As they got playing Ant smiled, it was nothing more then a 2D game. This was meant to be the almighty game cube. Just doing 16bit 2D games…
But still, the more they played, the more Ant found himself liking it. He’d never played anything like this. It was tricky and challenging yet easy to get into and… fun…
______________________ __________________
Inside Ants head, the 2 white ants dived for cover.
“WHAT WAS THAT??”
“I think that it was Smash Brothers weapon by the red ants.”
“At least it’s finally out of ammo. It’s been going for half an hour… such fire power too”
“Err, Sir… It wasn’t an attack and it’s not out of ammo… they just fired one round to test it out…”
“Don’t be so silly! Weapons that powerful don’t exist! Anyway, it’ll take more than one weapon to dominate. The red ants tried this last time remember? Did it work then? I THINK NOT!”
“But Sir, back then we had hundreds of weapons with lots of ammunition back then…”
“SHUT UP! No one can beat us! Understand?”
The messenger ant weakly nodded.
__________________ ______________________
Ant and Darkness went back into the bedroom. Ant looked at his friend.
“That’s it! Time for a rematch, I’d have had you if it hadn’t been time to dinner!”
“Nah, I want to play something different now. It’s 6 o clock in 20 minutes. That’s about enough time to train you before we go online.”
Darkness took the Smash Brothers disk out and put After Dark in.
___________________ _____________________
“What was that?”
“A different weapon Sir!”
“I know that it’s a different weapon! And I suppose that they’re just testing that one out too?”
“Yes Sir!”
The commander of the white ants laughed. The red ants had run out of ammo of one gun and moved onto another. They wouldn’t be able to keep it up. The white ants would rule supreme…
___________________ _____________________
Darkness put on his headset with the microphone.
“Hey, PB, Meka, we have an extra team member today, Ant!”
From the TV speakers Ant heard the voices of 2 of his SR friends…
“Hey Ant good to see you.”
“Welcome on board.”
Darkness used his pad to select the Swordspines game from the list of the games running on the Nintendo server. He put in the password that Grix had set and went in. The teams were quickly set. Dan uk and Grix (Team Swordspines) against Meka, Ant, Darkness, and PB. It was normally 2 on 2 but because Ant was new to the game and an easy target, his team was allowed an extra player to make up.
The game started. Because Ant and Darkness were using the same screen, they found it really easy to stick together and use some great team work. The battle went on. As PB took his PB position, Darkness and Ant went about their tactics on leading the Swordspines duo into the open to be targeted. There had been multiplayer FPS games on the PS2 but they’d never been anything like this…
___________________ _____________________
“WHAT THE HELL NOW?”
“It seems Sir, that they are firing the same weapon again but this time using more of it’s guns, not all of them but most of them.”
The white commander’s jaw dropped. Sure, he’d used multi gun weapons but they tended to be the weaker guns, and they never had as many as this before…
___________________ _____________________
Ant, Meka, PB and Darkness all stood behind the crates, holding the biggest weapons they had and holding the R button to keep the cross hair up. They were in the lead. Grix and Dan would have to come into their trap in they were to have a chance of winning and that wasn’t a chance that they were going to miss. Grix ran in, followed by Dan. The 4 opened fire on them, the powerful machine guns blasted taking down Grix. While they reloaded, Dan had found cover behind a corner but he only had double pistols, he was going to be no match for 4 assault rifles. Dan spun round the corner and fired his 2 pistols. Meka took a several bullets to the head and went down. The other 3 opened fire and PB hit Dan. Dan disappeared. He was dead surely. No one could have survived all that fire…
Dan reappeared, guns blazing and PB went down. It was just Ant and Darkness left. They had shot Dan again who was clearly low on health. Dan’s voice was heard through the TV.
“There is no way I am jumping into your trap with this health! If you want the points then you can come out you cowards!”
Darkness turned to Ant,
“Stay and cover me. If Dan pops out then shoot him.”
Darkness moved towards the corner that Dan was behind, picking up the weapons that Grix had dropped…
There was an explosion. One of the weapons there was a booby trap. Darkness’s screen went red. Ant was alone and the scores were even. Next point won. Dan spun round from the corner and fired. Each shot went into Ant’s head. Ant moved the analogue stick and pulled the trigger, his energy draining away. A shot from Ant’s assault rifle hit Dan in the head. Dan went down. Ant had won the game.
Using the microphone headsets, the 6 of the players talked about the game.
“Nice going there Ant.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let us down”
“That was close”
“You were, lucky this time Ant! I’ll get you next time!”
Then came Grix’s voice.
“It’s a pity you don’t have a Gamecube, you could join our clan…”
It went silent…
___________________ _____________________
Later that day, Ant picked up the phone. This deathmatching was fun and worth doing, even if his PS2 was better than the Gamecube…
“Hello, SR? Can I order a Gamecube with Smash Brothers and After Dark?”
“Ok, and you are…”
“Ant.”
“OH! I’ll put you through to Tony…”
“NO! I don’t want him to kno…”
“Hi Ant!”
“Hey Tony.”
“Are you actually ordering a Gamecube?”
“It’s only for 2 games.”
“Lol, that’s what Bonus said. And Wookie, and SSX pro and Turbonutter too…”
“They’ve all ordered a Gamecube too?”
“Yeah. Even Goatboy. He actually bought the Star Fox games believe it or not. They refused to admit that it’s better than the PS2”
“It’s not! I’m only buying it while I wait for the next decent PS2 game to be released”
“Really? You wouldn’t believe how many people have said that…”
___________________ _____________________
Ant put down the phone. Of course the PS2 was better. Ant was only buying the Cube for one or 2 games. The rest wasn’t even worth playing so he wasn’t even going to try them, let alone buy them. Little did he know that a secret weapon was inside the Gamecube package, one that had never appeared on the Nintendo system before – A demo disk!! One giving tastes of several must have games…
___________________ _____________________
The white ants looked at the big box. It was just like the boxes that their weapons came in, only bigger. It was right next to the colonies place, next to the TV.
“You see! What did I tell you about us getting a big new weapon!”
“I think that it’s a Trojan Horse sir.”
“You think that it’s full of red ants with fully operational versions of those weapons they tested against us?”
The messenger ant nodded The commander laughed.
“You’ll see. When we open this box, a certain colony of ants won’t know what hit them…”
___________________ _____________________
The crystal ball became misty again. Sniper looked perplexed.
“Where was I?”
Fogmaster grinned
“Well that’s fairly obvious isn’t it. I a grave.”
The group went silent, shocked but not surprised.
Ant suddenly broke out in laughter.
“This is what you get from a fortune teller who uses playing cards to tell the future!”
The rest of the group also laughed and left the tent. Only one stayed. Grix waited until the rest of them had gone.
“Team Swordspines? I thought I fired Dan uk ages ago.”
“You did, but one day you will rehire him again, you’ll see”
Fogmaster winked and disappeared.
Grix frowned and left the tent. He looked at the tent again. The crystal ball of FOG. He checked the program of the fair. There was no FOG tent in it, no fortune teller at all infact…
Grix looked from the program back to the tent. It had disappeared…
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Swordspines
Dan... you really can't take a hint, can you?
Find
Swordspines
Dan... you really can't take a hint, can you?
Some of you might think that this isn't as funny as my other stories.
That's because the funniest bit is about to come:
Ant's response to it!! :-D
Lol!
That's because the funniest bit is about to come:
Ant's response to it!! :-D
Lol!
“The six of spades? What’s so significant about the six of spades?”
Grix was sitting at a table, Fogmaster was dressed in a fortunetellers outfit on the other side of the table holding a pack of playing cards.
“Ah, this one means that you must never give up on your ideas…”
Grix stared at the black and white card in disbelief.
“You really need to save up to buy some proper tarot cards…”
Grix stood up and joined the rest of the group. They were about to walk off when Fogmaster called to them.
“You can also see your future in my crystal ball…”
Sniper laughed.
“Now this I have to see! How much?”
“Two pounds fifty!”
“Oh… forget it then.”
Ant turned round.
“I’ll give it a go.”
He paid FM the money who took the group into a closed tent. Inside there was a table with a crystal ball. They all crowded round it.
“You must be quiet for it to work. See for your selves what will happen to Ant in a years time…”
The mist in the ball slowly cleared. Inside they could see Ant, playing on his PS2 in the bedroom…
___________________ _____________________
Ant was bored. He was playing through Metal Gear Solid 2 for the fifty third time. It had been the best game ever the first time, still brilliant the 5th time, still fun the 15th time but now it was just boring. The PS2’s releases had dried up a bit. He hadn’t bought a new game for ages and even then, it wasn’t spectacular.
Games just weren’t what they used to be. They weren’t exiting any more. Sure, people were getting exited about this new Gamecube but how long was it going to be before they realised it was no better, just a few PS2 style adult games and a host of boring kiddie games. Gaming just wasn’t fun anymore…
The phone rang. It was Ant’s friend, Dan Buckley from down the road offering if he would like to come round and try out the Gamecube. Ant accepted. The Gamecube wasn’t going to be that good, but it might be slightly entertaining for 10 minutes or so – something to do.
________________ ________________________
Inside Ant’s head a war was raging. Three colonies of Ants, Red, White and Black were fighting to become the dominant species. The white Ants had dominated for years for years but all three were dwindling in size. The Blue ants had died a few years ago, just after the black ants had come in. None of the other colonies wanted to go the same way.
The White Ant commander was receiving bad news from a messenger.
“Sir, the Metal Gear Weapon has finally run out of ammunition.”
“Damn, that was our best one!!”
“Sir, what are we going to do? All our best weapons are out of ammo and our numbers are said to be dwindling! What’s more, the red colony seems to be growing faster than ever and it’s rumoured that they have some of the best weapons around.”
“If they had some decent weapons then they’d have used them by now! The truth is, the assault we made with the MGS2 cannon left them almost dead and they’ve barely recovered! They’re hardly going to launch an offensive!!”
“I hope you’re right commander…”
_________________ _______________________
Ant rang the Buckley door bell, Darkness opened the door and let him in and took him up to the bed room. Ant saw the golden cube under the TV.
“So you went for the golden one. I’ve heard that Grix had to get a pink one because there were no others in stock. That was hilarious!!”
“He was only joking. It turned out that he didn’t have enough money to buy all the great GC games out there so he made that joke as a desperate Gameaday attempt to win some more. So, what do you want to play?”
Ant looked at the collection. Dan uk had been telling him for years how unique Smash Brothers was. Time to see what all the fuss was about.
The game loaded up instantly. This surprised Ant at first. Most PS2 games had a short loading time but never this fast.
‘Of course’ he thought ‘It’s a Nintendo kiddie game. There’s nothing much to it to load.’
As they got playing Ant smiled, it was nothing more then a 2D game. This was meant to be the almighty game cube. Just doing 16bit 2D games…
But still, the more they played, the more Ant found himself liking it. He’d never played anything like this. It was tricky and challenging yet easy to get into and… fun…
______________________ __________________
Inside Ants head, the 2 white ants dived for cover.
“WHAT WAS THAT??”
“I think that it was Smash Brothers weapon by the red ants.”
“At least it’s finally out of ammo. It’s been going for half an hour… such fire power too”
“Err, Sir… It wasn’t an attack and it’s not out of ammo… they just fired one round to test it out…”
“Don’t be so silly! Weapons that powerful don’t exist! Anyway, it’ll take more than one weapon to dominate. The red ants tried this last time remember? Did it work then? I THINK NOT!”
“But Sir, back then we had hundreds of weapons with lots of ammunition back then…”
“SHUT UP! No one can beat us! Understand?”
The messenger ant weakly nodded.
__________________ ______________________
Ant and Darkness went back into the bedroom. Ant looked at his friend.
“That’s it! Time for a rematch, I’d have had you if it hadn’t been time to dinner!”
“Nah, I want to play something different now. It’s 6 o clock in 20 minutes. That’s about enough time to train you before we go online.”
Darkness took the Smash Brothers disk out and put After Dark in.
___________________ _____________________
“What was that?”
“A different weapon Sir!”
“I know that it’s a different weapon! And I suppose that they’re just testing that one out too?”
“Yes Sir!”
The commander of the white ants laughed. The red ants had run out of ammo of one gun and moved onto another. They wouldn’t be able to keep it up. The white ants would rule supreme…
___________________ _____________________
Darkness put on his headset with the microphone.
“Hey, PB, Meka, we have an extra team member today, Ant!”
From the TV speakers Ant heard the voices of 2 of his SR friends…
“Hey Ant good to see you.”
“Welcome on board.”
Darkness used his pad to select the Swordspines game from the list of the games running on the Nintendo server. He put in the password that Grix had set and went in. The teams were quickly set. Dan uk and Grix (Team Swordspines) against Meka, Ant, Darkness, and PB. It was normally 2 on 2 but because Ant was new to the game and an easy target, his team was allowed an extra player to make up.
The game started. Because Ant and Darkness were using the same screen, they found it really easy to stick together and use some great team work. The battle went on. As PB took his PB position, Darkness and Ant went about their tactics on leading the Swordspines duo into the open to be targeted. There had been multiplayer FPS games on the PS2 but they’d never been anything like this…
___________________ _____________________
“WHAT THE HELL NOW?”
“It seems Sir, that they are firing the same weapon again but this time using more of it’s guns, not all of them but most of them.”
The white commander’s jaw dropped. Sure, he’d used multi gun weapons but they tended to be the weaker guns, and they never had as many as this before…
___________________ _____________________
Ant, Meka, PB and Darkness all stood behind the crates, holding the biggest weapons they had and holding the R button to keep the cross hair up. They were in the lead. Grix and Dan would have to come into their trap in they were to have a chance of winning and that wasn’t a chance that they were going to miss. Grix ran in, followed by Dan. The 4 opened fire on them, the powerful machine guns blasted taking down Grix. While they reloaded, Dan had found cover behind a corner but he only had double pistols, he was going to be no match for 4 assault rifles. Dan spun round the corner and fired his 2 pistols. Meka took a several bullets to the head and went down. The other 3 opened fire and PB hit Dan. Dan disappeared. He was dead surely. No one could have survived all that fire…
Dan reappeared, guns blazing and PB went down. It was just Ant and Darkness left. They had shot Dan again who was clearly low on health. Dan’s voice was heard through the TV.
“There is no way I am jumping into your trap with this health! If you want the points then you can come out you cowards!”
Darkness turned to Ant,
“Stay and cover me. If Dan pops out then shoot him.”
Darkness moved towards the corner that Dan was behind, picking up the weapons that Grix had dropped…
There was an explosion. One of the weapons there was a booby trap. Darkness’s screen went red. Ant was alone and the scores were even. Next point won. Dan spun round from the corner and fired. Each shot went into Ant’s head. Ant moved the analogue stick and pulled the trigger, his energy draining away. A shot from Ant’s assault rifle hit Dan in the head. Dan went down. Ant had won the game.
Using the microphone headsets, the 6 of the players talked about the game.
“Nice going there Ant.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let us down”
“That was close”
“You were, lucky this time Ant! I’ll get you next time!”
Then came Grix’s voice.
“It’s a pity you don’t have a Gamecube, you could join our clan…”
It went silent…
___________________ _____________________
Later that day, Ant picked up the phone. This deathmatching was fun and worth doing, even if his PS2 was better than the Gamecube…
“Hello, SR? Can I order a Gamecube with Smash Brothers and After Dark?”
“Ok, and you are…”
“Ant.”
“OH! I’ll put you through to Tony…”
“NO! I don’t want him to kno…”
“Hi Ant!”
“Hey Tony.”
“Are you actually ordering a Gamecube?”
“It’s only for 2 games.”
“Lol, that’s what Bonus said. And Wookie, and SSX pro and Turbonutter too…”
“They’ve all ordered a Gamecube too?”
“Yeah. Even Goatboy. He actually bought the Star Fox games believe it or not. They refused to admit that it’s better than the PS2”
“It’s not! I’m only buying it while I wait for the next decent PS2 game to be released”
“Really? You wouldn’t believe how many people have said that…”
___________________ _____________________
Ant put down the phone. Of course the PS2 was better. Ant was only buying the Cube for one or 2 games. The rest wasn’t even worth playing so he wasn’t even going to try them, let alone buy them. Little did he know that a secret weapon was inside the Gamecube package, one that had never appeared on the Nintendo system before – A demo disk!! One giving tastes of several must have games…
___________________ _____________________
The white ants looked at the big box. It was just like the boxes that their weapons came in, only bigger. It was right next to the colonies place, next to the TV.
“You see! What did I tell you about us getting a big new weapon!”
“I think that it’s a Trojan Horse sir.”
“You think that it’s full of red ants with fully operational versions of those weapons they tested against us?”
The messenger ant nodded The commander laughed.
“You’ll see. When we open this box, a certain colony of ants won’t know what hit them…”
___________________ _____________________
The crystal ball became misty again. Sniper looked perplexed.
“Where was I?”
Fogmaster grinned
“Well that’s fairly obvious isn’t it. I a grave.”
The group went silent, shocked but not surprised.
Ant suddenly broke out in laughter.
“This is what you get from a fortune teller who uses playing cards to tell the future!”
The rest of the group also laughed and left the tent. Only one stayed. Grix waited until the rest of them had gone.
“Team Swordspines? I thought I fired Dan uk ages ago.”
“You did, but one day you will rehire him again, you’ll see”
Fogmaster winked and disappeared.
Grix frowned and left the tent. He looked at the tent again. The crystal ball of FOG. He checked the program of the fair. There was no FOG tent in it, no fortune teller at all infact…
Grix looked from the program back to the tent. It had disappeared…
Grix was sitting at a table, Fogmaster was dressed in a fortunetellers outfit on the other side of the table holding a pack of playing cards.
“Ah, this one means that you must never give up on your ideas…”
Grix stared at the black and white card in disbelief.
“You really need to save up to buy some proper tarot cards…”
Grix stood up and joined the rest of the group. They were about to walk off when Fogmaster called to them.
“You can also see your future in my crystal ball…”
Sniper laughed.
“Now this I have to see! How much?”
“Two pounds fifty!”
“Oh… forget it then.”
Ant turned round.
“I’ll give it a go.”
He paid FM the money who took the group into a closed tent. Inside there was a table with a crystal ball. They all crowded round it.
“You must be quiet for it to work. See for your selves what will happen to Ant in a years time…”
The mist in the ball slowly cleared. Inside they could see Ant, playing on his PS2 in the bedroom…
___________________ _____________________
Ant was bored. He was playing through Metal Gear Solid 2 for the fifty third time. It had been the best game ever the first time, still brilliant the 5th time, still fun the 15th time but now it was just boring. The PS2’s releases had dried up a bit. He hadn’t bought a new game for ages and even then, it wasn’t spectacular.
Games just weren’t what they used to be. They weren’t exiting any more. Sure, people were getting exited about this new Gamecube but how long was it going to be before they realised it was no better, just a few PS2 style adult games and a host of boring kiddie games. Gaming just wasn’t fun anymore…
The phone rang. It was Ant’s friend, Dan Buckley from down the road offering if he would like to come round and try out the Gamecube. Ant accepted. The Gamecube wasn’t going to be that good, but it might be slightly entertaining for 10 minutes or so – something to do.
________________ ________________________
Inside Ant’s head a war was raging. Three colonies of Ants, Red, White and Black were fighting to become the dominant species. The white Ants had dominated for years for years but all three were dwindling in size. The Blue ants had died a few years ago, just after the black ants had come in. None of the other colonies wanted to go the same way.
The White Ant commander was receiving bad news from a messenger.
“Sir, the Metal Gear Weapon has finally run out of ammunition.”
“Damn, that was our best one!!”
“Sir, what are we going to do? All our best weapons are out of ammo and our numbers are said to be dwindling! What’s more, the red colony seems to be growing faster than ever and it’s rumoured that they have some of the best weapons around.”
“If they had some decent weapons then they’d have used them by now! The truth is, the assault we made with the MGS2 cannon left them almost dead and they’ve barely recovered! They’re hardly going to launch an offensive!!”
“I hope you’re right commander…”
_________________ _______________________
Ant rang the Buckley door bell, Darkness opened the door and let him in and took him up to the bed room. Ant saw the golden cube under the TV.
“So you went for the golden one. I’ve heard that Grix had to get a pink one because there were no others in stock. That was hilarious!!”
“He was only joking. It turned out that he didn’t have enough money to buy all the great GC games out there so he made that joke as a desperate Gameaday attempt to win some more. So, what do you want to play?”
Ant looked at the collection. Dan uk had been telling him for years how unique Smash Brothers was. Time to see what all the fuss was about.
The game loaded up instantly. This surprised Ant at first. Most PS2 games had a short loading time but never this fast.
‘Of course’ he thought ‘It’s a Nintendo kiddie game. There’s nothing much to it to load.’
As they got playing Ant smiled, it was nothing more then a 2D game. This was meant to be the almighty game cube. Just doing 16bit 2D games…
But still, the more they played, the more Ant found himself liking it. He’d never played anything like this. It was tricky and challenging yet easy to get into and… fun…
______________________ __________________
Inside Ants head, the 2 white ants dived for cover.
“WHAT WAS THAT??”
“I think that it was Smash Brothers weapon by the red ants.”
“At least it’s finally out of ammo. It’s been going for half an hour… such fire power too”
“Err, Sir… It wasn’t an attack and it’s not out of ammo… they just fired one round to test it out…”
“Don’t be so silly! Weapons that powerful don’t exist! Anyway, it’ll take more than one weapon to dominate. The red ants tried this last time remember? Did it work then? I THINK NOT!”
“But Sir, back then we had hundreds of weapons with lots of ammunition back then…”
“SHUT UP! No one can beat us! Understand?”
The messenger ant weakly nodded.
__________________ ______________________
Ant and Darkness went back into the bedroom. Ant looked at his friend.
“That’s it! Time for a rematch, I’d have had you if it hadn’t been time to dinner!”
“Nah, I want to play something different now. It’s 6 o clock in 20 minutes. That’s about enough time to train you before we go online.”
Darkness took the Smash Brothers disk out and put After Dark in.
___________________ _____________________
“What was that?”
“A different weapon Sir!”
“I know that it’s a different weapon! And I suppose that they’re just testing that one out too?”
“Yes Sir!”
The commander of the white ants laughed. The red ants had run out of ammo of one gun and moved onto another. They wouldn’t be able to keep it up. The white ants would rule supreme…
___________________ _____________________
Darkness put on his headset with the microphone.
“Hey, PB, Meka, we have an extra team member today, Ant!”
From the TV speakers Ant heard the voices of 2 of his SR friends…
“Hey Ant good to see you.”
“Welcome on board.”
Darkness used his pad to select the Swordspines game from the list of the games running on the Nintendo server. He put in the password that Grix had set and went in. The teams were quickly set. Dan uk and Grix (Team Swordspines) against Meka, Ant, Darkness, and PB. It was normally 2 on 2 but because Ant was new to the game and an easy target, his team was allowed an extra player to make up.
The game started. Because Ant and Darkness were using the same screen, they found it really easy to stick together and use some great team work. The battle went on. As PB took his PB position, Darkness and Ant went about their tactics on leading the Swordspines duo into the open to be targeted. There had been multiplayer FPS games on the PS2 but they’d never been anything like this…
___________________ _____________________
“WHAT THE HELL NOW?”
“It seems Sir, that they are firing the same weapon again but this time using more of it’s guns, not all of them but most of them.”
The white commander’s jaw dropped. Sure, he’d used multi gun weapons but they tended to be the weaker guns, and they never had as many as this before…
___________________ _____________________
Ant, Meka, PB and Darkness all stood behind the crates, holding the biggest weapons they had and holding the R button to keep the cross hair up. They were in the lead. Grix and Dan would have to come into their trap in they were to have a chance of winning and that wasn’t a chance that they were going to miss. Grix ran in, followed by Dan. The 4 opened fire on them, the powerful machine guns blasted taking down Grix. While they reloaded, Dan had found cover behind a corner but he only had double pistols, he was going to be no match for 4 assault rifles. Dan spun round the corner and fired his 2 pistols. Meka took a several bullets to the head and went down. The other 3 opened fire and PB hit Dan. Dan disappeared. He was dead surely. No one could have survived all that fire…
Dan reappeared, guns blazing and PB went down. It was just Ant and Darkness left. They had shot Dan again who was clearly low on health. Dan’s voice was heard through the TV.
“There is no way I am jumping into your trap with this health! If you want the points then you can come out you cowards!”
Darkness turned to Ant,
“Stay and cover me. If Dan pops out then shoot him.”
Darkness moved towards the corner that Dan was behind, picking up the weapons that Grix had dropped…
There was an explosion. One of the weapons there was a booby trap. Darkness’s screen went red. Ant was alone and the scores were even. Next point won. Dan spun round from the corner and fired. Each shot went into Ant’s head. Ant moved the analogue stick and pulled the trigger, his energy draining away. A shot from Ant’s assault rifle hit Dan in the head. Dan went down. Ant had won the game.
Using the microphone headsets, the 6 of the players talked about the game.
“Nice going there Ant.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let us down”
“That was close”
“You were, lucky this time Ant! I’ll get you next time!”
Then came Grix’s voice.
“It’s a pity you don’t have a Gamecube, you could join our clan…”
It went silent…
___________________ _____________________
Later that day, Ant picked up the phone. This deathmatching was fun and worth doing, even if his PS2 was better than the Gamecube…
“Hello, SR? Can I order a Gamecube with Smash Brothers and After Dark?”
“Ok, and you are…”
“Ant.”
“OH! I’ll put you through to Tony…”
“NO! I don’t want him to kno…”
“Hi Ant!”
“Hey Tony.”
“Are you actually ordering a Gamecube?”
“It’s only for 2 games.”
“Lol, that’s what Bonus said. And Wookie, and SSX pro and Turbonutter too…”
“They’ve all ordered a Gamecube too?”
“Yeah. Even Goatboy. He actually bought the Star Fox games believe it or not. They refused to admit that it’s better than the PS2”
“It’s not! I’m only buying it while I wait for the next decent PS2 game to be released”
“Really? You wouldn’t believe how many people have said that…”
___________________ _____________________
Ant put down the phone. Of course the PS2 was better. Ant was only buying the Cube for one or 2 games. The rest wasn’t even worth playing so he wasn’t even going to try them, let alone buy them. Little did he know that a secret weapon was inside the Gamecube package, one that had never appeared on the Nintendo system before – A demo disk!! One giving tastes of several must have games…
___________________ _____________________
The white ants looked at the big box. It was just like the boxes that their weapons came in, only bigger. It was right next to the colonies place, next to the TV.
“You see! What did I tell you about us getting a big new weapon!”
“I think that it’s a Trojan Horse sir.”
“You think that it’s full of red ants with fully operational versions of those weapons they tested against us?”
The messenger ant nodded The commander laughed.
“You’ll see. When we open this box, a certain colony of ants won’t know what hit them…”
___________________ _____________________
The crystal ball became misty again. Sniper looked perplexed.
“Where was I?”
Fogmaster grinned
“Well that’s fairly obvious isn’t it. I a grave.”
The group went silent, shocked but not surprised.
Ant suddenly broke out in laughter.
“This is what you get from a fortune teller who uses playing cards to tell the future!”
The rest of the group also laughed and left the tent. Only one stayed. Grix waited until the rest of them had gone.
“Team Swordspines? I thought I fired Dan uk ages ago.”
“You did, but one day you will rehire him again, you’ll see”
Fogmaster winked and disappeared.
Grix frowned and left the tent. He looked at the tent again. The crystal ball of FOG. He checked the program of the fair. There was no FOG tent in it, no fortune teller at all infact…
Grix looked from the program back to the tent. It had disappeared…
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