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Pigskin Over Battle Rifles: A Merry Christmas Tale
Posted By: Severian
Date: 26 December 2008, 8:36 am
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Pigskin Over Battle Rifles: A Merry Halo Christmas Tale
It was a curious gathering. Odd, like seeing angels and demons congregating inside a burning church. Eight men in green armor mingled with eight in red, and though their faces were covered, the way they acted around each other--cautious, nervously skirting around those of different color--hinted at a history of past conflict.
Then one spoke: a man in red, with a thin voice almost inaudible in the weary quiet. "Good evening, gentlemen." He looked around, then said disappointedly, "and I suppose, good evening, non-existent ladies." His name was George.
Both sides, green and red, looked around to see if he was indeed right. It was the truth, there were no women in sight. Something about the lack of noticeable humps on their breastplates gave it away.
"Well," George continued, "as disappointing as it may be, we sixteen men are gathered here today--on the eve of Christmas eve, thus, two days before Christmas itself--we sixteen men are gathered here for one purpose, and one purpose only." Then he reached up and took off his helmet. The fifteen men around him stared as a wrinkled old face appeared, dark and lined, a hard face, a used face, one accustomed to hardship and discomfort. "We men," he said, "we are here to settle our differences." He grinned. White teeth; they looked fake. "Hopefully with far less frustration then in the past."
One of the men in green nodded. "With our fists, with our knives, with our bullets, with our hearts--we will settle for forevermore the question of our color's superiority." And his comrades all gave a hearty shout in assent.
The men in red stared at their green counterparts. George said, stunned, "but gentlemen, I thought we were here to play football."
The green contingent laughed as a group, as if George had told some hilarious joke. Hurt, George said, "but I--that is, we--are serious, gentlemen. We are indeed here to play football, because I was under the assumption that you lot felt the same way we did--that no more blood be spilled over our differences!" And he reached down into the duffelbag by his feet and--while the men in green tensed, expecting some grim surprise--pulled out a curiously shaped artifact, oblong in shape and covered in a synthetic approximation of pigskin.
There was a bit of silence. Then one of those in green, his voice muffled by his helm, shouted: "this is an insult!" And the rest of the green men gave again a hearty shout in assent. It was like a 'hoorah!' but with twice the excitement and five times the number of exclamation marks.
"But why?"
"Because I expected real football." The man in green, who has been the first to speak up from that side, took off his helm and glared. "Futbol, you pansies. Motherfucking futbol, not that pansy crap you's all having over there with a weird ball and even weirder rules. If you didn't want to have a shootout, then you all should've had the decency to bring a real ball for men with real balls."
Speechless, the men in red stood in silence. Insulted. But for George, it was worse. These guys came for a battle. He looked back, saw his comrades, knew they had come prepared for a game of football. My guys were gonna play a game. But these guys... The men in red, he realized, had brought duffel bags; the men in green had brought ammunition cases and what looked suspiciously like assault rifles stuffed into black plastic bags.
Oh, shit. He saw that the men in green were coming to similar conclusions but with different feelings. Happy ones, the one without the helm was starting to grin, his teeth all white under the dim light. I have to act fast. But what could he do? He had seven guys with copies of Matt Ryan's Guide to Laser Rocket Throwing tucked into their bags along with cups and jockstraps, while they, the men in green, had automatic weapons.
As if in slow motion, he saw one of those in green--one of those guys in the back--reach down and into one of the black bags. And before he saw it, George knew it would be a gun. He hoped it wasn't loaded. He'd have only one chance to make it good. George let the football drop from his fingers as he lunged--
--but the rifle was loaded, and the man in green had started firing before he'd even taken it out of the plastic bag. The bullets ripped through the plastic and punched into George's armor; he was slammed back into his comrades by the force of the shots. One-two-three, then four, then five, one after another in an seemingly endless succession.
There wasn't much of a resistance. It was over before George hit the ground, dead. It was over before the crows outside flew up into the sky, alarmed by the gunfire. It was over before the fat lady sang, because the fat lady, in this case, does not exist.
When it was over, eight men in red armor lay shattered on the ground. The men in green, triumphant, didn't bother cleaning up the mess. Blood, lots of it, seeping out of holes punched through hard armor, like a leaky barrel or a casket with too much fluid inside. It was over. The football that George had dropped bounced around a bit in unpredictable arcs before coming to a stop in a puddle of blood. It was almost symbolic.
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