Confessions of a Teenage NAB Enthusiast

Writing Stories

Rajada sighed a little as he stared at the blank page. Three-thirty. Half an hour and still nothing. "Why am I doing this?" he thought. "Why do I need to write a story? Chris comes back and suddenly you've got to write?" There were already so many stories; Rajada hadn?t even read half of them. He didn't have the patience for a serious plot line. Rajada clicked his pen and began writing.

<poem> Moose Rider

Caribou finds himsel- </poem>

"No that's a terrible idea," he said out loud.

<poem> Nerf Wars: Return of the Twisters

A long, long time a- </poem>

Suddenly a man with a grey beard walked through the door. "Nope, try again," said the man, scratching out Rajada's most recent idea. "Here, have an autograph, and come up with a better idea" he said, scribbling down a signature. Rajada lifted up the paper. "Uh, thanks, Mr. George who?" but the man was already gone. "Uh huh," said Rajada, turning back to his pad of paper. "I really ought to lock that door. Okay, better idea, better idea. There are already so many stories with forum members as characters. It's practically impossible to keep them all straight," said Rajada, mumbling to himself. He grabbed his pen again.

"Okay, a ruthless band of 100,000 Tribe team members attack a standing army of 306 Tycoons. I'll call it: '306'." Rajada stared at his writing. "Nah, that'll never sell."

Meanwhile, Chris was spying on Rajada, taking all of his ideas down. "This is pure gold!" whispered Chris to himself. Rajada looked back at the scratched out heap on his paper. "Things like 'Yam, King of Potatos' are popular. I wonder if I could use- no, puns are lazy writing." Rajada adjusted his chair. "Hmmmm... how about a story where I take a site administrator and make him some sort of crime-fighting, loose cannon cop?" he asked himself aloud. "It's been done," said Chris, hanging from a suspension wire just above Rajada's head. "Oops." Rajada whipped his head up and stared in disbelief. Chris just smiled back nervously.

"Well, now that that's taken care of," said Rajada washing the deep red stains from his hands, "I can finally get back to my story." "Hey, thanks for the cherries!" said Chris, dragging his harness cable behind him. "Well, I have so many," said Rajada as Chris walked out the door, "it would be a shame to let them go to waste." As the front door closed, Rajada's smile broke. "Lazy hack" he muttered under his breath. "Where was I?" Rajada looked at his mutilated page. "Oh yeah. Okay. No biggy. Hmmmm?" Rajada began writing again.

<poem> It was the best of ti-

It was a dark and stormy night in Skyscraper-

Call me G-MO. </poem>

He scribbled out his sentences. "Chris makes this look so easy! I bet he'll have written four of my stolen stories by the time I get one good idea!" Rajada clicked his pen rapidly. "Wait, that's it!" Rajada ran to his computer and began typing furiously. "Yes! Almost... done!" Rajada was about to submit his story when a message appeared in the chat box; it was Chris. "Hey guys, I just finished chapter 4 of my new soap opera: As the Balzooka Turns." "Son of a-! All right, I only need an entirely new idea." Rajada grabbed his pad again and started making notes under his Chris hangman doodle.

<poem> Yaaamaaahaaa, Vampire Slayer

Invasion from Tech Comb

Chronicles of Nerf Neighborhood Evening </poem>

"Ehhhhh, I just can't come up with a good idea." Rajada tossed his pen aside. "Wait, I've got it! A story about how I can't write a story!" Rajada thought about it for a moment.

"Nah, that's a stupid idea. I'm not that desperate."

Playing NAB Online G-MO grabbed the Hyperstrike off the podium. "Finally!" said Grant, picking off upwards of 16 n00bs per second. That?s when Rajada?s trap was sprung. A large chunk of the ceiling began falling right above G-MO. ?Ahhhhh!? cried Grant. He tried to type ?Ahhhhh!? in the chat field and then escape, but it was too late. G-MO was crushed and Rajada picked up the discarded points. Craig glanced at the rankings. ?Darn.? G-MO was still ahead by a slight margin and there was only a few minutes left in the

game. ?I am not losing to him again!? he exclaimed. Craig never had much trouble with bots at this skill level, but G-MO and other veteran players always seemed to have a way of taking away Rajada?s victory at the last moment. After a frustrating failure at writing a Nerf based fiction story, Rajada wasn?t going to let this slip from his grasp. A minute and thirty two seconds remained in this particular run of PM-Rajada?sRiggedMap. Rajada maneuvered to his Grenade Sprayer and picked it up. There was G-MO, his back to Rajada. ?DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!? screamed Craig as he filled the room with grenades. Craig laughed at the corpse that was flying into altitudes above 300,000 square Unreal units, only to discover that it was in fact not G-MO he had blown away, but RTSPlayer A.K.A. Death A.K.A. Grim? Some time later. ?A.K.A Jenna, A.K.A. Chris. ?Oh man, only fourteen seconds left!? said Craig. G-MO was still ahead by a few hundred points. ?Nothing a large radius heat seeking nuclear implosion rocket wouldn?t fix.? Unfortunately, Rajada didn?t have one of those, so he got the next best thing: an Acura Blaster. G-MO was stationed on a high cliff, looking through his sniper scope. ?I know you?re out there,? said Grant. Just then, a message appeared in the upper right-hand corner of Grant?s screen. It read: TRICK OR TREAT! Grant paused for a second. ?That took him an abnormally long time to type,? he said. As G-MO turned, he was only able to accidentally hit the ?T? key, freezing him in place before he was vaporized. ?Ha!? Craig yelled as he took the lead. ?I finally beat G-MO!? But Craig?s celebration was cut short by the dreaded ?CONNECTION FAILED? message. Craig then proceeded to pummel his computer with a grand piano.

Map Making "If there's one thing i'm good at," Craig assured himself,"it's making maps." In his confidence though, Craig had forgotten all about the computer's ability to drive him insane. Creating a new save file, Craig glanced at the drawing next to him. He almost always sketched a floor-plan for his levels which occasionally caused confusion. Sometimes passages wouldn't align or floors would be too low or too high. Whatever the problem though, Craig would always find a way to fix it. He grabbed his mouse and with it, created the first, cube shaped room. A few minutes later, he had a few arched halls with pillars set up. As he manipulated the properties of a light, he became careless and accidentally deselected the light. This spelled certain doom for his unsaved progress. "Oh no!" Craig attempted to close the properties window. There was a tone, then a message. General protection fault! History:wwindow::wndproc <-wwindow::Static Proc <-wwindow::wndproc <-wwindow::Static Proc <- Enforce Tick Rate <-Main Loop "Aw gaf!- It's okay, I didn't lose much." said Craig, trying to calm himself. He closed down the blacked out window and reopened NerfEd. After loading his level, he began working again. He made two intersecting hallways, but realized there was a small solid section at their junction. "Ahhh!" Craid said, exasperated. He began making cubes of varying sizes to determine the length of the gap. Finally, after several minutes the "guess and check" method, he came up with a number. "37? That's not divisible by 16 evenly." Craig's observation was in fact, true. He would have some difficulty making the required add on in the 2D shape editor, but he eventually finished it and cut it into the wall. "Finally!" Craig exclaimed, glad to have fixed the problem. "Now I can rebuild." After rebuilding though, Craig noticed something alarming. It was a BSP hole, right where Craig had just cut his abnormally shaped passage. "Darn it!" Craig rebuilt again, messing with the optimization values, but the hole remained. He rebuilt again and again for several minutes before he gave up and reluctantly deleted his addition he had spent hours making. He made another addition, and another but still the hole would appear every time. Several hours later, Craig examined the main hall agin to discover that it had been accidentally moved back, making a small, 37 units long gap. Craig stared, and his eye started twitching uncontrollably. "I guess that would have saved me some work," he said, his voice quivering with supressed anger. Craig took a deep breath and started to work again. A few hours later, he realized how well 2/3 his map was coming together. The geometry was quite pleasing and well textured. "Oh, I haven't saved in a while," he said. Craig moved the cursor towards the "FILE" toolbar, but slipped clicking the little "n" logo in the corner of the screen. NerfEd immediately closed. Craig stared a long time before finally picking up his monitor. he was about to throw it out a 3rd story window but just put it back and decided that the world was out to get him and that this was exactly what they wanted. So Craig just used his built up anger to write stories and cuss people out on NAB online.