Spartan33x saw his last team member die. The terrorist had emptied an entire 30-round magazine of .62mm bullets from the AK-47 into his friend’s body, which was now lying unrecognizable heap on the floor. The carnage was terrible. Shredded Kevlar and seared chunks of flesh lay strewn about the hallway as blood from the corpse slowly soaked into the carpet. But there was no time for grief.
In a single motion resembling a reflex, Spartan33x took aim with his M4A1 Carbine at the terrorist crouching around the corner of the hall and squeezed. The gun emitted a short burst of 5.56mm slug. The terrorist stopped dead in his tracks, fell to his knees, and slumped onto the ground. His friend’s death was avenged.
Suddenly, an unexpected high explosive grenade ricocheted off the wall and landed several feet away from him. Spartan33x had less than one second to escape becoming a fine pink mist. A flying piece of shrapnel ate deep into his torso as he ran for cover.
Thinking of the mangled bodies of his teammates, Spartan33x was on the verge of despair. The ten terrorists’ singular mission was to detonate a bomb within a remote office compound. Ten counterterrorist agents, including him, were deployed with an equally unambiguous objective – defend the compound at any cost. Now only he was alive, and half the terrorists remained.
Spartan33x ran into the main hallway and could make out the faint footsteps of three approaching terrorists. He was in luck. When they emerged from the stairwell, they all had their backs to him. Three bursts of the M4 later and the job was done. “Stupid,” he thought as he reloaded with a fresh clip. He found the fourth terrorist a little further down the hall. His enemy was already fatally wounded and had lost a large amount of blood. Spartan33x decided to put him out of his misery.
A voice announced through his headset that the last terrorist had just rigged the bomb in the office’s projector room. It was set to blow in thirty seconds. He decided to enter the projector room through a storage room, which held the office’s supplies in crates arranged on shelves. As Spartan33x approached the storage room, the terrorist tossed a flash-bang grenade. Spartan33x should’ve been completely blinded for 20 seconds but his assailant’s aim was a little off, and he could still make out the terrorist’s body. He pushed the trigger of his M4, held it down, and didn t let go until he heard a “click.” The terrorists were finished, but his mission wasn’t complete. He stumbled into the projector room with his last ounce of strength and defused the bomb.
“Oh! You noobs got pwned!” screamed CT agent (11B) Body Bag. “One v five and he still won,” cheered the server administrator. odl@k18!!! congratulated Spartan33x with a simple yet genuine, “Nice.” Spartan33x was beside himself with triumph. This epic victory meant money for the next round and a higher ranking for his account. Meanwhile, the voices of the terrorist team were not so jubilant. “Oh, my God!” complained drink booty sweat yeoo. “Why didn’t you didn’t get him?” JackBauer, who lacked a microphone for his computer, expressed his frustration by typing “F#$K THIS SHT!”
Spartan33x is a fan of Counter-Strike, a very popular first-person shooter computer game. He plays on his PC by connecting to various servers hosting CS games. Each server has its own map, game objectives, and selection of weapons. According to Spartan33x, he is only one of millions of people in the world who play CS.
Spartan33x plays everyday for two hours a day. He says he knows of others who will play for eight hours at a time.
He is very attentive to his account’s rank. “I used to be fourth out of a thousand, but now I’m 1st.”He is very proud of his kills-to-death ratio. “It’s around 1.5 to 1,” he states. “I would say that’s pretty good.”
Spartan33x’s favorite weapon is the M4A1 Carbine, an assault rifle only the CT team gets to use. His favorite map is The Office. At the end of each round, Spartan33x tries to learn from his mistakes in order to improve his CS skills and become a deadlier player.
“I should have tossed a flash grenade and then knifed him,” he once reminisced.
He’s been playing for a year and a half and has honed some clever skills. Capitalizing on the fact that bullets go through walls, he often pumps entire magazines into strategic locations of certain walls. He is often rewarded with screams of agony and frustration from his victims. Spartan33x calls this tactic “walling.”
He is proud of his ranking, but he knows he still a long shot away from CS’s crème de la crème. The elite often include server creators and game administrators. One of the most well known admins is The Kid.
Not much is known about The Kid, but Spartan33x believes he is a thirty-something-year-old who besides smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol, and playing CS in the basement of his mom’s house in Florida does little of anything else.