Enjoy.

A Water Battle
A Novel
By Andrew DeCoster
Saturday May 7th, 2005

PART 1
Reciprocity

Chapter 1
Taking Stock

Saturday June 24th, 2006
8:36 AM

It had been more than a year since the battle for the Whitehead Mountains. More than a year since the Aqua Warriors, the 2nd Infantry, the Stratford 56, and the Grays had united to take a final stand in probably the greatest water battle ever to happen. More than a year since the RVs had surged forward, over ran our defenses and captured our base. More than a year since they had hunted down Alpha Team through the backwoods of the Whitehead Mountains. More than a year since they had taken the flag from Aadit and proclaimed victory over every single major team in our area. It had been more than a year since we had been beaten.


Whilst asleep the human mind is a very interesting thing. The brain waves and neuron firings can be precisely recorded and measures, the activities of our neural organ carefully calculated and observed. However during sleep, no scientist has yet to explain the exact reason or logic behind dreams or the inky abyss we are all so familiar with. It is a bit unnerving; knowing that while you sleep modern science cannot explain what exactly happens inside your mind. Many people have said it’s the next great frontier. Like the west or the ocean or space. Understanding mind activity during dreaming is a feat almost none of use can comprehend. Especially when we’re dreaming.
I was currently having a dream. At least I thought I was. It was all very confusing. I was in one of those states where you have a sense of Déjà vu everywhere, and nothing seems connected, yet everything seems connected. It is the kind of dream where you have the capability of waking yourself up, or you wake up very easily. However being awoken from this state of sleep is a little strange to say the least. It feels like your being pulled upwards through many horizontal walls made of rubber. You lose a sense of what your dream was like and in many cases, even forget your dream entirely. I was determined not to let that happen. I tried frantically to hold onto the dream gripping it with my mind like an overboard person gripping a life line. I couldn’t place why I wanted to hold onto the dream so bad, yet I had the sense that I needed to. Suddenly the real world pierced through my mind. I was conscious of a bright light.
I awoke in my bed on the morning of Saturday the 25th. My little brother Tim was leaning over me hitting me repeatedly with a balled up t-shirt. “Wake up Andrew. Wake up. Come on. Wake up.” He wasn’t even paying attention to whether or not I was awake. I responded my pushing him off my bed. He fell to the ground with a dull thump muffled by my carpet. “Hey. He’s awake!” Tim exclaimed with a fake smile. He got up and left the room. He was fourteen and had gotten very moody lately. I got up out of bed and shook my legs before stretching to loosen up my cramped limbs. I pulled on a neon orange T-shirt with a white stripe down the middle and a pair of faded cargo shorts. I pulled on a belt and slipped into a pair of ankle socks before heading downstairs still rubbing my eyes. I entered into our terra cotta kitchen and noticed my mom bending over the stove attempting to create scrambled eggs while reading the newspaper and sipping coffee at the same time. “Hey.” I said groggily to her. I went over to the cupboard and picked out a box of cereal without noticing the type. I poured it into a bowl and filled it halfway with milk. Upon chewing it and realized it was Healthy Grain. I winced through the soggy cardboard taste and finished it.
School had let out two weeks ago. I had lost contact with most of my old friends, some of them moving away, others just away for the summer. To my knowledge Sean and Aadit were still around. Jake was as well, but I hadn’t spoken to him since…I stood up and grabbed the phone off the hook. I dialed Sean’s number. It ringed twice before a female voice answered. “Hello?”
“Hi.” I grimaced. My sleepy voice made me sound hung over. “This is Andrew. Is Sean there?”
“Yeah, he’s asleep. Want me to wake him up for you?”
“No, it’s okay, I can call back…”
“Never mind.” She cut me off, “I was just going to wake him up anyway. Hold for a sec okay?”
“Thanks.” I heard the phone being put down followed by a door slamming and multiple shouts. The phone was picked up again. “Okay.” His sister spoke. “He’s up.” She laughed and gave the phone to Sean. “Hey man.” He sounded tired and annoyed.
“Hey. Sorry to wake you.”
“It’s okay. I was going to get up soon anyway.”
“I’m sure. Listen I’m bored, but I have an idea. And you know those two things together combined with being sleepy are never a good thing. I was wondering if we could hang out today. I could use you as a sounding board of sorts.”
“Sounds good. I need to get out of here.”
“Cool. Let’s meet up at Lowes.”
“Meet you there.”
I hung up the phone. Lowes was a favorite meeting place for us. I told my mom where I was going, grabbed my cell phone, wallet and keys and headed out.
After I had gone back inside because I forgot my shoes I went out to the garage. I decided to use my motorcycle instead of my mom’s car. It sat in the garage unused next to a pile lumber. I usually used the bus to get to school or hitched a ride with a friend because I couldn’t carry all my stuff to school on my bike. “Let’s see if it still works.” I muttered to myself.
The bike was a BWM R 650 sport bike. I had put a couple saddle bags on the back. I slid onto the seat and turned the key. The indicator lights flashed on. I kicked the starter and the engine coughed to life. It sounded sick and weak like an old person. However I knew that it really started to sing around 60 mph. The quality of the engine’s performance improved at higher speeds. I grabbed my helmet and, released the clutch a bit and rolled out of my drive way.

The ride to Lowes was pretty uneventful, except for the aggressive driver in the plumbing truck. I eased into the parking lot behind a red Jeep Wrangler. From the back I could see Sean in the driver’s seat. I yelled to him and he nodded. We found a parking space although the place was really cramped. Since I there wasn’t enough space for my bike, we loaded it onto the back of his Wrangler. We did this often and it was convenient.
“What’s up, man?” He smiled and clapped me on the back. “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you to.”
“So what did you want to talk about?”
I took a couple breaths as we headed towards Lowes. I turned to Sean. “Sean. I want to start the team again.”

We entered into the store feeling the rush of filtered air hit our bodies. He stared straight ahead not really saying anything. We headed automatically to the PVC section. He finally broke the silence. “Start the curling team again? I told you, there wasn’t enough interest in school last year.” He was joking and he knew I knew it. He smiled and looked at me. “Why? Why start it again? You know what happened last year. It was way too serious. We can’t risk that happening again.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “It won’t.”
“It won’t? How can you be sure. How we be sure they won’t…” His voice trailed off. We all knew what had happened. We still weren’t sure we had understood it though.
“Sean, I can’t promise that it won’t happen again.” We continued walking. “However, since last year I haven’t heard from the Stratford 56 or the Grays. I talk to Harris over the phone and on the computer. Apparently the 2nd infantry has disbanded. Right after the war. Their team is gone.” Sean appeared genuinely surprised. “It happened right about the same time we disbanded.” I continued, “What happened last year didn’t only affect us. It affected everyone. It was terrible. I think…I think if we start it again, the same thing won’t happen. The RV’s disappeared. The kids in school who were part of the RV’s don’t talk about it anymore. It’s like they forgot.” We stopped next to a humongous outside grill that cost several thousand dollars. Its burnished steel finish reflected the fluorescent lighting with a wavy but dull glare. “Since the war, Jake hasn’t talked to me once. I’ve talked to Rob but since he moved across town, he’s been attending a different school and I haven’t seen much. Lee moved to Colorado. His dad got a new job there. Fred disappeared completely. I don’t know where he went or what happened to him. Matt moved to Florida because his mom divorced his dad and wanted him as far away as possible from California while still remaining on this continent. I still talk to you and Aadit, though Aadit doesn’t say much anymore.”
“If we did start it, how would we do it? You, Aadit, Rob, me…That’s only four people. Not nearly enough for a full fledged team.”
“We could put flyers out in school and around town.”
“Andrew you and I both know that our team was what it was because it had people in it dedicated to this sport. The seven of us spent more than three years training, working striving to make something from scratch. Our team was great. It will never be the same.” He looked at me. “Especially not with some new kids on the team. It would take years to find people as dedicated or as skilled as last time. It did take years last time to find all of us and organize. It was just you and Rob at the start. I came next. Aadit didn’t join until a year afterwards.” He sighed. “The truth is, I’ve been sinking about this too. How much fun it would be to have the old team back together and have something to do from 2:30 to 4:00 every day…I just don’t think we can do it.”
“We can try.”

The light from the rows of bar lighting high above our heads was partially absorbed by the dull finish of the PVC around us. As Sean and I walked down the aisle we had walked down hundreds of times, I suddenly had memories of my first homemade. It had been an APH design. It had never really worked very well, but that didn’t matter. The flood gate had opened, and there was not stopping it now. I looked around at the rows of PVC pipe and at the shelves of PVC adaptors and tools.
“So,” Sean began. “We’re restarting the Aqua Warriors. Yet you want to make it a new team. Starting from scratch.” I nodded. “Okay.” He whistled and started examining parts his back turned to me. “We need to take stock of our inventory, gear, members, time, and etcetera. We’re going to need to formulate new practice schedules and try to find an enemy other than the RVs.” He turned to me. “What does our arsenal look like?”
I looked upwards rattling numbers off in my head. “Uh, we sold tons of stuff after the team disbanded. Plus Lee’s and Matt’s arsenals which they took with them. I think Fred sold his arsenal completely.” Sean looked at me. “Let’s try to think of what we have not what we don’t have.” I smiled. He was trying to make this work for me.
“I have my entire personal arsenal. I have one pneumatic water balloon launcher, one CPS 1200, one CPS 21k, one CPS 1500…A pair of Storm 600s, and a XP 70.” I paused. “And my brother’s guns. He’s got a CPS 2100 and a CPS 3200. I think an XP 215, but that isn’t going to help much.” I turned around and looked at Sean. “What’s your arsenal look like?” He sighed and looked upwards in the same fashion as I did.
“I have both of my 21Ks, a CPS 1000, and a couple of XP 310s. Oh, and a Max D 3000.”
“Pretty good. What about Aadit and Rob?”
“Rob still has his 1500. That’s it though. Aadit got rid of his 2500 after the war. I believe he has a couple XP rifles left though.” I grimaced. Aadit was a dead aim with his sniper weapon. Now that he didn’t have it…
“Without his 2500 Aadit won’t achieve the same results.”
“Assuming he joins at all. He seems the least likely to come back. He’s still the best shot on our team.”
“What about Jake?” I had forgotten about him.
“What about him?” Sean chuckled. “He still has his 1200. Standard grunt gear. He probably still has the uniform and even that old rulebook we made a couple years back.” Jake had a tendency to own only what he needed, but use it well.
“Do you think Jake would join?”
“I don’t know. Right after that war he kind of lost it. He settled down after awhile though. It took a couple detentions and visits from the police to do it.” I sighed. Without Jake we were one man short of what we considered to be a standard squad size of five. And we weren’t even sure Aadit would still join.
“Okay. With those weapons, we have a pretty considerable force. Unfortunately we have mostly low CPS high XP class weaponry. We need some heavy guns.”
“We have no heavy gunner.” Fred was usually the man with the cannon.
“That’s okay. Rob can pull shift for him. I’m just concerned about weaponry. The 3200 and water balloon launcher should be kept mainly on the defensive due to their shot time. We need a good offensive weapon that would not require an escort.”
“You want to build something, don’t you.”
“Yes I do.” Sean smiled. I was always having crazy homemade ideas. He kind of pulled me back to reality sometimes. “What is it, how much will it cost, and how effective would it be?”
“I’m going to call it the Aqua Warriors Rifle Mk.3.” He laughed. The Aqua Warriors Rifle project had been a failed attempt to create the ideal general squad weapon. The other two designs had ended disastrously; one blowing up while pumping and the other one making some strange squeaky sound and never working again. I was determined to make this one work.
I outlined the general idea to Sean. It would be a simple water balloon launcher design with a compression chamber, valve and barrel. However the barrel would only be a quarter inch wide. It was simple breech loading foam bullet shooting design. You pressurize the compression chamber. The force of the air pushing at the bullet would shoot it out of the nozzle at a pretty high velocity. At least on paper. I couldn’t wait to build it. “We could build it today.” I looked up from tying my left shoe. “What?”
“We could build it today.” Sean insisted with an excited gleam to his eye. This was coming from the kid who wanted me to wait two weeks to build my first water balloon launcher just to make sure I did everything right.
“Okay. We can build it today. How much money to do you have with you?”
“About 40 bucks.”
“Okay. I have about 35. the total cost of parts should be about 2 dollars seeing as I have all of the gauges and the Schrader valve at home. We can go half and half and call this the first joint project of the new team.”
“Sounds good.”
“Great. Let’s get the parts and then head over to my place so we can put the thing together.”
As we headed towards the check out a few minutes later I heard Sean mutter under his breath. “I cannot believe we’re doing this.”

35 minutes later, Sean and I were breathing in the fumes of PVC glue as we primed and attached little sticky plastic pieces together in my basement. I shook my head. “This thing is going together pretty well. However I can almost feel my life span being shortened by these…” I trailed off as I waved the air in front of me. “…fumes. They’re everywhere.” Sean laughed and looked at me.
“Andrew, I’m so glad that you do not like fumes. It reassures me so much.”
I told him to shove it and got up out of the chair in front of my workbench to open up one of our basement windows. Behind me I heard something pop into place. “Well that sounded like it went together okay.” Sean muttered. I returned to the workbench and began to file down the compression chamber end cap to fit the valve through. A half hour later, we were having almost as much problems with the PVC dust as we had had with the PVC glue fumes. The gun was together though, and that was what mattered. I stood up and lifted it off the table. The sight was awe inspiring, stupendous, gorgeous…
“That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” surmised Sean as he stood up next to me. I nodded my head in agreement, and we got to work on the foam bullets. This was definitely going to be a great tool in future battles. If we had any future battles. I shook the thought out of my head and went to work cleaning it.

Chapter 2
Contact

“Sounds great.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah I’m all for it. We need to take some precautions though. Make sure the same thing doesn’t happen twice.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more.” I smiled.
“Okay, well sounds like a plan. When are we starting?”
“Monday at around 2:00 at my place?”
“See you there.”
“Make sure you bring your gear.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. This will work, I’m sure.”
“Bye.”

I hung the phone back on the wall in my kitchen and turned to Sean who was currently spinning around on one of our rotating stools. He looked up at me. “How’d it go?”
“Better than I expected.”
“So Rob’s in?”
“Definitely.”
“Great. That makes it three for sure. Does he still have all of his gear?”
“Pretty much. He had an Max D 4000 I didn’t know about that was broken.”
“Not that big of a deal.”
I pulled a stool up next to him. He started spinning again while talking to me. “You know what the big problem is right?” I grinned.
“Humor me.”
“The big problem that we are facing at this current stage in this little project of ours,” started Sean delaying actually stating the problem, “Will be to get Aadit.”
I closed my eyes and sunk my head into my hands. “We need him.” Commented Sean softly over me. “Rob, Aadit, you, me…We we’re the core of the team. Even if we are all the members we have, without one of us, the entire things fails”
“What about Jake?”
“He’s gone. Not physically.” He paused. He knew I knew what he was talking about. “I really don’t see how we can have him no the team or how we could get him to join. He’s changed to much to make the effort worth it. I don’t think he will ever be part of our team again. He will have problems being part of anything from now on. At school, work, life in general. It’s sad.”
“We still need Aadit.”
“Do you think we could get him?”
I grabbed my mom’s laptop off of the granite counter we were sitting at. “We could try.”

Twenty seconds later, the e-mail had been sent and the rest left to fate. I had tried to composing something compassionate yet forceful. Finding the delicate balance with Aadit would be hard to do for awhile. The e-mail read like this:

Hey,
This is Andrew. How’s you’re summer going so far? How’s that job at Joey’s? I’ll start working for my cousin a couple weeks from now. I talked to Sean today. We have an idea. This is going to sound a bit blunt…so brace your self. We we’re thinking of starting the Aqua Warriors up again. We never officially disbanded. People just stopped coming to the meetings, and the entire thing kind of fell apart. We we’re thinking of starting a new team. Something new. Something fresh. Building it from scratch again. Honestly, Sean needs something to do or he’ll go insane. He’s already part way there. We need you though. Rob has promised to join. I’ll talk to Jake. We might even find Fred somewhere. We need you though. So please, consider it. Don’t disregard this. Things can change if we try. This could lead to something good.

Think about it,
Andrew

I showed the entire thing to Sean and he gave it his approval. I clicked the send button hoping that we were doing the right thing. If we weren’t, we could end up in a worse state than when we started. And it would be because of me.

Sean went home, and I cleaned my room. After dinner I went back to my room and flopped my body on my bed. Tomorrow was Sunday. That meant church in the morning followed my cleaning the house till about noon. Perhaps I could get together with Sean or Rob and try to clean up the old tree house…
Before I could think about it anymore, my eyes had closed and I had fallen into another familiar inky abyss.

Sunday June 25th, 2006
6:43 AM

I didn’t exactly awake with a start as so many clichés in the past have said. I slept with a kind of unwary feeling in me that led to me suddenly waking up and looking around the room. I couldn’t see anything of course because humans don’t usually have the ability to see in the dark. I kind of got a grasp of the shadows in my room and relaxed a bit, knowing I was in a familiar environment. My head buzzed and I tried to remember why I had awoken. What is it a dream? Another dream? I had lost it again. The memory of the dream was fading fast and I knew trying to sit there in bed remembering it was a losing battle. I gave up with a sigh and laid down on my bed again. I tried to go to sleep, but everywhere I turned there always seemed to be something uncomfortable. I ended up lying on my back looking at my gray ceiling. The brush stroke patterns in the textured surface brought to life images of the past battle. I shook my head. “Why can’t I stop thinking about that?”

WOW. long stories...sorry i dont have time to read it, but im sure its really great.