The highlight of my year was a multiplayer Cops 'n Crooks match. A friend and I had been screwing around, taking things as they came and not really bothing to put any real effort into winning, which meant, of course, that we lost diligently. Added to this was our broken microphone, and apparently those of our team mates, which culminated in various losses and humiliations as our well organised, crack-shot and merciless opponents gunned us down in nicely timed little waves. They did burnouts on our corpses. At one stage, it got so bad that, after managing to coordinate ourselves into a single car, we chased one Crook right into the ocean, piled out, and gave chase in a fantastic effort of swiming. All four of us. He managed to make it to shore first and kill or send us hiding behind rocks. The whole thing was like an episode of Police Academy, though one in which all the characters are brutally gunned down in their incompetance and left to float and stagnate in the New Jersey bay, God bless their little hearts.

The highlight, however, came when our rivals, cocky now from their consecutive wins, piled into a helicopter, and flew low above the Liberty streets. Our team had been seperated and, without communication, left to our own devices in eliminating the criminal scum, but in some beautiful twist of fate, we inadvertantly found each other again, each riding a sportsbike in a desperate, high-octane, edge-of-your-goddamn-seat chase.

It was magnificant. Somehow, we managed to stay on the copter's tail the entire time, firing up with pistols and submachine guns. Occaisionally one would jump out as they flew low, and come round behind us in a SUV, and each time they were taken out by our rag-tag group of bike-heros.

I was the only one to remain for the entire chase, and thus the only one to witness it's climax: The copter, having taken a beating, started to smoke and eventually flame, and the pilot tried his best to land it. Two crooks jumped out at slightly too large a height and died. The others, one being the notorious Boss, rode the doomed chopper down to the street. It was a tense moment, and for a second it looked like they were going to make it out alive. But not this day, Mother Fucker. NOT THIS DAY.

Someways down the street, and coming up fast, I saw my moment. I pumped the throttle untill my finger hurt, hurtling headlong at them, firing wildly and screaming "NOT TODAAAAAAAY!".

And there was my perfect moment, like a samurai dying beneath his cherry-blossum tree: the fat, wounded boss stumbling out of the copter, bullets wizzing past his head, as one, crazed police officer speeds in a definite, fatal line towards fate and death and victory. And oh, the Liberty wind in my hair, and oh the flame and smoke and terror as the helicopter tore itself apart under my terrible fury, and oh how he fell, torn and lifeless, cartwheeling across the street, zero armour, zero health, that final celebration of physics, to fall near where I had been blown from my bike, dying myself and laughing, laughing, laughing as they dragged me down to hell and the end game screen. The Police Academy had finally triumphed. It was over, we had won.

Waiting for the next game to start in the lobby, the player who had been the boss turned on his mike and said "That was cool,"

I spat on the ground in my living room and exited the lobby, the final Fuck You.

"He's right." said my friend.

"I know," I replied after a while.

"I know."

- J Vening.