The next few hours passed in feverish sleep during which bugs of all hues and faiths played merry hell with Game Kid's external protrusions. On waking up, he immediately loosed a peace-making newsgroup cross-posting onto the Internet. Having done so, he scribbled a note, addressed it to The Offliners' Liberation Front and dropped the stamped envelope out of his window, trusting a passerby to post it for him.

The gist of the message is as follows:

"Oi, if you are the sort of shag-mouthed, fart-lipped, dreck-for-brains who thinks that you can have me, then it's time to put your fighting irons where your gob is. Meet me at the address below no later than 12:00am tomorrow morning, and come as tooled up as you like because I can run you and your mob good and proper. Lots of Love, Game Kid".

"There," he thought, booting up a game of Iron Fist on the Amiga emulator a mate of his had programmed into his PalmPilot, "that should shake them up or I wasn't the southern counties' Sack Race Champion six years running."

The newsgroup posting wormed its way from node to node, picking up flames about cross-posting from pedants who didn't bother reading it, before finally arriving at the desktop of a pale young man surrounded by a bank of monitors. At roughly the same time and by some freak of nature, a pale young man surrounded by a bank of monitors also received a tattered envelope.

Before smiling, packing a bag and leaving for a fate-making rendezvous, he said, "That Game Kid is a right fu..."

Continued next week...