On this episode of “The Adventures of the Ministry of Arguments,” entitled “Deadly Monkey and El Nooberino Get Killed A Lot,” (a double episode!) our heroes got killed a lot.

Deadly Monkey woke up early in the evening and decided to be useful. He headed to the SE part of the island, where he took an awfully long time liberating a Hunter from the squad of enemy soldiers who were guarding it. It took a while because these enemy soldiers were apparently expert foxhole diggers who kept disappearing into the ground. To be able to hit the last two, he actually had to drive up to them and hose them down from just a few feet away with his light machinegun. Then he realized that he was literally starving to death, so he booked it to the nearest trader, sold the Hunter, and had a snack. Then he realized that there was a cache of building supplies just to the south, so he went to retrieve that. The 3 enemy soldiers there were apparently too big a challenge and he was killed, but after retrieving his corpse he was able to kill them and take the building supplies back to MoA HQ.

When he got there, El Nooberino showed up. The two of them decided that it would be a good night for a mission. They headed out, but soon came across an abandoned Offroad truck just sitting in the road. El Nooberino hopped in and they pulled a U turn to go back to the trader to sell it. Unfortunately, they met a heavily armed band of bandits driving an Ifrit with a heavy machinegun on the roof. Monkey escaped in his armored Ifrit, but El Nooberino was swiss cheese in the unarmored truck. Fortunately, Monkey had a defibrillator in the Ifrit, so he was able to revive Nooberino (because defibrillators fix giant bullet holes!), and they got the truck sold.

Then the two intrepid heroes decided to go after a large cache of construction supplies and weapons to the north, even though it was guarded by no less than 18 enemy soldiers. Sure, it would be a challenge, but (perhaps after too many energy drinks and cans of Mountain Dupe) the two decided they were up to it. This lead to an important lesson of the night, which is this: 18 enemy soldiers standing around in a field can be made mincemeat with sniper rifles from a kilometer away relatively easily. 18 enemy soldiers who have holed up inside some buildings at the end of what was basically a box canyon are goddamn near impossible to kill, but we’ll get to that shortly.

The two heroes moved into position on what they christened Hill Butthead on their topo map. They opened fire, and were able to kill the gunner in a Humvee and four gunners in .50 cal emplacments before Monkey got overconfident and took a 7.62 round right between the eyes. Nooberino was able to revive him with the defibrillator, and the fight continued. Our favorite bumblers then decided to relocate to Hill Beavis, slightly to the SE. They were able to kill several more enemy from there, but the remainder had learned their lesson and weren’t moving around or presenting good targets. One of them managed to take out El Nooberino, but once again the defibrillator proved invaluable. It was so invaluable, in fact, that Monkey decided to just leave it sitting on the ground. They relocated once again, to Hill Butters, which was to the north. In the grandest tradition, they couldn’t see shit from there, so they re-relocated, this time back to Hill Butthead.

Monkey decided it would be a good idea to go back to *exactly* the same spot where he had died previously, because the enemy would never expect someone to be that stupid. Well, the enemy expected it. Monkey died yet again, and since he had cleverly left the defibrillator on a faraway hill in the last paragraph, there wasn’t shit that Nooberino could do about it. Nooberino held their ground while Monkey HALO jumped into a nearby town, found a quad bike, and made his way back. After retrieving his gear, they relocated to another nearby hill, which by this point they had given up on naming. They were able to take out several more of the enemy, and each of them died…. well, a few times. We’ll just leave it at that.

Eventually, the siege of the enemy compound stretched into the evening, and with nightfall, some of the other, uh, more experienced citizens of the island took pity on our heroes and offered to help. Several armored vehicles showed up, along with a Little Bird chopper, which was sporting miniguns and rocket pods. The sight of minigun tracers from the chopper and the two tanks zipping across the valley and bouncing high into the night sky warmed the hearts of the two Ministers of Arguments. Finally it was down to one enemy, and he was nowhere to be found. This lead to a Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooy Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenkins style attack on the compound, during which one of our allies, who ran into the place literally naked except for his rifle, found the last enemy cowering inside a building and killed him.

Our beloved idiots retrieved a Humvee, a Ural truck, a crate of supplies and weapons, and looted many corpses. They returned to the airfield trader and made the most of their bounty. During the battle, Deadly Monkey had also learned that he had won the lottery. One of the server admins announced this, and when Monkey asked what he had won, another player responded “an Axe!” which Monkey mistakenly read as having come from the Admin. He was pleased, but a bit disappointed in such a meager prize. In reality, Monkey had won: A Strider with a heavy machinegun, just like the one that he had lost to a rocket with Nooberino and their buddy Cliff Worley several days before. Hooray! Monkey and the Noob took their vehicles and supplies back to MoA HQ, and called it a night.

Our heroes will return in the next episode, in which they will try reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllly hard not to get killed quite as much.