Mathew had been consistently telling everyone to look laterally for weapons of any kind. The main Terran weapon was a group effort.
Several of the children had been playing in the corridors. Ali found a pipe on the wall beside a Cleaner. He started fiddling with it and discovered it fired a ball with compressed gas. Of course, it wasn’t long before the other children joined in and finally one of the children, Ali himself, was injured. The children trooped off and found Kelly who treated the injured eye and then demanded to know how this had happened. The children took her to the building and showed her the pipe. Kelly took the pipe to Mathew. On the way she saw Az and showed him the pipe.
“These are for clearing out the Cleaner pipes. When the Cleaners work, bits of fur, hair, nails, claws etc clog up the pipes. You shove this pipe into the drain. If it doesn’t clear you fire the balls. The fired balls will be underneath the floor. Magnets catch them.”
Con was there also and said, “Heck these are bloody good drain rods. Man could I use these.” Fascinated, he experimented. Off they all trooped to Mathew and demonstrated. Mathew was very interested. He took the pipe to Helkmid who said it would be no problem to add a poison to the balls; a lethal one. The children were not told this.
Within a day, the children had scattered throughout the apartment blocks and hotels and collected many pipes and thousands of the balls once Az showed them where and how to find them. By that evening, Ali had organised firing ranges and practice had begun. Kelly and Stella had organised competitions. Az and Kaz were amazed at the accuracy of all the Terrans in using the redesigned drain rods.
Li explained, “Last century, a game was invented called Paint Ball. It was a weapon that fired a blob of paint. Teams played. It was huge fun. Depending on where someone was hit, they were classified as dead or injured and had to either ‘play dead’ or continue fighting with an accurate reduced capacity. A decent blob on the leg meant they had to crawl. All head shots were a ‘Kill.’ Players had to wear protective clothing and got bruises due to the force of the guns. There were prizes for which Team won.
It wasn’t long before the military and police saw the potential and used them for training. The guns got better and better and finally one was designed for children that fired water-based paint that washed out and guns that didn’t bruise. Well not much anyway. It became a real craze in the schools and now is an Olympic sport;
“What is Olynip?”
“Olympic Games. That’s sport games our whole world plays together; one country against another.” When Az still looked puzzled Li explained what countries were. “Oh and the Olympics are games our whole world play.”