Needless to say, I attended the midnight launch the other night with Daniel and Kerry. There’s something magical about standing in line with other nerds. It reminded me of every other midnight gaming event I’ve stumbled through, and while I briefly felt shame, I know that I’d wait in line again for that PS2, Wii, etc.

On the subject of midnight launches, our Halo short arrives later this week. You’ll understand that transition once you’ve seen it.

As promised, a new challenger enters the ring with his bio this week. Switching back to the Counter-Terrorists, we’ll be taking a look at the life of Chet.

Name: Chet
Age: 25
Team: Counter-Terrorists
Position: Team Slacker and Debaucher

Sergeant Anderson was said to be the bravest and grittiest man that the Southern California Counter-Terrorism Unit ever saw. He was ruthless, inventive, cruel beyond belief and always managed to take down every target that he went after. It was said that he once rode a van full of seized drugs over the edge of a cliff, fighting a known terrorist leader in mortal hand-to-hand combat as the vehicle plunged to its doom.

Due to a nearly fatal gunshot to the heart, Sergeant Anderson had to end his tenure with the force earlier than expected and turned his attention back to his family. In particular, he committed his life to raising his young 2 year-old son Chet to be the perfect police officer.

As Chet walked in his father’s footsteps, he learned a great deal about how to exert yourself as a leader amongst peers. Chet was confident in every situation, often taking the lead in pre-school group exercises and directing the other children during co-operative games. This carried into his early grade school years as well. Being a staunch believer in excellence, Sergeant Anderson made sure that his boy was no slouch. Chet showed up well groomed to every social occasion, sitting up politely and quietly judging the moral fiber of others the way his father taught him to. However, even though Chet did what his father asked, he never really knew what the man was like beyond his rigid chiseled exterior.

By the time he was eight, Chet was beating up neighborhood bullies and cuffing them to basketball goals and mailboxes. Before he was eleven, he competed in the junior Olympics in a sharp-shooting contest, winning second prize. Chet was grounded for three weeks, one week for each bullseye that he missed.

Through it all, Chet became friends with a boy named Jim, another lad with Chet’s Southern California sensibilities. Jim was a family friend, the son of one of Sergeant Anderson’s fellow CTU officers. Chet and Jim did everything together in junior high and high school. They attended the same police camps, climbed the same obstacle courses and had secret crushes on the same girls. The two of them had friendly competitions about who could apply themselves more to a given task, who could get the better grades and other poindexter-ish activities.

When Chet and Jim graduated from high school, they decided to go to the same police academy that their fathers studied at, in order to follow in their footsteps more closely. The two young CTU prospects quickly flew to the top of their squads, made excellent grades and even joined the same fraternity — Alpha Beta. Even though Chet always excelled, his father was never quite happy with his clone son.

Since Sergeant Anderson hated all forms of fun, Chet abstained from anything like drinking, partying or “bitches”, as his frat brothers put it. He and Jim would instead study, in order to become better officers.

And then everything changed. One night, Chet received a phone call from his father. Jim had died in a motorcycle accident. Chet was distraught. His best and only friend was gone.

After a summer of depression, Chet’s desire to apply himself to counter-terrorism faltered with his general well-being. Sergeant Anderson barked that he needed to get over his troubles, all the while putting up the stony facade that kept the two of them from truly connecting for so many years. Finally, Chet had enough.

His second year at the academy, Chet discovered binge drinking and raging til the sun comes up. He discovered new levels of fun that some would balk at, and he loved not remembering a thing about his life from one day to the next, walking the academy halls in a drunken stupor.

Chet soon became the party animal and slouch of his squad and Alpha Beta, constantly throwing keggers, toga parties and other illicit nighttime get-togethers. There was even a shady summer in Tijuana where Chet got multiple piercings and had a brief fling with a girl that afflicted him with a venereal disease. Through it all though, Chet never regretted a moment of partying. He had to live extra hard, dammit, because he had lots of living to make up for.

Ashamed of his son and unable to cope because of his pride, Sergeant Anderson pulled some strings to get Chet through the academy when he should have failed out. They haven’t spoken since. Chet got a job on a counter-terrorism unit soon after graduation, but always seems to find himself in major trouble one way or another. What baffles his superior officers is the fact that his test scores were always higher for hostage negotiations, bomb defusals and other situations, but Chet never seemed to apply himself on the battlefield.

On the verge of losing his job after another late night beer pong tournament, Chet realized that he was unhappy following his father’s footsteps. He’d forge a new path. That’s when he saw the ad for The Leet World. It was time to party hard on national television.