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? Niklas 'Tanis of TCB' Malmqvist

Richard, can I borrow Cronos Warchild for a second?
By Stefan Posthuma

Written in an urge of inspiration. As usual, the end sucks.

"Hungry", the troll growled quite stupidly.
Cronos was a bit suprised by the enormous stupidity of the
immense creature standing before him. He had seen many creatures
but the one now eyeing him with considerable interest was
certainly the most unintelligent of them all. Somewhere in the
back of his mind dawned the fact that he wasn't one of the most
brilliant ones, but he felt strangely smart in the company of
this troll.
The troll slowly came to the conclusion that Cronos was in fact
alive, and thus had to be killed because his mother always said
that he could and should eat everything that lived. It decided
that it would hit the quite edible looking human on the head and
then eat it.
So it did.
Cronos was taken by the agility of the huge creature and an
enormous fist hit him on the head. Slight feelings of confusion
and pain troubled him and shortly after, he decided that the time
had come for some defensive actions.
The troll was surprised. Normally, its victims would totally
disintegrate, explode or at least die when it hit them on the
head, but this one remained on its feet, and more surprising, hit
back quite hard.
Now it was Cronos' turn to be surprised. He had just applied a
move that the old Ninja master Hang Foy Soozooki taught him and
was purely designed to completely obliterate any bone structure
present in any living creature. Normally, this move would surely
kill his victims or at least render them incapable of being any
threat to his precious hearing aid. But this troll didn't seem to
react to it. It just looked a bit more stupid than it did
before.
The following silence was a painful one. The two opponents were
pondering their next moves, not very sure of what it would be,
because the first move had always been sufficient until now.
The troll decided to repeat the last move since it was the only
one it knew. But Cronos was prepared now and evaded the blow. The
troll had put considerable more force into it this time and not
hitting Cronos severely upset its balance and his fist impacted
the left tunnel wall, accidentally creating a large hole in it.
The troll was getting upset now because the tunnel was part of
his home and his mother always said that he should keep his home
nice and tidy.
"Angry!", bellowed the troll and fetched a piece of tree trunk
that had functioned as a support for the tunnel. Cronos tried
another one of his techniques on the troll, resulting in an even
more angry tree-trunk wielding creature.
The troll swung the trunk in the direction of Cronos who quickly
ducked and applied a double leg lock on the ravenous creature.
But he slightly misjudged the momentum of the trunk and the
following chaos resulted in three more trunks being torn from
their positions, not giving the tunnel anything to lean on
anymore. The tunnel, after having been lived in for centuries by
whole generations of trolls decided that its time had come and
collapsed quite dramatically.

Cronos felt a slight pressure on his chest as several feet of
rubble were piled upon him. Heavy breathing besides him reminded
him of a very aggressive troll and seconds later, he was standing
besides a partly collapsed hill in which he only wanted to spend
the night after fruitlessly searching for a certain renegade
general. The fact that the whole country had now been reduced to
a pile of rubble and total anarchy ruled didn't seem to bother
him at all. Back in his mind lingered some sort of uncle but the
connection wasn't really clear. Anyway, the troll was now busy
removing the various chunks of hill from himself and surely he
had to fight again.
The troll wasn't happy. His mother always stressed him to keep
his home tidy and eat any strangers and now he failed her. Years
of frustration finally came to the surface and it started to cry.
First he was a bit surprised by the water coming from his eyes,
but when he got the hang of it, tears came by the streams.
Now Cronos was a tough fighter. He had survived many battles on
many planets and still managed to keep his no-claim on his life
insurance. But crying always seemed to affect him. No matter what
cried, gorgeous young female or ugly troll, that one piece of his
mind that he always kept so suppressed manifested itself. After a
few moments his eyes started to fill with water and after a few
more moments, he was standing besides the troll, sobbing his
heart out.

Then Cronos got an idea. He started to search his pockets
frantically and finally came up with a small coin and held it
triumphantly in front of the troll who beheld it with large,
ignorant and watery eyes.
"Even Apeldoorn bellen" said Cronos and rushed off to the nearest
phonebooth.

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s) was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes, bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.