The beach theme stretched out under a candy-pink sky, littered with oil drums and the occasional health crate bobbing gently in a foxhole. Two worms from opposing teams were locked in a spirited argument about the correct way to angle a bazooka shot, while a third, wearing a scorched bomber jacket, casually juggled a live grenade and hummed a wormsong about friendly fire.

A young worm named Nimsy popped her head out of the sand near the shoreline, a pair of oversized goggles strapped to her forehead and a half-eaten banana bomb in one hand. She spotted {user} emerging from the dirt just up the slope and broke into a gap-toothed grin. "Oi! {user}! Welcome to the World Party! You’re just in time for the—"

The rest was lost in a high-pitched battle cry. A Darksider worm, bloated and trembling with suicidal purpose, screamed "Tora! Tora! Tora!" as she rocketed across the beach in a perfectly straight line, ploughing through a mine, a sheep, and an indignant seagull before slamming directly into Nimsy. The explosion was a cartoonish orange-and-purple fireball, accompanied by the sound of a kazoo. Nimsy, still grinning, was launched into the stratosphere, her voice fading from a squeaky "byeeeee!" into a distant twinkle. A tombstone shaped like a disco ball tumbled from the sky and embedded itself in the crater she left behind.

The Kamikaze worm, now a puff of smoke and a satisfied sigh, and explodes too. The beach fell silent for exactly one second. Then the juggling worm’s grenade went off, and the argument about the bazooka resumed, louder than before.

A thick, chemical haze hung over the Jungle theme, occasionally backlit by the orange glow of distant napalm. Somewhere to the west, a Homing Pigeon shrieked past with the intelligence of a brick, and a sheep bounced gently into a patch of mines, detonating with a chorus of sheepish baas and the click-click-BOOM of forgotten munitions. This was a Tuesday... A perfectly ordinary Tuesday.

Down in a foxhole that had seen better centuries, a worm named Nimsy was busy doing what all worms did: surviving. She had an ammo belt slung over one shoulder, a beret tilted at a jaunty angle, and a half-empty Blow Torch that she’d been using to carve a tunnel straight through a fallen girder. She popped her head out just as a fresh arrival materialized from the dirt with the bewildered expression of someone who had just been handed a bazooka and no instruction manual.

"Whoa, hey there, fresh face!" Nimsy’s high-pitched voice cut through the crackle of distant flames. She scuttled over, her thick, muscular tail coiling behind her, and flashed a grin that was equal parts friendly and utterly insane. "You picked a spicy second to crawl out of the ground. I’m Nimsy, don’t mind the explosions—that’s just the morning welcome wagon. Stick with me, {user}, and you might only get blown up a little bit."

She gestured with a Prod she’d pulled from nowhere, nudging a stray landmine away from her foxhole. "First lesson: never trust a crate that whistles, and always, always bow to the Concrete Donkey." Her vivid amber eyes sparkled with the kind of reckless joy only found on a battlefield governed by the Buffalo of Lies.

Before {user} could even process the concept of a holy donkey, the universe decided Nimsy’s introduction had gone on long enough. From a hidden tunnel to the left, a voice screamed the sacred words: "TORA! TORA! TORA!"

A pink comet of self-destructive enthusiasm—a worm named Blitz, fully committed to the Kamikaze way—shot forward in a perfectly straight line, trailing a rooster tail of dirt and spent shotgun shells. She ploughed through the exact patch of earth where Nimsy’s coiled tail had been resting, clipping the poor worm with the force of a hypersonic handshake.

The impact sent Nimsy rocketing vertically out of the orbit. Her squeak doppler-shifted from surprise into a strangely poetic farewell as she ascended through the jungle canopy and kept going, past any reasonable atmosphere, towards a stratosphere that had never asked for her. "Whaaaat the—I didn't sign up for aerial reconnaissance! See you in the next crater, {user}! Aaaaaaand I regret nothing!"

A comical puff of smoke bloomed in the heavens. A moment later, a tombstone plummeted to earth and embedded itself in the soft earth right next to {user}’s tail. It was, of course, shaped like a disco ball.

The Kamikaze, Blitz, ploughed on into a cluster of oil drums, detonated in a glorious chain reaction of green-flamed judgment, and left behind nothing but a fresh water-filled crater and the faint smell of righteousness.

Silence settled over the Jungle for exactly two seconds. Then a Health Crate bounced off a tree and a sheep baa’d somewhere in the undergrowth.

Welcome to the World Party, {user}. Now dig in and pray.

In the cracked asphalt heart of the City Theme, beneath a sky the colour of old television static, three outdoor slot machines stood shoulder to shoulder like a firing squad on their coffee break. Their chrome was scuffed, their lights buzzed with the cheap optimism of a weapon crate that might contain something other than an exploding sheep, and Miss Tuffett—a wiry, bandaged worm with a faded red beret pulled low over her goggles—had been feeding them coins since last Tuesday’s crater cooled.

She yanked the lever again. The left reel clunked to a stop on DYNAMITE. The center reel followed, a perfect twin of cartoon TNT. The right reel ticked, wobbled, and landed on a grubby little pistol. Dink.

"D'OH!!" Miss Tuffett groaned, and her palm met her forehead with the soft, wet smack of a worm who had seen this exact joke too many times.

Then the machine did something unexpected. A low, hopeful ping rippled through its innards, and two of the reels began to pulse with a golden glow: HOLD. HOLD. A button lit up under her gloved thumb. Miss Tuffett’s expression shifted from deadpan to dangerous. She pressed hold on left and center, licked her lips (a habit she’d picked up from a grenade pin), and spun only the stubborn right reel.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. DYNAMITE. Three crimson sticks, grinning in a row.

The slot machine erupted in a tinny, triumphant cherry song—a cascade of digital fanfare and fluttering pixel confetti—and Miss Tuffett threw both arms in the air. In her mind, she was already up to her armpits in gold coins, maybe a crate shower, maybe a jet pack, maybe a real concrete donkey statuette she could pray to. She saw herself retiring to somewhere dry, with no water.

Then she snapped out of it as a sound was wriggling through the victory jingle. A hisssss. No—several. A whole choir of impatient little fuses, burning bright and close.

Miss Tuffett looked down. The payout tray was not vomiting coins, It was vomiting lit sticks of dynamite, one after another, hissing like a nest of furious metallic snakes, piling up around her tail in a sizzling mountain of cartoon death. Was enough TNT to level the whole town.

Her eyes shrank to pinpricks. She shook her head so hard her beret nearly flew off. "No, no, no, no!" Then she sighed resignedly, deep and existential, and let her head droop until her chin almost touched the warm, ticking pile.

At the neighboring slot machine, a curious worm named Carky—blue bandana, one good eye, no concept of personal space—leaned over. She tilted her head, let out a soft, curious "Mhm?"* and followed Miss Tuffett’s gaze down to the growing, sputtering arsenal.

Carky’s pupils dilated, drew in a breath that seemed to inhale all the oxygen left in the city block, and screamed. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—"

The neighborhood did not so much explode as reinterpret itself as a cloud. Brick, steel, mailbox, lamppost, oil drum, and three very surprised worms all achieved a brief, spectacular career as shrapnel. The screen of the middle slot machine tumbled through the air, still blinking HOLD. A single wheel of scorched cheddar—don’t ask how it got there—rolled gently into a fresh crater and stopped beside a tombstone shaped like a flamingo wearing a hard hat.

Smoke settled, fuses fizzled out. And somewhere, a pigeon homed in on the carnage with professional interest.

Another Tuesday, indeed.

The desert sun hammered the dunes like an orbital strike. The Desert Theme was sand, cactus, and the distant shimmer of an oil drum that someone really should have shot by now. A few meters from a crumbling adobe wall, a dud Indian Nuclear Test sat half-buried in the grit—a fat, evil cylinder of doom that had failed to go off, which in worm terms meant it was merely being polite before ruining everyone’s day.

The bomb’s access panel hung open. Inside, three wires—green, red, yellow—and a small screen that glowed a deceptively calm 10. Beneath it, a red light waited, unlit but smug.

Fugdy, a worm in a Brodie helmet that had seen better firefights, knelt before the device. She gripped her diagonal cutting tool like a holy grenade. Behind the nearest chunk of wall, two faces peered around the corner with all the subtlety of a Sheep Strike.

Beanie, her helmet rustier than Fugdy’s and her expression blank as a fresh crate, watched intently. Beside her, Petralosky adjusted her eye patch and grinned the grin of someone who knew exactly which wire she would have cut first, and it was all of them at once.

"Alright," Fugdy muttered, voice high and tight. "One of these defuse the bomb. Yellow feels... yellow?"

She pointed the cutters at the yellow wire and glanced back at her friends for advice. Petralosky gave a solemn nod, and Beanie gave two thumbs up.

Snip.

The red light blinked to life. PING. PING. PING. The screen flickered and the 10 became a 9.

Fugdy whipped her head around toward her friends, face twisted in pure alloyed betrayal. Petralosky instantly looked away cutely and began humming an innocent little wormsong, the picture of angelic non-involvement.

Beanie collapsed into wheezing, uncontrollable laughter like she just made a mild joke instead of pushing her friend onto existential dread. The kind of laughter that suggests you’ve just watched someone prod a mine.

7 6

The counter was going down.

Fugdy turned back to the bomb. The green wire is a classic. She snipped it with desperate precision. Absolutely nothing happened, the counter ticked to 5.

Petralosky leaned out from behind the wall and offered a slow, philosophical shrug.

Beanie was now laughing so hard she had to brace herself against the wall, tears streaming from her eyes.

4 3 2

The red wire, The stupid red wire. She jammed the cutters into the gap just as the screen’s 1 began its transition to 0, the segments freezing mid-change, stuck in digital limbo. The light died, and the PINGing stopped.

Silence at least... except for Beanie, who had zero intention to stop laughing any time soon.

Fugdy exhaled relieved. A single drop of sweat traced a path down her cheek, dripped from her chin, and fell in perfect, cinematic slow motion, and she watched it. The drop landed on the red wire’s severed end, then rolled—with the deliberate malice of a sentient sheep—across the gap. It bridged the cut. The circuit completed with a tiny, almost apologetic spark.

The screen twitched. The 1 finished its journey. 0.

PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII—

Beanie stopped laughing, Petralosky’s eyes went wide. Together they managed a synchronized, soft "Huh?"

The high-pitched whine stretched for ten full seconds—enough time for three small lives to flash before three very large eyes—and then the desert became light, sand, and the warm, familiar roar of an Indian Nuclear Test finally doing its job.

When the dust settled, three fresh tombstones sat in a brand-new crater: a cross with a cracked Brodie helmet, a statue with a slightly rustier Brodie helmet, and a single stone ball wearing an eye patch.

It was, by every measure, a successful Worm operation.

The battlefield wore its medieval best that afternoon: grey stone ramparts, smoking chimney pots, and a scattering of oil drums that had no business being in the thirteenth century. A light wind carried the faint scent of gunpowder and roasted mutton.

High on a crumbling parapet, a worm named Sandy balanced a grenade in her palm, tossing it from hand to hand with the casual rhythm of someone who had long ago stopped reading safety labels. Below her, ambling along the dirt path without a single care in the world, came Two Bit Charlie—a worm who had clearly decided that a lovely stroll through a warzone was a perfectly reasonable way to spend the day. She hummed a tuneless little wormsong and paused to admire a passing butterfly.

Sandy’s amber eyes glittered. She pulled the pin with a satisfying clink. A low, malicious chuckle bubbled up from her throat as she drew back her arm. "Special delivery, sunshine!" she chirped, and let fly.

Something small and metallic sailed through the air and pinged Two Bit Charlie square on the top of the head. She blinked surprised, reaching up to pluck the object from between her helmet straps. A grenade pin? She held it in front of her face, squinting at it with the profound confusion of a worm who had just been insulted by physics.

Up on the parapet, Sandy was still cackling, shaking her head at the poor aim—and then the sound died in her throat. She looked at her empty throwing hand. She looked at her other hand. Still holding the grenade. Still very much missing its pin.

Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. "...Oh, bobbins."

A tiny, high-pitched scream echoed across the medieval rooftops. It was cut short by a magnificent, cartoonish fireball that sent a puff of smoke rolling into the sky. When the smoke cleared, a small granite tombstone shaped like a slightly embarrassed-looking duck dropped neatly into the crater.

Down on the path, Two Bit Charlie flinched at the noise. She glanced around, ears ringing, dust settling in her hair. Nothing, no one around. Just a fresh crater, a smoking duck monument, and a very confused butterfly.

She stared at the pin still in her fingers, shrugged with her whole wormy body, and flicked it over her shoulder. "Weird."

And with that, she continued her stroll, blissfully unaware that she had just won a firefight by doing absolutely nothing at all.

The Medieval theme shine with its crooked stone towers, smoking chimneys, and a few oil drums that had no business being there. Comedy Al was strolling across the battlements, alert, her pink tail coiling silently over the cobbles. She raised her binoculars and spotted a tank rumbling towards her through a cabbage patch. A worm rode atop the turret, helmet gleaming.

Comedy Al didn’t hesitate. She pulled out her Blow Torch and started digging straight down, carving a neat little bolt-hole like every respectable Darksider. By the time the tank rolled to a halt beside the freshly turned earth, she had vanished into the dark.

Perched on the tank, Frying Pan peered into the hole and let out a triumphant "Ah-hah!" She was already pitying the worm who’d tried such low tactics. With a smug little smirk, she rummaged inside the hatch and produced something soft and woolly. She gave it a pat and dropped it into the opening.

Down in the burrow, Comedy Al was comfy and hidden in the pitch black, until a gentle "Baaaa..." echoed right beside her.

"Huh?" She fumbled for a match, struck it, and found herself nose-to-nose with a sheep. Goofy blue eyes, black face, and fluffy white wool that practically glowed in the tiny flame. The match died. Comedy Al managed only a soft, low whine.

Above, Frying Pan leaned forward on her tank, waiting. The ground gave a small, polite tremble. A muffled boom rolled beneath the soil. One second later, three tiny tufts of white wool drifted up from the hole, spinning lazily like indifferent survivors of the underground apocalypse.

The Forest Theme stretched out in dappled green and shadow, all mossy stumps and towering oaks that creaked with the weight of too many ambushes. Ship of Fools, a worm of apparently boundless optimism and extremely limited planning, was out for a casual stroll along a cliff edge, tail swaying, humming something sweet, when she spotted it—a pristine Weapon Crate sitting at the base of a giant tree, just a few meters below. The ground around it glittered with enough mines to delete a team of eight.

Naturally, she went for it.

With a flourish, Ship of Fools produced a Ninja Rope, sighted the tree trunk, and fired. The grappling hook sank deep into the bark. She gripped the rope with both hands, did three quick, adorable little work-out jumps in mid-air—one, two, three—and then launched herself forward with all the mathematical grace of a worm who had spent every ballistics class eating paste.

Then she swung, completely misjudging the landing ...

The arc was bold, brave, wobbly, and from a physics standpoint, an absolute travesty. She released at precisely the wrong moment, sailed through the air in a flailing pink blur, and slammed face-first into the dirt directly in front of the crate with an adorable "OOF..." The impact left a small worm-shaped dent. Groaning, she lifted her head just enough to find herself nose-to-nose with a mine.

Groaning, she pushed herself up just enough to see what was inches from her nose: a landmine. A single, patient mine, sitting there like it had been expecting her. Ship of Fools went very, very still.

A single leaf detached from the oak above and began its slow, undulating descent. Ship of Fools watched it, huge pink eyes locked on the pirouetting green speck. Every time the leaf fluttered directly over the mine, a tiny, soft, deeply concerned whine escaped her throat— "Eeehh..." —high-pitched and quivering. The leaf wobbled left. "Eeeehhh..." The leaf wobbled right. "Eeeehhhhh..." Finally, it came to rest on the grass a safe distance away, harmless.

She exhaled with relief. "Phew..." Then she looked up at a new sound. "Uh?"

The branch the rope was tied to—a great, thick limb—groaned, splintered, and snapped clean off the tree, plummeting straight toward her. Ship of Fools’s eyes went wide with pure, adorable dread. "Uh-oh..."

She covered her face with both hands in the most cute way possible. There was a deafening click-FWOOMP as the branch hit several mines, which hit the others mines, which hit the crate. For a single, glorious instant, the forest lit up like a firework display designed by maniacs.

When the smoke cleared, the oak looked slightly more embarrassed than usual. At the bottom of a fresh crater sat the Weapon Crate, still pristine, still glowing, utterly indifferent. And beside it, where Ship of Fools had been, a tombstone now stood—a comically crooked wooden signpost, a jester’s hat carved on top, and the words Here Lies a Calculated Risk etched beneath.

Up in the canopy, a Homing Pigeon cooed aloof and amused, as the Buffalo of Lies probably chuckled.

A warm, lazy wind rolled through the Rural valley, ruffling the grass around moss-choked fence posts and making the old windmill creak like a rusty hinge. Sheep dotted the hills, utterly indifferent to the fact that the world might end before supper. At the base of a dead tree, right where a crudely drawn black X marked the spot, a Worm named Froooom stood with a treasure map clutched in her hands. She looked at the X, then at the map. Then at the X again, then at the map once again. Her cyan eyes narrowed with the confidence of someone who had definitely, absolutely, probably found the right place.

She pulled out a metal detector and advanced, its tinny tic-tic-tic rising to a frantic shriek as she swept it over the soil. The needle flew off the chart. Froooom tossed the gadget over her shoulder without a second glance, hefted her shovel, and started digging. As dirt sailed through the air, she muttered happily to herself, "Oh, I can feel it... a pile of weapon crates, maybe a health stash, I’ll be the richest wriggler in the whole valley..."

An hour passed. The hole grew so deep that all the landscape could see was a fountain of earth and the occasional pink flick of a tail. Finally, her shovel struck something solid. Froooom let out a triumphant little gasp, dropped to her tail-base, and brushed the dirt away with her delicate hands. Her smile vanished. Staring up at her, blinking a slow, rhythmic red light, was a freshly uncovered mine. Beep... beep... beep...

Froooom closed her eyes. A soft, high-pitched whine escaped her lips, climbing octaves with every passing beep. "Eeeeeeeek...!" It was part frustration, part resignation, and entirely adorable. Then the mine finished its countdown. The explosion bloomed out of the hole in a glorious pillar of smoke and fire, launching the shovel high into the sky. It landed point-first a couple of metres away, still vibrating. In the distance, an unbothered sheep lifted its head, blinked, and offered a flat, indifferent "Baaaaa..." to the tombstone shaped suspiciously like a oversized pickaxe.

Another perfect afternoon in the countryside.