With rapidity we discovered, o holy parental beast, that The Balloon was a vast malignant nemesis vying with great elan to scuttle to the top of our rogues' gallery, as with heinous ire and ferocity he led his deadly Balloon Army against our undermanned and napless gang of frazzled rebels. We were also wholly underprepared for the melee at hand, as none of our armaments were equipped with so much as a sharp point; for our mothers, in their grandiloquent wisdom and nervous worrying, had seen fit to arm us only with rounded tips and invisible weapons made animate through our collective imaginations, each bazooka and warhead more hulking than permissible by physics. Deadly as they were in our military scrimmages, invisible bloodbaths of chestclutching and reeling to the pinestraw, lifeless for sixty seconds or fewer if no one was looking, against the behemoth facing us these munitions were as otiose as real arms in an invisible war. The Balloon squeaked its orders and we were quickly surrounded, the sky appearing as lunatic shades of green and pink and orange and yellow and all tertiary colors therewith. Not in the most foxed and torn comicbook had any of us seen the likes of so vicious an enemy, so harsh its intent, a bloodlust against which our small band of fighting forces would quickly be o'ertaken, lest some deus ex found some miraculous way to swoop in or burrow from underneath, a gang of sentient heroic moles with their electric digging device and a supercolossal grudge against The Balloon and his drooling, wicked minions. All hope, mister sir, was lost. There was, seemingly, no other way out.