For the next three weeks, assassins will lurk outside classes and stake out homes in hopes of picking off another agent in the Gainesville Street Wars.
These agents aren't armed with pistols or rifles, but with water guns. Each student or Gainesville resident has another agent as a target. The competition began Wednesday and two agents were already assassinated by 7 p.m.
Each agent receives a target's name, picture, address and workplace, along with a fun fact. When an agent is attacked with a water gun or water balloon, he or she is eliminated from the game and is required to give his or her target's information to the assassin.
Then the victorious assassin has a new target. Before the game began, each of the 68 registered agents paid $2. The sum goes to the person who kills the most participants.
Gainesville Street Wars was started by three friends, who modeled it after an internationally popular role-playing game called Assassin. Daniella Otálora, one of the founding members, discovered the game on a Web site.
"I linked the site to my friend James, and we were like, 'Let's organize it,'" Otálora said.
This is the third round of the Gainesville Street Wars. The first was held in the summer of 2008 and had 40 participants.
Andy Lievertz, who is organizing this year's War, wants to hold another game in the winter.
"It's a very unusual sort of clandestine and 'Mission Impossible' game," he said. "It's not something we get to do every day."
Participants take the game as seriously as assassins do in the movies. During the fall game someone told David Halford, the former runner-up, that his assassin planned to kill him at his house. Halford's two roommates dressed in head-to-toe scrubs, including scrub caps and surgical face masks. Halford then hid in his car, waiting for his assassin to arrive.
The plan worked.
The confused killer shot his roommates, thinking one of them was Halford and the other was a decoy. Halford then jumped out of his car and shot his assassin, which, according to the rules, did not allow her to pursue him for 24 hours.
The game includes a few wrong moves that could lead to elimination. Agents cannot be killed in class, at work or in places of worship.
Jorge Suarez, who won the fall game with three assassinations, said he is confident he will win this year, but he cannot reveal his methods.
"I can't discuss, but there's definitely a new trick," he said.
