Who would have ever thought Eliot House Dining Hall would be the stage of a dramatic Hollywood-style shootout? Well, last night Eliot Assassins wrapped up in a fashion that would've made Jason Bourne proud.
The finale pitted Alfredo E. Montelongo ’11, Julia C. Tartaglia ’11, Phoebe Kuo ’11, and William B. Peck ’12 against each other. (None of them, according to Tartaglia and Peck, had been involved in the controversial "break-in" that we told you about yesterday.) In an e-mail sent over the Eliot open list, Montelongo revealed everything that went down in this electrifying final round:
It started with Peck and his roommates waiting in the dining hall for Montelongo and Tartaglia to show up. Little did Peck know, the couple (Peck told us they're dating) was formulating what Montelongo called a "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" style battle strategy.
Tartaglia secretly “stunned” (Assassin-speak for squirting shooting and temporarily sidelining someone who is not your assigned target) Montelongo before entering the dining hall so that his assasination of her after they entered, in front of everyone, would be nothing more than a ruse. Tartaglia would later emerge from her pseudo-death to kill Kuo and Peck, just when they least expected it. Then Tartaglia and Montelongo would shoot each other at the same time to finish off the game in a spectacular tie.
But the strategy didn't work quite as planned. According to Montelongo's e-mail, the other contestants threw a wrench into the mix. Kuo, unaware that Tartaglia was "dead," attacked her anyway. Tartaglia managed to kill Kuo (her target) but ended up stunned. Peck (Kuo's, and now Tartaglia's, target), meanwhile, barricaded himself in the bathroom and refused to come out. “I hid so Alfredo couldn’t kill me," Peck said. "I wanted my friend, Brianne Corcoran, to keep the title of ‘Most Kills.'"
Eventually the chaos ended, and the competition resulted in a three way-tie between Peck, Tartaglia and Montelongo. Theatricals aside, Tartaglia and Peck said that they were both glad they participated in Assassins. “It was a fun ending to a stressful week and a great way to bolster House spirit,” Tartaglia said.
We at FlyBy admit that we're pretty impressed. This ending to a "just for fun" game of Assassins has left us a little breathless. Who said that the stereotype that Harvard students are intense isn't true?