In the town Thalon on the ninth night of the ninth month in the year two thousand and nine at house number nine on Ninth Street, a young boy of nine lay asleep in his bed. In the corner of this particular boy's room were two unusual glowing orbs of light unbeknownst to the boy.
In the silence of the room a tiny voice asked, "Is he the one?"
The second orb replied saying "Maybe, I still favor the one from Cornwall, but he seems to fit the ticket better."
"Why do you always need to put down my excitement?" the tiny voice hissed
"I do not!" The second orb boomed
"You do too!" The first orb screamed. If the two orbs had not been so busy arguing, they might have noticed the boy wake up before he grabbed the first orb.
"What are you?" the boy inquired of the orb as he closed his grip tighter around the small orb. Out of the corner of his eyes, a bright light shone and he watched as the orb that was free began to change. It grew arms, legs, and scraggly white hair. After the metamorphosis had completed, the creature looked almost like a normal boy.
"I would think it to be in your best interest to let her go now." The boy snarled. After the orb was freed, the orb changed form into an almost human girl with purple hair.
"H-hello, my name is Archie Sm-m-mith" Archie stuttered and the boy with the white hair groaned
"Hello Archie, I'm Caine and this is my sister Viatakey and by the way, I really hate stuttering." He said "We were sent by the Galactic Alliance Against Global Attacks to pick a worthy person, you, and help them defeat W.O.R.D, Weapon Of Ridiculous Destruction." Once Caine had finished, there was nothing but silence in the room until Caine spoke again
"Look, I know it is a lot to take in but we really are wasting time a- ouch!" his sister smacked him in the head
"Don't pressure him," she scolded him then she turned to Archie, "let it soak in."
Archie took a deep breath "Okay, when do we start?"
"Tomorrow, we've got to gather a couple friends and you need to explain to your parents that you are spending the night at your friend's house." Caine whispered
"Why?" Archie asked
"Don't worry about it; just meet us outside the forest tomorrow at 9:00am. Now go to sleep." Caine whispered before he and his sister turned back into glowing orbs and zipped out of the window.
The next day, Viatakey and Caine met Archie outside the forest and they brought friends with them. There was Butch, who looked like one of the professional wrestlers his brother watched on TV all the time.
"The one from Cornwall was better." He grunted to Isaac. Isaac was normal looking except for his spiked hair and upside down glasses
"Shut up Butch and go back to playing with your guns. Hey there Archie, I'm Isaac the brains of the operation. That's Butch our trained gorilla and weapons specialist"
Then a female's voice chimed in "And I'm Laura, the pyrotechnics specialists."
Caine groaned "I may vomit from all the warm and fuzzy feelings so for my health, may we move on with our plans? Good. Isaac, give Archie-boy the rundown."
"Alright Archie, we have nine hours to enter the ninth dimension and destroy W.O.R.D before it gets into your world and destroys everybody. The plan is simple: attack and destroy which will be easy seeing that the ninth dimension is tiny. Do you have any questions? No good we are leaving in nine seconds so get in the car and put on the backpack by your seat." When Isaac finished, Archie ran into the car and buckled up. The others got into the car, Caine pressed a button, a bubble surrounded the car, and in a flash they were gone.
Archie looked through his backpack to find a handgun, a flare gun, rope, and a framed picture of Elmo. They were walking through a cave that Isaac said would lead them directly to W.O.R.D.
"The tunnel runs directly under the Biret River and into the old plaque mine where we believe W.O.R.D" he explained to Archie once again as they made their way down the tunnel
"When you say plaque, you mean the stuff that gets on your teeth or the gold plate with writing engraved on it?" Archie inquired
"Neither, it's a form of radioactive crystal that won't harm us, but it will super charged W.O. weapons." Isaac explained
They made their way down the tunnel and as they went deeper and deeper into the tunnel, the moister the area around them became. When they reached a point where the ground was so moist that Archie's feet sank into the ground Caine stopped them.
"Alright, the mine is just up ahead, be sure not to shoot the ceiling because this whole place will be flooded in less than three minutes. Get out your weapons now and follow me."
They all pulled out their weapons and trudged forward into the belly of the beast. Archie found that W.O.R.D was not as bad as he expected to be, it was worse. W.O.R.D was a gigantic metal spider with large blades for legs and eyes that, Archie could only assume, shot lasers going by the scorch marks around the room.
"Right now it's dormant so Archie and I will go inside of W.O.R.D and manually shut it down while the rest of you stay here and if need be, engage W.O.R.D." Caine instructed everyone and led Archie underneath W.O.R.D
"How do we get in?" Archie asked
"Hand me your rope." Caine said and in one swift motion took the rope from Archie and used it to pull the hatch down "Start climbing."
The interior of W.O.R.D was nothing more than a large gray room with a chair sitting in front of a desk with three buttons on it. The man sitting in the chair was old and gray with a long gray beard and he spoke in two voices, a robotic voice and a voice of a normal man
"Hello Archie Smith, I've been expecting you for quite some time now."
"Y-you have?" Archie stuttered
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Do you know that W.A.R.D actually stands for Warrior Against Ridiculous Diseases?"
"Wait W.A.R.D? I thought it was W.O.R.D what's going on Caine?" Archie turned to Caine who was sneering at the man in the chair
"I'll tell you what's going on, that thing is trying to confuse you Archie. Do not listen to it."
The man in the chair grabbed Archie's shoulder and croaked out "Archie, the Galactic Alliance Against Global Attacks is actually the Galactic Alliance Against Global Assistance. The organization formed in the early 1900s when a large group of aliens from different planets saw earth as a threat and joined together. Instead of a full on attack on planet earth, they decided it would be a smarter idea to stop the other peaceful races from helping the humans. After many failed individual attempts, a small group of the peaceful races of aliens started to develop the machine you are standing in, which has a considerable amount of plaque, which can cure most diseases, on it in an attempt to foil the enemy's plans. There was a spy in our midst who told the Galactic Alliance about our plans who sent the group of agents you're with to destroy W.A.R.D."
Archie scratched his head in confusion "I still don't see how I figure into this."
The man sighed and shook his head "In order for W.A.R.D to transport to Earth or to be destroyed, a human needs to press that blue button to teleport or the green button to shut down W.A.R.D. It was a necessary precaution we took in order to better defend ourselves."
"Come on Archie are you seriously going to believe him?" Caine groaned
"He seems to be telling the truth Caine and people with your name don't have the best reputation."
Caine lowered his head and shook it "I've come too far to let some little kid stand in my way." he pull out a communicator and spoke into it "Open fire on W.A.R.D."
Archie felt the entire machine shake back and forth angrily. The man pressed the third button on the desktop that triggered the weapons. Archie was jerked back by Caine who walked up to the man.
"I would ask you to deliver a message but," he laughed "we both know I'm not going to give you the chance."
In an act of desperation, Archie reached into his backpack and threw the framed picture of Elmo at Caine who stumbled backwards over Archie and fell through the open hatch, dragging Archie with him. They impacted against the land and got up to face each other. Caine pointed a shotgun at Archie who held a flare gun in his hand.
"It's a shame that we couldn't be friends Archie, I like people who are smart and using the Elmo picture like that I must say I'm impressed." Caine laughed and shot at Archie who dove out of the way
"I don't think we could've been friends, I have this thing about friends being insane!" Archie exclaimed and dove again to dodge another shot from Caine's gun.
"I'm not crazy! I'm a visionary!" he screamed and shot at Archie who dodged the bullet yet again
"What's that your organization's motto?" Archie asked but immediately regretted it as Caine charged at him. Archie was terrified until and idea popped into his head. He pointed his gun upward and pulled the trigger. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks when the flare exploded against the ceiling and water started to pour into the chamber.
"You just doomed us all you idiot." Caine exclaimed and Archie laughed
"Nope just you." He pushed Caine over and ran to the rope and started climbing. He was almost to the top when a bullet whizzed over his head and snipped off a bit of the rope.
"Sorry Archie-boy if I go down, you're coming with me!" Caine exclaimed and readied his gun to fire again, when a huge gush of water consumed him. The rope Archie was hanging on began to tear more and more, and just when it was going to snap, a wrinkled old hand grabbed Archie and pulled him into the spider.
The man helped Archie up and pulled him to the desk "Quickly, quickly press the blue button before-," he was cut off by the water that started to flood into the room "Press the button NOW!" the man yelled and Archie complied pushing the blue button down and in a flash they were gone.
They reappeared at the outskirts of Archie's hometown in an explosion of metal and water. The metal scraps that once made up W.A.R.D lay around them in large puddles. Archie and the man sat there in silence until they both busted out laughing.
"We're alive!" The man screamed in delight as he looked around "And all the plaque has been destroyed."
They sat there laughing for a couple minutes and once they stopped, Archie looked over at the man "So what do we do now?"
The man shrugged "Want to go get some pizza?"
Archie shrugged "Sure let's go. I know a good place on Main Street." They got up and as they walked away chuckling at how normal everything seemed compared to the events of the past couple hours, neither of them noticed the crystals shimmering in the sunlight.
THE END