Disclaimer: I do not own anything that has to do with LOTR,

Notes: This is going to turn into LOTR's I promise, I just had to introduce my main guy :). Chapter two will explain a lot, this story modifies the story of lotr majorly by adding a new person the fellowship and the main plotline. He will help at defeat the Balrog, defend helms deep, face the ringwraiths and much more. I hope you enjoy my original story and idea. Book 1 of my trilogy: The Last Xion: The Third Age by Mark Sterrett

Prologue:

The Last Xion: The Third Age

The Last Xion

The helicopter rotor rumbling overhead echoing through the valley below, most likely alerting the enemy of our approach. This was no ordinary mission though, but a soldier has to do what he has to do. It was the first thing any good soldier has to learn, what he has to learn to be an effective killer...

Back a couple of years ago, I would have believed and done anything my commander told me to believe or do, because a soldier has to do what a soldier has to do. The red faces in front of me lit up by the ready light had no emotion, just the same look they had shown throughout battles long since past. The blackhawk swayed back and forth as the wind josseled the vehicle.

The man to my right named Yuri, a man about my height but with extreme dark black hair and black eyes, a man whose saved my ass and a man whom I have saved on an occasion, a man I've known for almost my entire career with the United States Secret Tactics and Operations Force also known as the clean up squad to the veterans of the squad, a man who was retiring after the mission was a success would be sorely missed by the entire squad. Yuri was the demolitions operative of our squad of twelve men, he had been doing operations since he was twenty-five, and that's saying a lot.

To be eligible for the clean up squad you had to be top of the line in almost every field you can think of. The United States government sends scouts to almost every single major high school to look for people that shine above the rest. Not even Delta force goes through the rigorous training that we have to go through, its almost a form of mind control. Six years of intense high level security training using forms of mind manipulation and the latest educational techniques. The ones that do not make it through the training end up in looney bins because of a complete brain shutdown. Out of a class of three hundred and ninety-one recruits, only about one forth of them make it to the end. The rest either transfer to a lower qualifying branch like delta force or leave the government completely to try and rebuild their lives.

Growing up, I graduated from Derby High school in Derby Kansas. The day I received my diploma a man came up to me and threw out his hand to greet my own. I returned the gesture and inquired as to who the man was, he simply replied "The names Luke". Little did I know why he had picked me out of the crowd, but eventually I would find out. He instructed me to show up at a unmarked building in the heart of Kansas city. Luke told me it was an opportunity of a lifetime and it couldn't be passed up, I wish now that I did. I arrived at a tall building with a blue taxi cab in front of it like Luke said there would be. I studied the inside as I walked in, their were no markings or anything visibly inside. I wondered what the deal was when the ground in front of me parted slowly revealing a stairway leading down in a spiraling curve. As I placed my foot on the first step, the room below was lit up in a blink of an eye revealing an elevator. I walked over to the stainless steel doors and hit the button, a tinkering hum could be heard from below as it lifted the platform. The doors opened to reveal a circular area with a small bench inside, I entered and the elevator automatically lowered. For what seemed like an eternity the walls in front of me moved upwards as I moved downward. As I reached the bottom, their were at least thirty other people their, ranging from whites to blacks, Hispanics to Asians. Every type of person in the world could be found in this one room, interestingly enough they just sat there looking at me probably thinking the same thing I was, "You too huh".

We all boarded the silver steel train that was sitting on the edge of the room, it wasn't like any train I have ever seen, the insides were meant just to hold us in our seats with no luxuries anywhere. Luke came out of the front of the cabin to look at who had shown up, he gazed at me for a moment then moved his gaze to the others as if to approve the group.

Luke opened his mouth and had a gesture on his face like he had just been laughing, "We will be leaving shortly, if anyone has doubts about this its not to late to catch the elevator to the surface." Luke turned around and punched a button on the wall revealing a cockpit with extremely high tech looking equipment, whoever these guys were they definitely had there hands on some money.

Kalebs eyes hit a couple others but nobody to my surprise sat up and left, it almost raised a smile to my face. I looked threw the window located in front of me to see the train start moving forward. The tunnel was dark, but lights lit the side every couple miles. The lights started going by faster and faster until it almost seemed as a light blur. The train was going at unheard-of speeds, I was getting nervous to say the least as were some of the others.

A couple minutes later the lights started flashing again notifying us that the train was coming to a halt. We arrived in a brightly lit room surrounded by men in white suits. I didn't know what to think, had we been chosen to undergo some sort of test or training. As soon as the first of the recruits stepped out of the train he was met with a bunch of white robes and escorted into a room to the right.

As we all exited the vehicle being scanned by weird devices and sent either left, front or right. The doors had letters marked on them directly above the handles, A for left, B for front and C for right. I was chosen to go threw door C after about a minute of scanning and prodding. I entered the door escorted by the white robes and was instructed to sit down next to a few men already seated.

Although I didn't know it at the time, Yuri was also in the room with me. Almost three hours later by the clock on the wall and a man in a black trench coat walked in holding a professional looking briefcase. The room looked like a classroom I had been in while in English, the front was littered with chairs and desks and the main desk was located in the direct center. The trench coat man walked to the front of the room and stood behind the desk scanning a his prey before he sat down. None of us knew what we were in for, but this trench coat man a.k.a. destroyer of lives was about to show us our destiny.

The man hit a couple buttons located at the front of his desk, causing a series of screens to be lowered from panels to the right and left of the man showing pictures of weaponry and unusual armor suits. He spoke in a clear and serious tone of voice stating that we had been chosen to participate in a top secret project code named Project STO.

We were chosen because we exhibited the brightest minds and most fit physique of our age group. If we were to proceed we would be sent to a boot camp located three hundred and twenty-four miles off the California coast line to an unmarked island. Of course being the ignorant cocky man I was back then I instantly wanted to be apart of it.

A month went by of tests and inoculations. I asked a couple times what the shots were for but they answered with the same thing each time, I'm on a need to know basis, and I didn't need to know. After the preceding tests some were chosen to go back home and some were chosen to stay and continue with the project. Yuri and myself were the only two men to make it out of C room, there were about forty other people that we saw walking to the train that would take us to the nightmares to come, Yuri and myself had become quite fond of each other. We shared many things in common, as our love of guns and cars. Just two average guys thrown into the twist of things thanks to Uncle Sam. I keep forgetting to thank him for everything he's helped me through.

When we arrived on the island we were instantly greeted with not more white robes, but men in camouflage uniforms, our "mothers" for the six years we would be there. I don't remember much of the training, all I can remember is the numerous times I had to go into a white room and put on special goggles that appeared to show nothing threw their lenses. Little did we know that it was a new technology that allowed the government to download programming into our heads like we were machines.

Six long years of programming taught us to be perfect killers, training in the most deadly of arts, the most stealthy of movement. The fastest way to kill a man was to lacerate his throat followed by a upward heave of the fingers in the jugular causing the neck bone to snap off the skull, all of it happening within a fraction of a second.

The latest innovation our dear uncle invented was the integration of nano technology into our battle suits. Our suits looked nothing like any Ops force anywhere. Our helmet was less than a inch thick and could stop a armor piercing round from a hundred feet away. It housed infrared and night vision sensors which were viewable threw a eye piece that lowers over the right eye, which also could be transferred into a map which satellites constantly update using infrared imaging to pinpoint the exact location of enemy soldiers and target friendlies to let us know not to shoot.

Our basic suit was a mixture of nano fibers and nano optics. The nano fibers acted as a secondary muscle set which enhanced our strength by almost two fold and increased our speed to up to twenty-six miles per hour. The nano optics were interlaced within each fiber and faced outward, nine mini camera's located on the back of the helmet relayed information to the suit which enabled you to almost perfectly blend into your environment. The battery for the suit was rechargeable two ways, one by the movements by your body releasing heat which the suit transfers to energy and the second way is by being in the sun which charges on two collectors located on your soldiers which looked almost just like shoulder pads. The suit was made to heat the body in cold temperatures and cool the body in extreme temperatures. Although its armor protection is no more than steal intertwined in the fabric it relies more on the users actions to protect it rather than its technological advances.

Every S.T.O. soldier was armed with a semi-automatic mini version of the m16. It was a much more advanced version in that its rounds were almost unhearable ripping threw the air at subsonic speeds, and its scope was wirelessly connected to the soldiers head gear. It made looking around corners much easier and safer.

By the end of training, my Russian friend Yuri and I had become good friends and never let each other down. By the time our first mission came up, Yuri automatically signed both of us up for it thinking it was time to test our abilities. The mission was simple, assassinate some European official, we didn't care what he did; a soldiers got to do what a soldiers got to do. We were on a need to know basis and we didn't need to know, so when we arrived in Paris and assassinated the man, I thought I would feel compassion but the only thing I felt was accomplishment...a sad thing for a person to feel.

Accomplishing my mission was the only thing in my mind, it was what they had fed to us for so many years. Nothing else matters, get the job done and get it done as fast as possible. Hundreds of missions went by, killing hundreds of individuals for the sake of accomplishing a mission and not a single shred of emotion filled my head. Sometimes I wondered if Yuri felt anything but I discarded the thought as soon as it came up, a soldier doesn't think about what somebody is thinking, a soldier must accomplish his mission. Those words would haunt me for the rest of my life.

A new mission was in the makings, the last mission of Yuri's career. We were to rescue a team of scientists studying some type of physics on an island located on the equator in the middle of the Pacific. Some terrorists decided that they wanted to technology for themselves and took the most brilliant minds the United States has to offer. Estimated time of arrival was around five minutes so I unhooked my two side arms and dislocated the magazines to make sure they were in perfect order. I had done this thousands of times before, but I didn't think it would hurt to do it again. The helicopter came to a halt and the door opened revealing a lush green jungle, the night air swarmed in and attacked our faces like a cloud of bee's stinging our faces with heat.

Each man jumped down and landed on the ground and silently and swiftly moved into a defensive position gun raised. I was the second to last out of the chopper, the last being Yuri. I hit the ground the nano fibers kicking in cushioning the landing to a small strain on my legs. I moved into the forward position telling the alpha team to move ahead while the bravo team take the right flank.

Four teams of three men struck out into the jungle heading for the compound located in the center of the island. Charlie and Delta teams led by me and Yuri flanked the left and would lay down suppressive fire if Alpha encountered any resistance. As the teams moved up, I signaled for the teams to activate infrared and camouflage. The teams became one with the jungle, each as ferocious as a rabid wolf in a room full of sheep. The infrared picked up two terrorists outside the compound heading for the southern shack, they would run into Bravo if their path was constant. Charlie and Delta moved forward moving with swift and silent footsteps, the door suddenly opened and a single terrorist came out gun lowered at his side. I signaled Yuri and his team to take the flank and move into fire position while Delta moved to the side of the building to lay a trap for the rest of the terrorists.

The man walked out into the clearing lighting a cigarette and gazing at the stars above, I trained my gun on his right arm and released a bullet from its metal shell inside the guns chamber causing it to tear directly into the mans arm almost ripping it off. The man screamed in pain and about twenty men came running out of the compound and Yuri gave the order to commence firing. With almost perfect timing Bravo and Alpha had advanced up to the forest edge and began firing into the frantic men. The terrorists fired randomly into the jungle not knowing where its attackers were hidden.

A bullet bounced off my helmet but didn't phase me from my train of thought. A second later the last of the terrorists fell to the ground, body limp. Yuri instructed his squad to move inside and secure the prisoners while Alpha and Bravo would set up the landing beacon for the blackhawks to pick them up. Delta and Charlie decided it best to locate the backdoor of the building and enter threw there.

We found almost no resistance inside the building besides a couple ak-47 armed men with something to prove. Yuri's squad stumbled upon the experiment room where supposedly top secret projects were going on. We didn't care, we just needed to get the mission done. Charlie and Delta both entered the experiment room expecting large resistance but only found a single tied up scientist. Yuri rushed to untie the helpless man, when unplugged the scientist began talking as fast as he could.

The man was in afraid of something, kept saying dimensional rift overload over and over. Yuri tried to make out what he was saying and tried to calm him down.

The scientist began talking in plausible words, "They activated the Dimensional Rift Accelerator!" Yuri tried to ask him what it was and what it did but the man kept repeating it over and over. I could tell it was bad but I didn't know how to proceed. I picked the man up and started escorting him out of the building, he instantly lunged out of my arms and for once spoke in clear understandable words, "You don't understand, its going to destroy the universe! It can't be stopped!".

Yuri rushed over to the man and lifted him off the ground and threw him onto the wall, "Tell us what it does or we leave you here."

I had never seen Yuri act so violently and emotionally, the scientist started explaining how the machine was made to target locations on the Earth and revert them to a time when it was plush with jungle and life. It was a super weapon that turned back time, and it was going to go off.

Yuri held him tighter, "How do we turn it off!"

The scientist instructed Yuri that they couldn't, that the terrorists had done something to it...changed it somehow. It wasn't going to revert the planet back in time, it was going to shift everything in a jumbled mix-match of clutter. Yuri looked and me and I knew what he was thinking, he had enough explosives on him to blow the complex sky high.

It took less than twenty minutes to jury rig the machine which was now on a countdown from five minutes. The team evac'd the compound with the lifeless bodies of forty-some scientists. The blackhawks came down along with a chinook and the team started loading everything up.

The timer was now at less than thirty seconds, Yuri began to close the hatch as the scientist they had found lunged forward and exited the vehicle and ran towards the compound. Yuri ran after him followed by me, they would need to evac in less than twenty seconds if they would make it in time.

They entered the experiment room to see the scientist in the cradle position on the ground crying. Yuri grabbed him and dragged him out of the room easily.

Then a call came threw the headset on both their gears, "Nuclear detonation in ten seconds." HQ had overheard the entire mission and decided it was best to nuke the site with its men still on ground.

Yuri looked at me and I did the same, they had abandoned us and would cover it up. The machine lit to life in the other room and a white light broke there the wall and door enveloping both of the men. I had thoughts of my life flashing threw my head all at once, I had guessed I was dying but something didn't feel right, not like dying. A second later a huge explosion could be heard overhead then my entire view faded from white to black.