A/N: this is just a story me and my friend wrote up while bored in class. Read on, it gets better. Just for a laugh, nothing too serious. Enjoy!
Steven Pimpernickle was sitting by a peculiar tree, which seemed to be sprouting glue sticks. He was sitting on a deserted island, among coconuts and trees. He was busy watching a lifeboat go by in the middle of the ocean, when an ATM floated by and started paying out cheese… tasty mozzarella cheese. He began to feel hungry and so started eating the cheese when he came across a big guitar which seemed to be winking at him. He stared and began to think – not for the first time that day - he was going mad. Suddenly a giant emergency flare signalled from afar and a sign plastered with alarming stickers appeared in front of him, like a mirage. He wondered where the fog came from, but went towards the sign anyway. When he got there, he saw a large, dead, reptilian creature's body spread all over the floor beneath the sign, so he put the body parts onto the guitar and carried them off through the jungle behind him.
Steven Pimpernickle woke up in a daze, facing a huge castle. It took him a little white to come to terms with the fact that he was not, in fact, on a deserted island, but in the harsh icy terrain of the Antarctic. Wind whipped at his face as he attempted to stand, the force of the wind threatening to knock him over.
Steven was a member of the United States Marine Corps, the USMC. Due to this fact, he always carried with him an Armalite Maghook – the trademark weapon of the USMC, which he now pulled out of its holster and shot up into the amazing tower of ice in front of him. Generally, Maghooks were used on metal, as they had a magnetic attachment on the end, but they also doubled as a normal grappling hook. The Maghook and shot up the vertical ice tower and clamped onto the 'roof'.
The ice tower in question was actually a secret base in which the USMC was using to train some of the up-and-coming young Marines. Steven was one of these Marines. He had arrived in the Antarctic two days previously and had trekked through the harsh terrain with the rest of his unit. They had been dropped via helicopter in what seemed a completely random position and told to navigate their way to the 'ice tower'. That was until the danger struck. His unit had felt no need to set up a watch, seeing as the only other living things sharing the icy island with them were penguins and the senior Marines which had travelled with them to run the intense training. This was a mistake. During the first night of camp, they were attacked. Silently and swiftly. Professionally. Steven had concluded that the attackers were some sort of armed force – 'obviously not Marines,' he thought, 'perhaps the SEALs?' He didn't care too much at this moment however; he was more interested in reaching the icy tower before the attackers inevitably chased him down. He pushed the 'reel in' button on his Maghook and began his ascent. Once on the roof, he saw a bunch of what could only be soldiers dressed from head to tow in white. The men stood shocked for a moment – but only a moment before they pulled out a peculiar looking weapon and started shooting. It was only when one of the arrows caught in Steven's chest plate that he realised what the weapons were – crossbows – the unofficial trademark weapon of the French! Steven reacted as he had been trained – quickly - by shooting his (now reeled in) Maghook straight through the lead French guy's head. The second man stopped immediately and Steven was rather proud of himself, 'must be my intimidating charm,' he though arrogantly. It was only when he realised that the French men were now staring directly behind him that he realised something was wrong. He whipped around and found himself staring into the eyes of a huge reptilian creature.
"Reese!!!" Steven had no time to react as the Frenchmen screamed and ran in the opposite direction, with the apparent 'Reese' chasing after them.
After a few moments of silence, Steven looked around – he found a small trapdoor in the roof which he jumped down, knowing that underneath was the training complex the Marines had built especially for ice-survival training. He tried to get his mind off the reptilian creature but couldn't help wondering about the very same reptilian creature from his dream… 'Of course, it had been dead in my dream,' he mused. But this didn't stop him being amazed by what he saw when he jumped through the trapdoor. It was practically a huge iceberg with the inside carved out, the result – an enormous cavernous room, freezing cold and completely secure. Until now. All around him there were a mixture of Marines and other soldiers, fighting. Steven couldn't figure out, at first, whom was fighting whom, until he saw one of the soldiers who defiantly didn't work for the SEALs. One of the men wasn't a man at all. He was at least 7 foot and had massive horns sticking out the side of his head. Three of the soldiers – from what Steven could see they were each from a different country – were battling against the huge creature. As he continued to look around he saw many strange creatures – more of the horned monsters and other crazy things – there was even a little, completely white creature with a huge egg shaped head, running around yelling something about it not being the right time. Three letters were all that came to Steven's mind, 'wtf?'
Steven saw someone he recognised – a rather large woman with a fully shaven head.
"What the hell's going on Mother?!!" It wasn't because the bald woman was his parental figure that he had called her 'Mother', this was her call sign, short for a word which peculiarly rhymed with 'mother trucker'. She was one of the senior Marines that had accompanied the trainees on the 'mission'.
"Hey there Stevo! Um, in answer to your question, well, maybe we should talk about this later!" She answered as she spun around and shot a particularly nasty piece of work through – what Steven assumed was – its head.
"What are these things?" He attempted to yell above the noise, Mother replied in a calm voice as she continued on, killing more monsters as she went. "Well, the humans are a mix – some Marines, some SAS and some French, and before you ask I have no idea why they're here or how they got here. As for the obviously non-human beings, well, we're still working on that." She turned to Steven and smiled.
"Marines, the SAS and the French." Steven repeated, dazed. Mother looked at him, wary. She saw his eyes change colour, from their original green to a horror-movie black. As his eyes changed colour, so did Steven and Mother knew there was no going back.
"Shit!" Mother whispered as she took out her gun and shot Steven between the eyes. "Sorry Stevo," she said quietly. She turned around and saw Scarecrow standing behind where Steven once stood.
Scarecrow was the call sign of another of the senior Marines caught up in the current mess. His real name was Shane Schofield, and he was one of Mother's closest friends, having been on many missions with her, most of them turning out to be more than either one had bargained for.
"Jesus, this is getting way out of hand, Mother," Scarecrow said slowly, diverting the mayhem around him.
"Tell me about it," Mother said sarcastically, shooting one of the monsters that had been about to zap Schofield from behind with her gun.
"Follow me," Scarecrow said simply and walked determinedly left, heading towards a small office-like area him and the other senior Marines had set up while the trainees had been on their trek. Libby 'Fox' Gant was already in the room, reloading weapons and occasionally typing something into a laptop computer on the small desk. She turned and Scarecrow and Mother walked in and aimed her gun on instinct.
"Whoa there tiger, it's just us," Mother said.
"Come into the light," Libby said evenly, "let me see your eyes."
They did so and Libby cautiously looked into the pair's eyes. "I swear, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown if this goes on any longer," she said resignedly as she sat back down, convinced that Mother and Scarecrow were who they said they were.
"Hopefully it won't go on much longer," Schofield said as he sat down in a seat next to her.
Unfortunately for them, it did. The fighting lasted hours – Mother, Gant and Schofield occasionally joining in, using the office as a sanctuary.
They had come to the agreement that the story had gone like this…
The 'aliens' (the only way they could plausibly explain the tall horned men – well, it was at least more plausible than Mother's 'goatman' suggestion…) had come down to Earth for some reason and the SAS and the French had found out about it beforehand. The SAS/ French had obviously come to Antarctica in attempt to try and head the other countries off and become the first country in history to succeed in discovering alien life. This extremely far-fetched plan seemed to have backfired, the aliens being a little more well-equipped and intelligent than the humans gave them credit. And so the fighting had begun.
This was, at least, what the three Marines had assumed. And there was an awful lot of assumption going round.
Gant was busy with a reptilian beast. She had worked out so far that it had a tail a bit like a scorpion might and that if you touched, you were gone. She ducked under its swiftly moving tail just in time. It was then that one of the little white men pointed his little white gun at the reptile and fired. The gun shot out a brilliantly white beam of light and, in an instant, the beast was dead.
"Umm, thanks?" Gant said to the little white man.
"That is alright," said the man in perfect English. "Follow me," he added.
Gant followed him, not because she trusted his judgement, but because she simply had no other reasonable option. He lead her to the office, were Mother and Schofield were recuperating. Schofield whipped his gun out as Gant said, "Don't, he just saved my life."
Schofield slowly lowered his weapon, eyeing the little white man suspiciously. The little white man said, "I am Selexin, and I apologise for the inconvenience our region of the galaxy has imparted upon you." All three of the Marines looked at him, utterly astonished. He continued, "You, see, it was not supposed to happen again for some time. The contest I mean. I'm not sure whether it was supposed to happen again at all! But alas, I believe that the unspoken agreement of peace throughout the galaxy has finally been broken. By whom, I am not sure."
He said all of this very informatively. Gant pinched herself, only to find that she was, in fact, awake. "Ok,' she said. "Ok."
"I think what she means to say," Schofield began, "is what the fuck?"
And so Selexin went on to explain about how every so often (or every so not-often) a contest of sorts was 'played' throughout the galaxy. About how the last contest had been on Earth, in New York, to be exact. About how a representative from all of the different species of the galaxy had competed and about how the last being to win had been a human by the name of Swain. He also discussed how lately, the universe had been somehow disturbed, by what Selexin could not tell them. But he could tell them that the way in which many of their comrades had 'turned' (when their eyes had changed to black) they were being controlled by a higher power.
The Marines still didn't quite understand, but they knew enough. For now.
They exited the office cautiously. It seemed that a lot of the fighting had been finished. There was the occasional sound of gunfire in the distance or a fragmentation grenade being launched. Just then, a man whipped around the corner, gun blaring. One of the bullets his Gant's ankle, and, without missing a stride, Schofield picked her up and ran on with her in his arms.
They ran down to a contraption called a diving bell and hopped inside. The diving bell was a smallish circular room in which could be lowered into the water below the ice, in the fashion of a submarine. Safe inside and away from any unwanted enemies, Scarecrow lowered Gant and bent down to inspect her bullet wound. Her ankle was shattered, but the bullet passed right through, so he ripped the sleeves of his shirt and bandaged it as well as he could. Gant looked very pale. Scarecrow was worried about her. In a pressurised environment like the diving bell, falling unconscious would be a guaranteed death trap. Suddenly, somebody from outside the diving bell began smashing on the door.
"Scarecrow, it's us!!" somebody yelled.
Mother opened the door and two men tumbled inside, quickly shutting the door behind them. Their names were Jack Station and James Winter, other Marines in Antarctica for the training course.
"I honestly didn't think any of you guys would still be here," Scarecrow said. "It was tough enough for us."
Station and Winter grinned. This was one hell of a compliment from the most enigmatic lieutenant in the USMC.
Mother started updating the two on what had just happened. Slowly, Fox's head begun to lull to the side; she was slipping into unconsciousness.
A/N: Review please! Oh, and to all of those reading this who haven't read any Matthew Reilly, you probably won't understand any of this and may as well stop now. Unless you liked it, in that case please read on! To all of those who have read Matthew Reilly, don't pay much attention to the detail enjoy our crazy imagination! (Note, we are utterly obsessed with Antarctica, ever since Ice Station...)