Hello, I am back from a long recess writing Fanfiction for Code Lyoko. recently, after getting off from a two month long Graduation party and watching an hour and a half of prerecorded Season 4 on DVR, This story came to mind. I deciided to write about how the world would truly react to Xana, at the worst possible time and place for humanity.

This story, titled "The Good War" tells that story. It is told through the words and eyes of an anonymous mercenary, and how the Military that hired him reacts to a threat it is ill-prepared for, through the written words of a combat journal written on the battlefield.

This story could go either way. the gang isn't here, only Xana and the brave soldiers who must fight him in this story. I have a couple of more 'entries' to this journal on the way, but whether or not I write any more after that is up to how people react to this journal.

So here it is, the first entr to "The Good War."

8-9-08 I think, my watch is broken; I had to ask someone the time

If you find this, you don't need to know who I am. I'm just another soldier who's probably going to die before I finish writing out my story. Well maybe not another soldier. But I hope and pray that this document falls into the hands of someone that can use it to fight these goddamned things.

I don't know who-scratch that, what, they are, only that they came out of nowhere, more or less. Sadr City to be precise. I know that no one around here is safe, that we're all more or less cannon fodder for these-things. "I wish I had paid more attention to my Sunday school classes, looks like the Tribulation just arrived," or at least that's what the gibbering, god-fearing weekend soldier sitting in the bench next to me is saying. Lucky me, I never went to church.

I think I should start at the beginning. As I write this, The Army Reserve Unit-The 511th Mechanized I think-that I managed to hitch a ride with is in full retreat from the ruined capital of Iraq that was once the infamous city of Baghdad. I'm riding in a troop transport, one of the new armored ones that recently arrived. Much good it's doing us right now. Much good it did the 511th, they lost two platoons.

I can hear the sounds of rifle and mortar fire, and the occasional sound of a passing fighter squadron heading into what's left of the city. Usually they don't come back. We keep passing vehicles, horse pulled wagons, even handcarts, loaded down with brand-new refugees trying to escape the living hell that the city has become. Most of them are moving faster on foot. I have the sinking, awful feeling most of them aren't going to survive the to the next night at the pace things are going.

That's what Baghdad is now by the way, a proverbial wasteland. We tried to hold it as long as possible. I mean my former unit. About that, I should tell you a little about myself. I am, or was, a private contractor hired by the Americans to help foot security in the Green Zone, the only secure part of Iraq (Or that's what they say, it still got wailed on by mortars and car bombs.) I wasn't out on patrol that night when they came, I don't think anyone form my outfit that was out on patrol that night is still alive. From what I managed to put together from jumbled and garbled gibberish from that night, is that about five minutes before all hell broke loose, a large, black tower appeared, out of thin air, smack dab in the middle of Sadr City, the hellhole suburb/slum that was a nightmare to drive through. The one Yeah, sounds crazy. I'm correct, for the most part, I saw it myself, A black tower taller than the old Public Information Building. More or less, the sky was filled with smoke and obliterating any reference points.

Then about five minutes after it appeared, all hell broke loose. I literally mean all Hell. I recall hearing the clatter of the Kalashnikovs and sporadic mortar fire as I woke up. I heard and felt several large explosions as I rushed out of bed, grabbing my combat pack and rifle. The sound of C4 detonations and tank shells and volleys of SAW and M16 rifle fire as I rushed outside. The explosions and gunfire got real close, real quick, We tried to get on the radio and to the Green Zone GHQ only to find every channel crammed with frantic requests for reinforcements and screaming men describing only half-coherently robots and strange people attacking them and slaughtering them. And then we started hearing screaming on some of the channels, just horrifying, non-stop screaming.

I remember that night too well, my words all flood out at once. We were holed up in a Security Checkpoint on the western bank of the Tigris. Just south of one of the main bridges across through the city. Just north of the Green Zone. Smack dab in the middle of a favored target area for Insurgent mortars. About an hour after the shit hit the fan, I recall rushing out of the Communications bunker, a truck full of injured soldiers and civilians had just pulled in. I recall looking out across the dark river and seeing the whole of Sadr City lit up not by tracers or floodlights but by fire. Fire engulfing all of Sadr City and probably all of Baghdad east of the Tigris and probably all of Iraq for that matter. I just stood there, mesmerized, until my sergeant, (think he's dead, I'm not sure though) Told me that the order had come through from way up to start pulling out, that the city was lost.

Anything they may have heard about how modern cities couldn't burn, they were probably lying to you. Because in a night and a day I saw a whole city burn to the ground. A city that was called Baghdad. I know because I was driving through that city as it burned. (Funny thing about various combustibles mixed together: When ignited all at once, they can burn hot enough to melt steel foundations and heat up fast enough to shatter brick. Just an observation I made recently.)

I have been told that scattered American and Coalition units are regrouping in Basra, about Two hundred miles south-southeast of where we were when I started this first entry. There aren't any official death toll counts, but the general consensus is that we just lost more soldiers in a single night and day than probably the whole, so-called "War on Terror that the Americans claim to be fighting. There were about thirty thousand troops in Baghdad at any given time; I think maybe half made it out of the city that night. A good portion of those survivors are headed south-like us-in the general direction of the Persian Gulf. And Kuwait. Maybe the whole Occupation is pulling out. Washington's been looking for an excuse.

Another Squadron of jets just passed overhead going north. A-10's I think. About a dozen by the sound of it. I haven't heard any jets flying south for a few hours now They must have stopped surviving long enough to, well, survive. Or they're taking another route. We just passed a large convoy of refugees, heading in the same direction we are. They decided to get out early I think.

But there's one thing that's been bugging me. The Catholic sitting next to me mentioned something earlier, something that's been bugging me since, something I also heard over the radio hours earlier.

It was: "Shoot them through the eye when you see it, you'll know when you see them."

I don't know what that means; I guess I'll know when I see these robots.

That's a wrap. Short, by my standards, byt very sweet. Expect another installment in a week or two, as soon as I draft it.