Author's note:Yay, first anonymous review reply of the entire story!

None: Consider it done.

On another note I'm surprised so many people added this story to their favorite's list within a few weeks of me posting it.

You guys are awesome!

Not quite as awesome as my reviewers though…

Anyways, its worth noting that this chapter is more of a chapter 1.5 then a second chapter because it's centered around a different character and Chell is only briefly mentioned.

You will never guess who I picked as the main character, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Special thanks to my editor/beta reader Cuddles_the_destroyer who wrote almost as much for this chapter as me.

Bet you can't guess who wrote which parts, I'm not even sure at this point

On with the story!


In an alpine forest, somewhere in mountains, the sounds of animals could just be heard over the whirring of machinery from the nearby water purification plant.

The tranquility of nature was suddenly interrupted, not by one of the many engineers and assorted personnel present in the nearby water purification plant but by a sudden flash of blue light followed by the scream of a man in a purple shirt and spiked collar suddenly appearing from thin air and falling to the ground eight feet below.

The man's head smacked against a rock as he landed and he fell unconscious.

Hours later, the man awoke and staggered to his feet. He was clutching his head, the sounds of the forest only serving to intensify his massive headache.

"Ugh, my head, what did I do last night?" muttered the man in the purple shirt, Gary, while looking around the small clearing.

This was definitely not the hideout.

And his idiot associates where nowhere to be seen.

That's when Gary realized why he wasn't at the base and his buds weren't around.

"I'm going to kill that bitch" shouted Gary while kicking a nearby tree and stubbing his toe. Gary's violent outburst once again completely shattered the quiet serenity of the natural environment, and could be heard from miles away.

One such location was the water purification plant, which held a garrison of trigger happy mercenaries working to secure and lock down the area, already on alert because various occupants had reported seeing a blue flash of light earlier.

These soldiers immediately jumped into the various jeeps haphazardly parked across the purification plant, and rather then drive through the purification plant's reinforced gate in an orderly single file convoy and give Gary a chance to escape, the mercenaries opted to drive straight through the barbed wire fence, creating their own gates, the manly way.

Most other tires would have been shredded by the wire, but Redmond had requisitioned Mann Co. tires for the jeeps, which did not even get scratched.

Gary, ever the observant individual with over five hundred hours of experience avoiding apprehension from the police under his belt, decided that the lady wearing orange was not a priority and immediately ran up the mountain, deeper into the forest.

Unfortunately for Gary, a jeep can travel faster than a runner, even in a thick forested terrain.

Fortunately for Gary, his pursuers were incompetent idiots.

The lead Jeep immediately crashed into a rather obscenely large Sequoia tree growing and minding its own business. Since it was a Mann Co. Jeep, it exploded on contact with the tree, turning it - the tree, four mercenaries, another jeep with four additional mercenaries in it, and a squirrel - into vapor and bits of matter.

Gary mistook this explosion as a rather large grenade, which stemmed from a botched casino robbery in New Vegas seven years earlier, and reacted the same way he had back then.

Running the hell away and not looking back.

This plan was not nearly as effective as it had been last time, because last he was being chased by few armed cops through a city he knew like the back of his hand, rather than nearly forty jeeps through an unfamiliar forest.

Seeing a promising looking thicket, Gary dived through a large clump of bushes…

And landed in a large sandy beach bordering a massive lake.

The Jeeps immediately surrounded Gary before soldiers wielding M-16/203s jumped out and pointed there weapons at the intruder wearing purple.

Realizing he was caught, Gary raised his hands behind his head, and dropped down to his knees, a position he was all too familiar with.

Normally though he would have a squad of snipers hiding somewhere nearby to take out his opponents when they least expected it.

A sergeant climbed out of the back of one of the jeeps flanked by two grunts and approached Gary.

Gary noticed all the soldiers were clad in red and all their equipment had red decals for some reason. Gary immediately assumed they where apart of the recently resurgent communist party.

He hoped they did not realize that he was the one who sank one of their primary economic sources off the coast of the Horn of Africa a year ago or that he was the one responsible for killing off over half their leadership in a different event.

His attention was brought back to the present when he was jabbed in the side by a red-clad grunt carrying an M-16 with an M203 mounted grenade launcher. Behind the private was a rather boisterous looking sergeant, who smirked at Gary. "You're trespassing on company property," muttered the sergeant, poking Gary's chest. "Wearing Blue, no less."

Gary blinked before he voiced his realization. "So you're not commies, then." said Gary before adding matter-of-factly. "You're just idiots with assault weapons. For the record, I'm clearly wearing purple."

There was a few moments of silence before the sergeant processed what Gary had said. "FUCK YOU, LEAGUE SCUM!" shouted the sergeant, while simultaneously drawing his M1911 from its holster.

Just as the Sergeant was about to shoot Gary, the sound of helicopters filled the air and everyone turned the attention to the mountains to the east where the sounds originated from.

The noises grew louder as dozens of Mi-8 Soviet Transport Helicopters came into view from behind the mountains. Half of these helicopters altered their course to the water purification plant, and the other half approached the caravan of jeeps.

As the helicopters drew closer the soldiers started to notice little details about these new arrivals.

Like purple insignias painted on each side of the helicopters.

And the side mounted M134 7.62 mm, multi-barrel heavy machine guns or "Miniguns" trained on their positions by soldiers.

These soldiers were also wearing purple.

Gary used the distraction the helicopters had created to slip out of the circle of red soldiers and hide in a small ditch in the bushes he had crawled through earlier.

Just as he got settled in, the helicopters arrived and opened fire on his former captives.

Unlike the red mercenaries, these strangers in purple were among the best marksmen in their class. Of course, marksmanship is really just an ancillary skill for the minigun, which works like a laser pointer, but far deadlier.

When the guns started to shoot, every visible person on the ground was guaranteed to be dead unless they were made of steel or the miniguns shot confetti.

All Gary could hear during the battle was the roar of minigun fire and screams of pain. Somebody's shredded arm landed on his face at some point of the battle.

Soon after the helicopters started shooting no one in red was left intact.

Two helicopters hovered over the clearing before dropping rappel ropes and allowing ten soldiers in purple uniforms to slide down into the clearing before flying to the purification plant.

Their faces were hidden under helmets as they combed the clearing shooting the occasional survivor, who usually was missing an assortment of limbs instead of simply being dead.

Gary decided that he would rather be somewhere else and slowly crawled away from the clearing into the forest he arrived through.

His foot crushed a stick, and a timid snapping sound obliterated the oppressive silence of the clearing.

The soldiers immediately turned to face Gary, who found himself surrounded before he could even stand.

"Got another one, wearing purple like us!" shouted one of the troops as he bashed at Gary with the butt of his gun.

A solder muttered into his helmet about a background check before exclaiming "He's not a part of any of our squads.

"Probably a civilian then, guys. Notwinsky, You know protocol." stated a third soldier, a sergeant, with finality in his tone.

The other solders began walking back to the clearing as the last soldier forced Gary to a kneeling position.

"Thanks for clearing those dumbass mercs outta' Gorge for us kid, you saved us a good fifteen minutes by getting them out in the open like that. You should know that while your unwitting service was helpful we are not looking for any new members. Good bye."

Before Gary could even react a bullet was lodged in his squishy brain.

To Gary, everything was dark, and his story was over.

But Chell's story, it is just beginning.


Authors note: So all-in-all Gary had a very bad day.

If you can already guess where the plot was going from here cut yourself a slice of cake and tell me in a review.

Chapter was late because the editor and I received Minecraft at the same time.

We are sorry.

As an apology, from now on this story will update on every other Monday

Yay, regular updates!

Editor's Note: What she said. The saying that comes to mind is "I had a future, now I have Minecraft." I also have a veritable assortment of other video games that have distracted me, such as (in order of procrastination over the past 3 weeks or so): Age of Empires, Mass Effect 2, and Battlefield 2. That and education, which has been put on hiatus for now since the teachers at my school would have struck if they had to work past the 2nd week of June. I shall keep up with the deadline because if I do not, Zanna-chan will kill me and burn down my residence, and I like my stuff and being alive, so deadline it is, then!

But enough of that.

Positive Ratings or I blow up Florida (at Zanna-chan's behest).

Authors note: No he wont. All reviews are awesome.