So, due to insomnia and a large amount of caffeine, I can't get to sleep, so I decided to update my other crack fic. This time...
"The Champion for Hogwarts, is..." Headmaster Dumbledore paused, and furrowed his brow. Around him, the students assembled in the Great Hall watched with baited breath. Dumbledore held the paper up and peered closely at it, as if he couldn't believe his eyes.
"A-hem, the Champion for Hogwarts, is Spartan B-312!" He declared.
As one, the entire class turned to look at the figure sitting at the far end of the Gryffindor table. Clad from head-to-foot in slate-grey armor, complete with a sealed helmet, the young man showed no sign that he'd even heard the Headmaster's announcement. The entire school waited for a few seconds, before Dumbledore cleared his throat.
"Mr.-" He paused, even when the young man had arrived at school many years ago, two feet shorter and even then clad in his insulating cocoon of metal and ceramic, he couldn't believe that anyone would have a last name as ridiculous as that. He mentally shrugged; wizards did do some fairly bizarre things. "Mr. B-312, please join the other champions.
Silently, the Spartan stood up and walked with silent grace towards the head table. Even as a kid, he'd always been a loner, and the fact that no one had ever seen his face hadn't helped. In fact, he never even took his helmet off to eat! No one even knew why he came to the Great Hall at mealtimes, because all he did was stick a straw up under his helmet and drink whatever was available. According to the Gryffindor boys, he didn't even take the armor off to shower!
As he drew level with the table, the Spartan turned his mirrored visor towards Dumbledore, and somehow he knew that the young man was staring him right in the face.
"You're going to regret this." He said in a soft, deep voice.
The First Task...
"And now!" Dumbledore's voice, magically amplified, boomed out to the entire crowd. "Mr. B-312 will enter the arena, and face his dragon!"
The crowd, safe in the heavily warded stands ringing the massive, boulder-strewn arena, cheered and looked towards the tent. A minute passed, and then another, and another, as the applause slowly died down to give way to murmurs of confusion.
"Uh, Mr. B-312, would you please enter the arena?" Dumbledore said, his voice betraying a hint of uncertainty.
In response, there came an echoing crack, and the Hungarian Horntail's massive head evaporated into a bloody red mist. The crowd screamed in shock and Dumbledore cursed a blue streak before belatedly canceling the sonorous charm on himself, looking sheepish. Five minutes later, Spartan B-312 came striding into the arena through the tent, holding a massive muggle sniper rifle, and calmly retrieved the golden egg from where it lay besides the dragon's rapidly cooling corpse.
"Was this supposed to be difficult?" he asked quietly, although his voice seemed to reach every part of the stands.
The crowd went wild with applause.
The Yule Ball...
"And now, Champions, and their, uh-" Professor McGonagall said, glancing at the pair of Spartans clad in heavy armor at the back of the formation. Spartan B-312 had invited a friend from out of town. Her armor was a light blue color, and slimmer, more feminine than his. She also had a robotic prosthetic replacing her right arm. "-Partners will enter the Great Hall."
The assembled champions and their dates walked in through the double doors, pausing as a bright flash illuminated them.
"You told me there wouldn't be any cameras." B-312 whispered to his head of house as he walked in with Kat on his arm.
"Yes, well, you told me you were going to wear something nice!" She replied as the couple stopped to have their picture taken. The transfiguration professor sighed. This is going to be a long night.
The Second Task...
As the other two champions dove into the lake, Spartan B-312 merely held up his left wrist and began tapping on the glowing blue computer screen located there.
"Um, Mr. 312?" Ludo Bagman asked, walking up beside him. "What are you doing?"
"Fulfilling the Task." Was the curt reply.
"Uh, then why aren't you in the water?"
The Spartan cocked his head, and folded his arms across his chest. "Look, am I right in saying that my hostage is Kat –the one I went to the ball with?" It was a rhetorical question; really, his motion-tracker already knew that she was at the bottom of the lake.
"Well, yes."
"And since you probably put her is some sort of magical coma," Bagman nodded, and the nearby audience leaned in closely to listen. "Well, I just told her armor to inject a massive amount of stimulants into her system, with any luck she'll be waking up right about-"
Suddenly a huge dark shape broke the surface of the lake, flew through the air, and landed at B-312's feet. It was a merman, the angry red outline of a large fist still visible on his left cheek.
"Now." The Spartan finished calmly, as if injured merpeople often landed at his feet.
Seconds later Kat, her armor dripping with water, burst from the lake herself and landed next to B-312.
"Why you motherfucking-" She swore for ten minutes straight, becoming ever more creative as she went on, including discussing how the tournament organizers' mothers must have performed anatomically impossible acts with hordes of grunts, elites, and hunters, and how their fathers must not have had more than two brain cells to rub together, and threats to do... unspeakable things to each and every one of them with an unloaded sniper rifle.
B-312 looked up at the men and women at the top of the stand, who had grown ever-paler throw Kat's rant, and spoke one word to them.
"Run."
The Third Task...
B-312 dove around the corner and leveled his assault rifle. The stunned sphix barely had time to blink before it was perforated in a hail of lead. Running passed the still-twitching corpse; the Spartan slammed a fresh magazine home and consulted the mini-map in his heads-up display. He was getting close to the cup. He rounded one more corner as stopped in shock. Blocking his path was what appeared to be a large, mutated scorpion, with a pale, off-white shell, too many legs, and a massive, disproportionate stinger.
B-312 had heard rumors about Hagrid's blast-ended Skrewts from classmates actually taking Care of Magical Creatures, but he'd never actually seen one. If his intel was good, then the were slow, but heavily armored, and could shoot fire from both ends-
His eyes widened within his helmet and he dove to the side as a jet of flame roared through where he'd been standing. Turning his shoulder towards the ground, he turned the dive into a combat roll and came up firing his assault rifle on full auto at the slowly advancing thing. As he'd expected, it didn't do anything but piss it off and waste sixteen shots. Hefting his gun with one hand, the Spartan primed a plasma grenade and tossed it directly in the Skrewt's path. After a couple of seconds, it detonated, sending the abomination flying end-over-end. Luckily for the Spartan, it landed on its back, legs flailing helplessly in the air. B-312 quickly ran over, stomped his boot on the thing's tail just below the stinger, and emptied the rest of his magazine into the Skrewt's relatively soft underbelly, splattering him with green blood and ichor.
Inserting another magazine into his assault rifle, B-312 tore around the corner, and beheld the glowing, golden Triwizard Cup a few hundred meters away. Spartan Time kicked in, and he took off in a full-on sprint towards the cup, his feet kicking up massive clods of earth and grass as he ran. Dimly, he noticed a flash of light as he ran passed a champion, but paid it no mind. In under two seconds he'd reached the cup and grabbed it firmly with one gloved hand.
Then with a jerk behind his abdomen, the Spartan vanished.
The Graveyard...
Still under the influence of Spartan Time, when B-312 hit the ground he immediately ducked and rolled behind the nearest piece of cover; a headstone. Crouching low, he checked his motion tracker. A single contact a few meters away. He'd lost his assault rifle, probably left it back in the maze before he was transported here, wherever here was. Shrugging, he drew his pistol instead, turned, and rose from behind the headstone.
A squat, very ugly man with a sniveling nose and tiny, beady eyes stood just beyond, staring at him. One hand held what appeared to be a bundle of rags, the other a wand, which was pointing at him.
"Stun him now!" A high-pitched, cold voice ordered.
"Stupefy!" The rat-like man incanted, and B-312 watched bemusedly as a jet of red light flew from the man's wand-
-And dissipated harmlessly against his energy shielding, which absorbed the shot with a flash of gold light and a muted crackle. As Wormtail's eyes went wide in shock, the Spartan smoothly raised his pistol and placed the HUD's crosshairs over his skull.
"Bang." He said, pulling the trigger and splattering the scenery behind Wormtail with skull, brains, and bits of hair and skin.
As the echoing report of the magnum faded and the Death Eater's body crumpled to the ground, B-312 walked up and nudged the bundle he'd been carrying with his armored foot.
The bundle exploded, and B-312 got the briefest impression of a naked, fur and scale-covered, red-eyed, genderless baby flying at him before the thing latched onto his helmet, trying to pull it off, all the while shrieking with an unholy rage. Stunned for a brief instant, B-312 reached up with his left hand, grabbed Lord Voldemort by the back of his misshapen head, threw him on the ground, and with a grunt drove his right foot clean through the horrible, twisted thing's body. The Dark Lord's screeching died away, and the Spartan sighed in relief.
"Huh, that was different." He muttered.
The super-soldier walked a ways away and sat down, idly trying to wipes the chunks of dead Dark Lord off his foot. He tapped his wrist computer and activated the emergency beacon. The young man then leaned back against a headstone, pulled his helmet off, and lit up a cigarette that he'd pulled from a hidden compartment in his armor.
Any more surprises you'd care to throw at me today? The green-eyed, black-haired Spartan-III asked of the universe.
Ta-da. As usual, I own nothing.