Chapter 2: New Friends; New Surprises
It was lunch break in the school. Marcus was sitting at a table by himself. He was quietly going over some notes and information that he had written down during the morning lessons. He had small headphones in his ears as he was listening to some music that he had uploaded onto his laptop. Judging by the quiet sounds coming from them, it was dance music. Dance music of a pretty favourable one as it was making Marcus mime the main lyrics to the tune he was listening.
Out of the collection area of the lunchroom; the four boys appeared; holding their lunch trays and spotting Marcus at the far end of the room.
"Look, there's Marcus." Stan spoke.
"Hey, let's go talk to him." Kyle replied.
The four boys began to walk over to where Marcus was; much to the disagreement of Cartman who was moaning under his breath.
Marcus, noticing the four boys walking towards him, closed all the windows on-screen and pushed down the screen of the laptop; still keeping it on.
"Hey guys. Didn't notice you there."
"Hey Marcus, what you doing?" Kyle spoke.
"Oh I'm just going over the notes I wrote down while in yer' class. Pretty hard to write down anything relevant considering I've only been doing this course for about three weeks now."
The boys looked at one another and began speaking again.
"So where 'bouts you living in England?" Stan asked.
"Well, I'm currently living in the capital, London. But I'm originally from a small town in the North called Middlesbrough."
"Middles…..brrre?" Cartman replied; pronouncing the town's name ridiculously wrong. "Never heard of that place before. Must be a crap place."
"Cartman!" Kyle shouted.
"No he's right." Marcus spoke; looking down at the table and taking a sip of the drink beside him.
"……He is?" Kyle asked; expressing slight shock.
"I is? I mean, I am?" Cartman asked; also showing slight shock on his face.
"Yep. I never liked living there when I was about your age. It was awful."
"Why? What was bad about it?" Stan asked; at which Marcus went into a quick 10 second flashback of his past life living in Middlesbrough.
There was a brief silence. Marcus finally spoke.
"Well, I'm not going to enjoy saying this…….but. While I lived there……I was beaten up, mocked, bullied, abused, bored, sickened, disgraced and rejected by most people in the town. Plus there was nothing to do there and the local football team were quite rubbish."
Marcus looked straight on to see all four boys in again, a state of temporary shock.
"Woah! That's just wrong." Stan spoke; breaking the silence.
Suddenly, something started to beep in Marcus' pocket. He looked down and realised a device he had in his pocket was ringing and beeping.
"Excuse me boys. Someone's trying to call me." Marcus leapt up from his seat, walked out of the lunchroom and pulled out what looked to be like a digital communication device of some kind. Marcus pressed the call on button and began speaking.
"Hello, this is Marcus."
"Have you managed to complete Phase One of the mission." A low-toned voice began to speak on the other side of the communication line.
"Will you give me a minute; I need to find somewhere private and quiet." Marcus looked round and moved towards a smaller and isolated area of the hall where no one was standing.
"Well!"
"Yes, I've moved into the house that you gave to me and I've unpacked all my belongings. Nice house by the way. I never knew I'd be staying in such a big house like that."
"Yes, alright, enough about the house. Listen carefully Kane-Bridge……" Marcus put the communicator close to his ear. "We've recently received new visual information regarding your mission."
"Visual information? You mean a picture or a group of pictures?"
"Yes, our main intelligence have been able to acquire new pictures; regarding the subject targets that you have been told to protect. The enemy doesn't know of these subjects and their whereabouts, so it looks like everything is going to plan."
"So where are these pictures then?"
"We sent them securely to your computer."
"My laptop? MY LAPTOP?" Marcus rushed back to see where his laptop was. He noticed that the four boys appeared to be trying to mess around with it. Marcus was slightly worried about what might happen next.
"Something wrong Marcus?"
"Oh…..no, everything's fine."
"Good. Take a look at the pictures we sent you. Your mission objectives will become clearer once you have finished viewing them. Remember, the subject targets must not know about this. Keep your mission state at a Level 1 protection. We will get back in touch in the next few days."
"Alright sir, see yer later. Bye."
Marcus rushed back to his seat.
Meanwhile, back where the four boys were sat, they were trying to work out how to work Marcus' laptop.
"Where's that thing yer' use to control the little arrow on the screen. I don't see it anywhere?" Kyle spoke.
"I dunno. But this laptop looks pretty cool though." Stan replied.
"Yeh, I agree." Kenny spoke.
"Hey, hey, hey. What are you guys doing?" Marcus asked in a joke-like manner.
"We were just wondering how your laptop works. It looks like a pretty cool thing." Stan spoke.
"Oh, well basically it's just like a computer, except instead a mouse you use to control the little arrow on-screen, you use this grey square here to control the arrow with your finger, like so." Marcus quickly demonstrated how the laptop worked; still worried about what the four boys were going to see that they shouldn't see.
Finished with it, Marcus shut down his laptop and folded it back up; sliding it into his carry case.
"That's a cool-looking laptop Marcus. Where'd yer' get it from?" Stan asked.
"He probably stole it. All British people still things like that." Cartman replied.
"Cartman shut the f--- up." Kyle shouted again.
"Well, my father bought it for me only a few months ago. It's one of the best laptops around. 120 Gig of hard disk memory, 2 Gig of RAM memory, 15" Screen, DVD and CD player, 3 GHz Processor and a load more cool things on it as well." Marcus replied.
The four boys were oblivious and completely clueless to what Marcus just said.
"I don't know what you just said, but I'm going to just agree with you." Stan spoke.
"Yeh, me too." Kyle replied.
"Me three." Kenny also replied.
With that done, Marcus left the lunchroom; leaving the four boys to eat their lunches.
Marcus looked to his left and right whilst going down a corridor. He quickly walked into a small closet-like room. Turning his laptop back on and logging on, he quickly loaded up the pictures that he had received from the unknown person from before. They were quite slow to load up, but once they were finished, Marcus had become completely shocked by what he saw. He dropped his mobile phone that he had hold of in his left hand and placed his head in his hands; now knowing that his mission was going to get a lot harder now that he knew he had to so-called "protect and watch" the subject targets.
For right in front of him on his laptop, the image was of the four boys that Marcus least expected; Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman.
There was only one word that Marcus said that portrayed his emotions, thoughts and opinions as to what he was seeing and thinking:
"F---!" "Why them?" He spoke in a slightly confused manner. "It makes no sense. Why would they send me here if they already knew who the subject targets were?" Marcus looked down; still with his head in his hands and his laptop on his knees. "Oh god, how am I going to be able to put on a lying act to those four while I've got this mission to focus on? Oh, why me?"
Marcus left the room with his laptop/carrycase around one shoulder and a small bag around the other. He decided to head back home to drop off some things and collect some other objects. He knew he had plenty of time left but he still rushed to get back home and back to the school in time.
About 15 minutes later
The four boys were back outside; enjoying a game of swing ball on the snowy play-ground of the school.
"Hey, has anyone here seen Marcus? He's been gone for about 15 minutes now." Stan spoke; punching the ball back round the pole.
"Nope, haven't seen him since lunch. I wonder where the heck he's gone." Kyle replied; also punching the ball when it came near him.
While this was going on, Marcus re-appeared in the grounds and walked over to a nearby bench. Sitting down, he placed his new bag that he was carrying by his side and opened it up. Out of it came a quite large acoustic guitar that Marcus began to tune and set-up. It seemed as if he was about to play something; whatever it may have been. The sight of the four boys at the other side of the ground caught Marcus' eye. He saw that they were now arguing over something; with Cartman making all the wrong points and Stan, Kyle and Kenny disagreeing with everything he said.
Marcus laughed softly and began playing his guitar. He was only playing a slow rhythm that was quiet, but it somehow grabbed the attention of the four boys who made their way over to Marcus.
"I didn't know you could play the guitar." Stan spoke; at which Marcus stopped playing.
"Oh yeah, I've been playing this since I was about your age. You like it?" Marcus replied; playing a bit more of his guitar.
"Hell yeah, could you play us a tune of some kind?" Kyle asked.
"Errrrr, yeh sure. Hang on; let me get a beat going." Marcus started playing a slow/medium paced tune. The boys were enjoying listening to it except for Cartman who was starting to think that Marcus was more like a hippy rather than a college student.
But before Marcus could end his little guitar tune, a snowball was thrown towards all four boys as well as Marcus; whose guitar got slightly damaged from the impact.
Clearing the snow from their faces, the four boys looked over to see a large group of sixth grade kids standing right near them.
"Oh jeez, it's the sixth grade kids." Stan spoke in a very worried and slightly scared tone.
Marcus slowly looked up and turned to his right to see the sixth graders standing there with snowballs in their hands and cocky grins on their ugly faces.
"So…..what do we have here?" A sixth-grader spoke. "The little baby kids are listening to nursery rhymes; awwww, how cute." He said sarcastically and hurtfully; at which the other sixth grade kids laughed.
"Hey, look man. We don't want to fight; especially with snowballs." Kyle pleaded.
"Yeh, coz' if you come near us, we'll just let Marcus here kick the f---ing hell out of yer'. So stay back!" Cartman shouted in a confident but stupid manner.
"Cartman, are you crazy!" Kyle yelled in a very worried voice.
The leading sixth-grader looked towards Marcus who was looking straight at him.
"So, you're the kid who's from Britain huh!" The sixth-grader spoke.
"Yeh, you got a problem with that." Marcus looked back down at his guitar and started to tune it some more.
"I bet you ain't that tough. Anyone who plays guitar is a big f---ing wuss."
"If that makes me a wuss, then I guess anyone who dresses like you must be a f---ing freak then. So I guess you and your ugly-looking friends must all be freaks."
The sixth-grader and all his friends were starting to get annoyed at what Marcus had just said.
"Well then, why don't you show us what you've got and fight us. I bet your smart mouth can't beat all seven of us."
"I don't want to fight alright. Now why don't you do us all a favour and p--- off."
"What's the matter? You afraid!" Marcus ignored what he said and continued tuning his guitar. "Hey, I'm talking to you, Brit!" Marcus ignored him again. "Oh well, I can understand why you don't want to fight. After all, you British people are nothing but f---ing losers and weaklings anyway."
Suddenly, one of Marcus' guitar strings snapped. Something inside Marcus had also snapped and he slowly stood back up.
"Boys, will you look after my guitar just for a minute please." Marcus very calmly spoke; looking forward as he did so. He turned towards the sixth-graders and started walking towards them.
"Alright, let's get him." The sixth-grader spoke.
The four boys couldn't stand watching and closed their eyes in fear of what might happen. They heard a lot of punching and kicking during this. The noises lasted for about a minute and then stopped. They all opened their eyes to see that surprisingly, all the sixth-graders were lying on the ground; all beaten up seriously; but not too seriously. Marcus was stood there; wiping off little bits of dust and dirt off his navy blue jacket.
"Woahhh!" Stan spoke in shock. "How'd he do that!"
"I don't know. I had my eyes closed." Kyle replied.
"He must be one f---ed up British dude." Cartman spoke.
Marcus walked over to the bench again and picked up his slightly damaged guitar. Weird as it may sound, he started playing it and singing as well; with the four boys still in a slight state of shock.
"I kicked the s--- out of some sixth-graders today! Oooooo ooooo oooooo!
I had enough of their pathetic crap today! Oooooo ooooo oooooo!
They got what they deserved because they're just stupid, no one should ever dis-respect British people.
I kicked the s--- out of some sixth-graders today! Oooooo ooooo oooooo!"
He stopped playing.
"Nah, that doesn't work! The lyrics don't go with the tune. Ah well." Putting his guitar back in the carry case, he walked off.
The four boys broke away from their shock and rushed over to where Marcus was heading towards.
"Dude, how did you do that?" Kyle asked.
"What do you mean?" Marcus surprisingly asked.
"What do you mean what do you mean? THAT!" Stan emphasised; at which Marcus realised what the boys were on about.
"Oh, you mean that. That was just a bit of self-defense."
"Self-defense?" Kenny spoke.
"Yeh, self defense. I learned it at school. Yeh, I took part in a self-defense class. It helped me to defend myself from people like those idiots over there."
"Woah!" The four boys said together at the same time.
"I don't know what it is about you Marcus, but you're a cool dude." Stan spoke.
"Thanks Stan." Marcus replied; at which he stopped and turned towards the four boys. "Hey guys, I need to ask you a huge favour." Marcus spoke.
"Sure, what" Stan replied.
"The thing is, I've got no contact with any friends or family here in South Park and it can be quite lonely for me back home here. So I was wondering, would it be alright if I….like……hang around with you guys until my work here in South Park is done?" Marcus started to look worried.
The boys looked at one another in delight as if they were really happy.
"Hell yeh. We thought you'd never ask." Stan replied in a very happy manner.
"Really! Wow, thanks a lot guys. This means a lot to me. I don't have many friends back home in Britain, but I'm glad I found guyz like you who seem to like me being round here." Marcus smiled. "Well, I have to be going now. I promised the music class in this school I'd help with the guitar players. I guess I'll see yer tomorrow back here." Marcus walked off; wiping a tear of sweat off his forehead.
"Thank goodness for that. At least I know now I can watch over them as a friend." Marcus spoke to himself; walking into the main building of the school.
"Wow, can you believe it. A new friend who plays the guitar and knows self-defense. How can it get any better. This is friggin awesome." Stan shouted in an excited mood.
"Yes, that's exactly what he wants you to think." Cartman replied; still with his smart-arse voice on.
"Cartman for the last time, will you shut the f--- up and lave Marcus alone. All he wants to do is be our friend and do his work here." Kyle shouted.
"Hey, don't tell me to shut up you f---ing Jew. I bet he's planning something evil and dangerous, just like all British people do."
"Cartman. He's not planning anything. He's just here to do his college work. That's it." Stan replied; trying to get some sense into Cartman.
"How do you know Stan? HOW DO YOU KNOW?" Cartman spoke; putting more pressure on Stan to answer.
"OK fine! We'll go and see what he's doing tonight, in secret. And I can promise you, he's not doing anything evil, or anything bad, or anything like that. He's just a normal British dude. And hopefully, it'll finally shut you up Cartman. Happy?" Stan finally spoke; at which the four boys walked back over to their game of swing-ball.