User blog:GuacamoleCCXR/Guac's LMBW fanfic story thing - CHAPTER 2



''Author’s notes: I genuinely hope not to mess up anyone’s personality writing this. If I do, don’t be to hard on me pls. :c Finally introducing some LMBW people now. ''

Waking up from a forced unconsciousness under circumstances like mine is hardly a pleasant experience. Without opening my eyes, I scanned the floor with my fingertips, just to find my arms aching from the sudden movement. However, I still managed to come to the conclusion that I’m lying on laminate, which supported the thesis that I have never left the room of the London hotel. Sadly, it didn’t end there. The fact that I felt a gentle wind passing over my back, the sand on the floorboards, the subtle warmth that the sun’s rays left on my stiffened limbs as well as the fragrance in the air contradicted my observation.

I forced myself to get on my knees, ignoring the dull pain that filled my arms and legs. This seemed to be a nice moment to open my eyes and finally determine my exact location with the help of visual input. It wasn’t the hotel room. In fact, it wasn’t London at all.

Yes, I was kneeling on a somewhat square surface made from laminate that closely resembled the cheap stuff on the floor in the hotel. But beyond the clean-cut edges, I saw sandy soil, which was loosely covered by mosses and small herbs growing out of it. Closer to the horizon I spotted a few spindly trees. If I had to come up with a geographical term to describe the landscape that was presented to me, I would go with “savanna”, but I’m not an expert, so I might as well be way off.

‘It can’t be’, I thought. ‘There’s no way.’

I was startled by a small pebble that hit my back. Though I initially cringed as I have not noticed anyone else’s presence so far, it made me turn my head to the left to see just who wanted to get my attention in such a marginally rude manner. Looking beyond my suitcase (which I was very surprised to see next to me) I recognised the shapes two people sitting with their backs leaned against some sort of rock ten to fifteen metres away from me. When my eyes finally adjusted to the brightness (it appeared to be high noon) I realised that the man to the right was one of the two Special Forces’ officers who were in the hotel room when I passed out, except he had taken off his helmet and body armour. Now I saw that he was in his late 20s, with rather short blonde hair and dark eyes. What was much more surprising however was seeing another – much more familiar – face to his left.

“Just what are YOU doing here?” I asked, my voice being slightly hoarse from being idle for an unknown, but certainly long, timespan. The 15-year-old smirked.

“Nothing productive, that’s for sure. But I could ask you the same thing,” My glance fell upon the AKG headphones, empty Monster cans and remains of a chair that were scattered in his proximity. I got up and made a few shaky steps in their direction.

“I don’t understand. Where are we? What happened?”

“It’s not like we know any more than you know,” the soldier finally said. Hearing his voice I recognised it was the one who has been giving out orders in the hotel before, thus concluding that he must be rather high ranked. “The one thing I’m certain of is that I’ve been suddenly taken out of that London hotel, which felt pretty much like being thrown into vacuum for a second and then landed here. According to my watch that happened about three hours ago, and seeing as the sun is past its zenith at this point we’re somewhere in the UTC plus 2 time zone, close to the equator at that. That pretty much covers all I can say to your first question.” After a short pause he continued: “I woke up a little earlier, probably due to my armour absorbing most of the impact, so I used to time to scan the area for supplies. There’s all sorts of debris lying around, and though most of it is just rubble and broken furniture, I found a few useful things as well.” He pointed at a pile of what seemed like mostly kitchen utensils a few feet away from him.

“Well, that’s a start”, I commented silently admiring just how pragmatic the man was. But that also implied that he didn’t see us getting out of here any time soon. “Good thing I packed like ten kilogrammes of snacks in this thing,” I muttered while seating myself on the suitcase, “even though it’s just fast food.” The officer was about to reply something as his features suddenly tensed up.

“Get down,” he called just loud enough for the rest of us to hear, simultaneously grasping his assault rifle and dashing towards the suitcase and taking cover behind it, then placed the gun’s barrel on top of it so he could peek and fire over it without exposing too much of his body for the supposed enemy to aim at. Both me and my brother were a little slower to react, but still managed to lie down behind the baggage.

“What’s going on up there?”

Instead of answering, the soldier shouted: “You put your hands up and slowly come closer, understood?” In the meantime we exchanged confused looks behind the suitcase. After a few minutes of tense anticipation, we got the leave to come out of our hiding spot. The person the soldier has been talking to turned out to be a boy around the age of 17, standing with his hands up some ten metres away from us and looking about as out-of-place we three did. When all of us got on our feet, the ‘interrogation’ began.

“Identify yourself. What’s your name?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I’m Marcel, I’m…”, he started, with a noticeable German accent. Before he could even finish the sentence, I interrupted. Could it be…?

<p class="MsoNormal">“LMBW?” He looked at me with a great deal of surprise in his expression, but nodded. “This is not a coincidence, is it?” It was the soldier’s turn to be perplexed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Do you know each other?”

<p class="MsoNormal">“Sort of.” He shook his head in confusion and laid down his weapon.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Well, this brings up a point… We should introduce ourselves. I’m Major Jonas Rollins, squadron leader of a part of the Special Forces Support Group. I suppose we can drop the formalities and you can call me Jonas or Jos while we’re getting out of here.” I glanced at Marcel, deciding on what to say.

<p class="MsoNormal">“I suppose I’ll be best known as Guac.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“You can call me LED, then,” my brother added.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Those are some weird names. Mind explaining yourselves…?”

<p class="MsoNormal">Taking over once again, I said: “We should do that at some point, but first I’d like to ask you one thing I was wondering about… when you broke into that room of mine back in London, you said something about a counter-terrorist mission. Can you tell us what that was? And is there a way it could possibly explain just why we’re got teleported to a completely different place on the planet?” However, Marcel spoke up first, pulling his phone out of his pocket. LED interrupted him on the first word.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Really now, obviously you won’t have any internet or connection here. It’s not even worth trying, better save your battery power for something decent.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“No internet maybe, but most definitely GPS signals.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“That’s it,” Rollins commented, brightening up.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Except… I don’t have GPS here. That can mean two things, either the third world war began and we’re somewhere in Russia or China, or we’re not on Earth.”

<p class="MsoNormal">“I don’t know which of these scenarios is more unsettling… wait, listen up.” A distant roar filled the air. And it constantly drew nearer, at an alarming speed.

<p class="MsoNormal">“It’s an airplane!” I gasped out.

<p class="MsoNormal">“This isn’t the sound of a regular plane, “ the soldier objected. “This is the sound of a fighter jet, and one that flies at an extremely low altitude at that.” Just as he said that, the jet shot past us, raising a whole cloud of dust behind it which distributed itself all around us, ten metres over the ground at most. The deafening sound of its engines followed a few seconds later. When it was out of sight and our group was still recovering from the effects of the encounter, Rollins continued: “Now that’s beyond peculiar. Looked like a Su-35 to me, ‘cept it had this red and white livery that I don’t recall seeing before. I wish I knew what country it is affiliated with, but I’m afraid we’re never going to find out,” he sighed. As the echo of the turbines was dying down over the plains, all out of sudden, the noise seemed to grow louder again.

<p class="MsoNormal">The jet appeared on the horizon, and it was going straight at our camp.