Chapter I: ‘‘Obliviate!’’
Saddam Hussein’s promise to deliver the “Mother of All Battles” was nothing more than a joke. They were a pushover: Coalition air power had pulverised the Iraqi positions for several weeks, and many soldiers in the Iraqi army simply ran away. Some more stubborn Iraqis, however, didn’t.
See the world! or serve your county! the British Army posters and articles said. Corporal Archer Price was doing both, fighting the Iraqis that didn’t run in bombed-out Kuwait City. The air reeked of petrol, and the horizon was slashed with black plumes from burning oil wells. Thuds of explosions and cracks of gunfire broke the tranquillity of the deserted city.
A bunch of Iraqis with a machine gun were barricaded behind sandbags and concrete barriers at a street corner. Corporal Price and the other soldiers took cover and traded fire from across the intersection. A well-placed grenade landed in the knot of Iraqis, and the machine gun nest fell silent.
Archer peered over the rim of the potted palm tree he was covering behind and saw the fleeing backsides of some Iraqi soldiers in the derelict street ahead. “Let’s go! We’ve got them on the run!” he shouted exuberantly.
Corporal Price and the rest of the men eagerly ran off in pursuit of the retreating enemy. Archer fired as he ran, and the body in his sights fell down. Then, completely out of the blue, the ground soared up and connected with Archer’s face.
He had no idea why he had fallen down, but he was soon provided an answer. There was a blossoming spot of red in his uniform from the bullet that had passed cleanly through his left thigh. Then the pain caught up to what he just saw.
It was an experience that Archer didn’t care to repeat.
Three weeks in the hospital, two medals (Distinguished Service Order and the Gulf Medal), a promotion to Sergeant, and five years later, Sergeant Archer Price enjoyed a less violent life stationed in the West Country. He much preferred Somerset to Kuwait, since he felt he had seen enough of the world with the Persian Gulf War. At the base in Somerset, he and his men did combat exercises, drills, and of course, military parades from time to time. Archer proudly wore the two shiny medals on his dress uniform, quite happy that there were no opportunities to earn any more decorations. Earning the Distinguished Service Order was painful enough the first time.
With nobody to fight, Archer and the rest of the men relaxed in the barracks on a lazy, muggy weekend. The weather for the last few months had been equally depressing, though beer and card games helped.
Archer never joined in the weekend gambling sprees. He had too much experience owing other soldiers his hard-earned money that the habit had been beaten out of him long ago. He saw no need to break up the card game though, but he had his duties to attend to.
“Private Brown and Private Williams, you have to clean the loos,” he ordered, the harbinger of bad news that day. Rank hath its privileges, Archer thought to himself smugly.
The two Privates grumbled, pulled out of the game, and disappeared for an hour. Archer sat on his bunk and wrote some notes for his lecture at the local Primary School the next day. He had been asked to tell students what it meant to be in the Army, and to tell them the importance of protecting the nation. Protect against whom, exactly? his brain wondered.
Archer thought of answers to probable questions that would be asked, all of which were stupid like have you ever shot anyone? or what did it feel like getting shot? If the Army had taught Sergeant Price anything, it was to always be prepared for the unexpected. Since nobody was going to attack Britain anytime soon, he instead prepared himself for his upcoming encounter with the students.
When the lights went out a few hours later, Archer fell asleep, assured that nothing out of the ordinary would happen the next day.
How wrong he was.
There is no bugler waking the men in the morning. Instead, the harsh shrill of the emergency alarm resonates throughout the barracks, at an early, un-Godly hour. Sergeant Archer Price suddenly jerks awake and checks his watch: it is seven minutes after midnight. Almost in unison, he and all the other men in the barracks leap from their bunks and dress into their uniforms.
“What’s going on, Archie?” asks Corporal David Smith groggily.
“No idea,” replies Archer as he laces his boots. “It must be a surprise drill.”
“I didn’t hear anything about it,” interjects Private Brown stupidly.
“That kind of defeats the purpose of a surprise drill. Hurry up and get ready!” Sergeant Price snaps.
“Move soldiers! Form up!” bellows the Colonel.
With unconscious precision, all of the soldiers form perfect squad lines, the senior non-commissioned officers up in front.
“First Squad ready!”
“Second Squad ready!”
“Third Squad ready!” yells Sergeant Price.
In moments, all of the squads in each platoon are ready: armed, dressed, and ready to go.
“Men!” shouts the Colonel, “this is not a drill! We have received numerous reports of an enemy of unknown size and identity, here…” he points at a huge map of the area on the board with his stick, much like a teacher would with a yardstick. There goes my school lecture today, Archer thinks to himself. “…All police and Army units have been mobilised to isolate the threat. It is our job as the Army to surround the disturbance and create a perimeter. You will then receive further orders from there as more information comes in. Any questions?”
There aren’t any. However, Archer doesn’t like how they have no idea what they will be facing off against. He keeps these qualms private.
“Good. Move out!” finishes the Colonel
“Each squad to their Saxon! Move!” barks Lieutenant George. The men of Third Squad clamber into their Saxon Armoured Personnel Carrier through the rear double doors. Sergeant Price counts his soldiers again as they board the vehicle with their L85 rifles. When all are accounted for, he clambers into the back.
“Is this the real thing?” asks one of the Privates excitedly. Archer can’t understand why the soldier is looking forward to getting shot at. You can’t argue. You were just like him five years ago, his brain reminds himself.
Archer solemnly nods and climbs up into the commander’s cupola, manning its machine gun. He flips the top open and loads a fresh belt of 200 bullets. Something really horrible must be happening, Archer thinks to himself grimly. The situation, whatever it is, is serious enough to send both the police and the Army. They are even bringing along Scorpion light tanks, whose 76mm gun is unsuitable in hitting anything smaller than an elephant.
The drivers fire up the motors, and the armoured vehicles come to life. With loud hums from the engines and crunches from clashing gears, the Saxons lumber out of the barbed wire gates, with the Scorpion tanks in the lead.
In the distance, several news helicopters hover high above, aiming wavering searchlights and cameras downwards into the chaos below. About a mile ahead of him, the sky is aglow from fires and distant explosions. Dense columns of smoke spiral up into the glowing darkness. The streets crowd with people gawking and pointing at the dazzling destruction ahead.
The armoured column snakes forward and comes to a stop at a roadblock, only a few blocks away from the scene. The police had evidently arrived first and blocked all of the streets with a tangle of cop cars. Now it is the Army’s turn to move in and face the unknown, nameless enemy. The column of Saxons splits off into several smaller groups to enter the area from different directions, each column headed by a Scorpion.
Archer’s column squeezes through the police roadblock. “Good luck,” a policeman says over the din of the vehicles’ engines.
The Scorpion’s tank treads clatter as they go, crunching up old and loose bits of pavement. Archer notices the increasing devastation as they get closer. It looks as if a hurricane had visited itself in the West Country: there are uprooted trees, gutted houses without roofs, bent lampposts…
…And bodies. Many of them “ all civilians “ are grotesquely sprawled in twisted positions. All of them are still in their pyjamas.
“Jesus Christ…” he says softly. It is the closest thing to prayer he can say.
The column of Saxons rounds a corner, and then Archer sees them: hooded, cloaked figures, dragging people out of their houses and running rampant through the streets.
“We have company!” Sergeant Price yells. The Saxons come to a stop momentarily to let the soldiers dismount, who take cover behind the vehicles and nearby houses. Archer aims the machine gun at one of the men in black cloaks. He squeezes the trigger and looses off a burst. His target leaps aside with impossible speed, so that the stream of bullets screams harmlessly past. The man had moved so fast that he could have simply vanished from one spot and popped out the other.
Archer swerves the machine gun and shoots again, but the cloaked figure simply darts to-and-fro, dodging his bullets. Archer has just enough time to see that the man’s face is obscured by a mask when a bolt of green light whizzes past the Sergeant’s head. Had he not ducked in time, the tracer will have certainly made a mess.
Archer stands up and fires again. The masked men are totally unperturbed by the stream of hot lead, and the Sergeant doesn’t hit any of them. A jet of red light from nowhere hits the Saxon’s engine. The vehicle staggers to a halt and the front bursts into flames. Knowing he has only moments to spare, Archer clambers down into the passenger compartment, choking on thick, greasy smoke. He grabs his L85 rifle and he runs out of the Saxon.
The surviving Saxons and the Scorpion tank charge at the enemy, guns blazing. One of the Saxons suddenly comes to a halt, its wheels having inexplicably disappeared. Seeing enough, Archer runs back and finds cover behind a low brick wall where the rest of his squad is huddled.
There is a loud bang and a chain of explosive pops much like firecrackers: the tank and all of its ammunition must have lit up. Confirming this, hot chunks of armour plate thump against the brick wall and land in the grassy lawns, setting fire to them. More green and red tracers thwack into the wall, showering Third Squad with bits of pulverised brick and mortar.
“We’re pinned down!” screams the Corporal, stating the obvious.
Archer quickly peers over the wall and sees more hooded men approaching, tracers zipping in all directions from them. Much tougher than Iraqis, they are, his mind says stupidly. He fires wildly into the mass before ducking behind the wall again.
Archer rips the empty magazine out of his weapon. “Smoke!” he barks as he reloads his rifle with a fresh magazine.
Two of his men pull out cylindrical grenades, which resemble soup cans with pins and levers. They pull the pins and lob them over the wall. There is a sputtering sound, answered by billowing clouds of grey smoke.
“Third Squad, follow me! We’re going to flank them!”
He doesn’t know whether his men had heard the order or not, but it doesn’t matter. When he hurdles the wall and runs, his men follow.
Green tracers dart through the smoke. Most pass harmlessly…but one doesn’t. When it makes contact, it isn’t accompanied by the wet slapping sound that announces a bullet meeting skin. Instead, there is a flash of green light and a rushing noise like some demented vacuum cleaner, trying to suck up something more than just air. A soldier flops to the ground: limp and very dead.
“Charlie’s down! Man down!” screams Corporal Smith.
“Leave him David!” responds the Sergeant. The distance is only as long as the street is wide, but it feels like forever to cross it. The squad makes it to another row of houses, leaving one of their number as a blurry black blob through the smoke, lying the middle of the road.
Archer pulls out his radio and thumbs it on. “Lieutenant George, this is Sergeant Price, Third Squad! We are attempting a flank attack to your right. Do you copy? Over.”
The radio sputters and burps. He waits for a reply, but there is none. Just strangled squeaks and beeps are heard from the radio, which is plainly going haywire.
The whole operation had simply boiled down into chaos. The Army had just walked headlong into the meat grinder, and Archer has no idea what is happening to the other squads and platoons. At least one of his men is dead, and not being able to communicate with other units isn’t helping matters. As Archer sees it, the whole operation will fail.
It will not fail due to lack of effort, though. With Archer in the lead, Third Squad runs past several more rows of homes and wrecked vehicles. A car lies flattened and squished in the middle of the street, like a bug that had been stepped on. A BBC news helicopter is hit by a purple tracer and it bucks and jerks in the air madly, as if to unhorse its occupants.
With no enemy in sight yet, Archer jumps over a broken see-saw and breaks down a house’s back door, and the rest of Third Squad takes positions in the neighbouring houses. He barges up the staircase. All the light fixtures are out, but the light from the explosions and fires outside are more than sufficient. The noise of the battle is much louder here: explosions, screams, gunfire…
Sergeant Price peers through a second storey window, scanning the street below for targets. Finding one, he aims his rifle at the back of one of the hooded men below, currently busy lighting a man on fire. “Gotcha, bastard!” he growls as he pulls the trigger.
There are a series of brilliant flashes from the muzzle. The rifle jumps. Ejected cartridge cases spin through the air and glimmer in the firelight.
The burst makes contact, but barely. Some of the bullets blatantly bounce off the man’s hardly bullet-proof cloak. The man staggers as if punched, turns around, and shoots a menacing green bolt of light at Archer with his thin weapon. He ducks momentarily as it whizzes past, and immediately afterwards lobs a grenade through the window.
The grenade lands at the hooded, masked man’s feet. He bends down to pick it up and eyes it curiously, as if wondering what to do with it. The man had seemingly never seen a grenade before. Idiot, the Sergeant can’t help but think as the grenade explodes in the man’s face.
Not much of him is left. His mask is punched full of holes and his weapon falls to the ground with a clatter and rolls away. Sergeant Price barely has time to register the dead man’s peculiar gun. More silent tracers “ or are they lasers? “ of various colours slam into the wall around Archer’s window. Then there is a deafening roar; not a roar of an explosion, but a human voice that is impossibly deep and loud. Forgetting the battle, Archer turns around to find the source of the voice, and sees through the other window an 8 tonne Scorpion tank flying towards him.
The wall explodes as the tank smashes through it. Splintered bits of wood and plaster scythe through the air. He is thrown from the house and lands on the lawn. The Scorpion lands in the street behind him, gouging a huge hole and scattering asphalt and mangled bits of tank all over the place. Archer’s eardrums are pounding so hard he can’t hear anything. His heart is beating so fast it will explode any moment. At least his eyes are working… until he sees the giant.
There is an enormous man, a full head and shoulders taller than the house he just destroyed. Archer furiously rubs his eyes to make sure they are still working properly. Opening them again, he discovers that sure enough, only a man that size is big and strong enough to toss the shattered tank behind him. Despite its enormous size, the man looks like no man Archer had ever seen. It is strangely misshapen, with an unusually large and round head with thick, wiry black hair protruding from beneath his tank-like battle helmet. The head is perched on top of the shoulders with very little neck, and its thick, muscular body is clothed in a dark green scaly material. Archer tears his eyes from the impossibly large man and skims the ground frantically, looking for his rifle. It is nowhere to be found, but it hardly matters. What can a stupid, tiny bullet do to a man that size anyway?
Other men are firing at the giant, though, and not just with small arms. A tank round hits the side of the giant’s big, bulky helmet. There is a shattering explosion and the giant’s thick beard lights on fire. The giant reels under the impact, but quickly regains balance and charges after the offending tank, bellowing unearthly war cries. Several missiles follow, but the few that make contact are barely able to penetrate his skin, let alone his armoured clothing. The other missiles explode prematurely or “ very strangely “ stop in midair entirely.
Suddenly, Archer is dragged irresistibly up in the air by his ankle. He had been so busy watching the giant that he forgot about the hooded, masked men in cloaks making a horrible mess of things in the streets. Dangling absurdly upside down, he sees that his ankle is grabbed by nothing but air… and in the air is a horrific image of a huge, green, glittering skull with a snake protruding from its mouth. Looking down, he sees that many of his comrades lie dead in the streets. Corporal Smith is cut down by what looks like a zigzagging jet of purple flame, and slumps to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.
Resigned to the same fate, Archer looks at his hooded captors, all of whom are laughing and pointing thick, wooden chopsticks at him. He isn’t thinking anything; his mind had simply gone blank. After what seems like an age, one of them yells “CRUCIO!” at the top of his lungs.
The pain is unbearable: his body is on fire. Aided by gravity, the blood vessels in his nose, and surely his head, burst. He can’t even hear himself scream, because it is too painful to listen. His arms and legs thrash. His teeth are chattering, and he can feel blood from his tongue.
Suddenly, it is gone.
“Stupefy!”
One of the masked men is hit right in the face by a red tracer and topples over. People in long cloaks materialise out of nowhere to fight the masked men. Red and green tracers fly wildly in all directions. Archer falls to earth with a crunch.
He doesn’t dwell on the thought that the fall might have broken his neck. He is driven by a single, perhaps even divine purpose: to escape.
He ignores the pain in his legs. He ignores the explosions and the thrashing bodies. He even ignores the fear inside him. All he is doing is running faster than he ever had in his life. He hurtles past a downed helicopter and ruined Army vehicles, the broken remains of a police roadblock, and finally the battle itself.
Finding a secluded corner, he collapses and lets exhaustion take him away.
“Ennervate,” said a voice.
Archer suddenly awoke. It was morning. He blinked his eyes, and the image of a man slowly came into focus. The man was wearing plus-fours, and he was pointing a wooden stick “ a wand “ at him.
He smiled weakly. “You got me Gandalf.”
The man in plus-fours looked puzzled. “And what exactly, is a ‘Gandalf’?”
“It’s not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’,” explained Archer. “Ever read The Lord of the Rings?”
“No,” the wizard responded smartly, lowering his wand. “I need you to tell me everything that happened here.”
Archer was in no mood to do so. I better get a medal for this, he thought to himself bitterly.
“Just look around you. That’ll tell you everything you need to know,” he answered, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.
The wizard looked in the direction of last night’s chaotic insanity.
“I see your point sir. You are the fourth Muggle so far to give me that answer,” he said with a wry smile.
“And what exactly, is a ‘Muggle’?” echoed Archer, imitating the wizard’s voice.
“A non-wizard or witch, such as yourself. A normal person, if you will. Now please, tell me everything about you,” he ordered, annoyed, as he pulled out a notepad and a green quill. He sucked on the end of the quill and left it on the notepad, where it balanced upright on its point.
Archer sighed. “Why not? My name is Archer Reginald Price…”
After about ten minutes of tedious dictation, he finished. The wizard checked the notes the green quill had written for him. Suddenly, a mischievous smile exploded on the man’s face.
Archer was going to ask the wizard what was funny, but he was distracted by the wand pointed directly at his face, aiming straight at his nose.
“You going to kill me?”
“No,” the wizard responded simply, still smiling…
“OBLIVIATE!”
His eyes slid out of focus and all thoughts were wiped blank. He didn’t see the wizard disappear into thin air.
When he returned to consciousness, he wiped off the crusty, hardened blood on his face. He looked down at the nametag, and wondered why he was wearing Sergeant Archer Price’s uniform. “I guess I’ll give it back to him,” he muttered vaguely to himself.
Michael Cunningham walked away from the freak hurricane’s aftermath, with an unexplained desire to move to Australia.
List of Bewildering Military Things You Probably Didn’t Understand
This short, handy-dandy guide will explain to you the more troublesome military equipment and other things mentioned in the story that had you scratching your head. If you haven’t noticed, I have a strange passion for military hardware.
Saxon Armoured Personnel Carrier: This is a four-wheel drive armoured vehicle used by the British Army, as well as the militaries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, and some other African and Asian countries that nobody bothers to remember the names of. The Saxon can transport around eight to ten infantrymen (foot soldiers) in the back, which is accessible from a double door at the rear and a door on each side. The Saxon is equipped with either a turret on top or an open mount, with either two or one machine guns. The Saxons featured in this story just have an open mount with a single L37A1 machine gun.
L85 Assault Rifle: This is the standard infantry firearm used by the British Army since 1985. Its official designation is the L85A1, but I didn’t feel like repeating that throughout the story. Anyway, it fires the 5.56 millimetre NATO round, which is the same ammunition used by other weapons such as the M16 (standard U.S. infantry rifle). Like the M16, the L85 uses a 30 round magazine and has similar performance. However, the L85 looks nothing like an M16. The L85 uses a “bullpup” configuration, meaning that the action, receiver, and magazine (in short, all of the guts) are placed behind the trigger. This makes the L85 much shorter than the M16, even though their rifle barrels are of similar length.
Scorpion Light Tank: Please understand that this tank is “light” in relative terms, weighing a mere 8 tonnes as compared to 60 for the Challenger tank, for instance. Anyway, this is a tracked vehicle with a three man crew, armed with a 76mm main gun with a 7.62mm machine gun coaxial (parallel) to the main armament.
I can see that your attention is waning, so I'll just shut up now. Thank's for reading!
Tim the Enchanter
''OBLIVIATE!'' by Tim the Enchanter
Chapter Notes: Salutations, O’ noble reader of my first Harry Potter fanfic! Like most of you, I read and reread the series after DH came out, and my brain was (and it still is) stuck in Harry Potter mode. Thus, I whipped this out over the summer and it took me four months to muster the courage to finally post it on this website!
Before that could happen, I underwent the painful process of submitting this story and editing it and editing it again to get it on this site. I would like to thank my friends and my English teacher for reading and reviewing my fanfic, as well as mugglenet.com moderators Sandy and Bethany for taking the time to look over my submissions.
And now, the inevitable disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anything else pertaining to J.K. Rowling’s epic. Everything she has written is 16,472 times better than my story… but please, by all means, read and enjoy!