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Sweat rolled down Pvt. Bitterman’s neck as he slowly traversed through the gloomy hallways of the Strogg base, his mind alert and his eyes scouring for any sign of the bio-mechanical aliens. Even in the dark, he could see metal pipes lining the steel walls, and he followed these pipes which he had hoped should lead him to the underground sewer tunnels, where he had at least a slight chance of escape from the dreaded fortress.

He was just about a meter from one among a series of geometrical-themed blast doors when he suddenly heard a faint hiss coming from the dark shadows of the hallway. He turned around to face what ever sort of creature that was threatening him, only to have the hiss coming again from his back. “The fucker is crawling up the ceiling,” Bitterman thought. So he spun around real quick and aimed his double-barreled shotgun about 45 degrees upwards before letting out a shot.

‘Boom!’ sounded the gun, and the buckshot went narrowly pass the shadowy creature and hit one of the metal pipes lined on the ceiling. Steam came rushing out of the ruptured pipes, and the creature squealed before falling from the ceiling and crashing down to a spot on the floor where what little light that was present shed upon it’s misshapen form.

Bitterman only briefly looked at the creature – it was part machine, part flesh, all monster. It looked like something Satan would have spawned from the deepest bowels of Hell, only with a dash of science fiction with its various gothic tech melded onto its already horrible body.

The creature was quick to get up from his fall and charged at Bitterman with the resoluteness of a mindless beast – claws, sharp teeth, and metallic spikes protruding from its body came rapidly at the soldier. But Bitterman only had to move his aim slightly to the center of his view – right at the head of the incoming tech-spawn – and again let off a blast. The creature’s head exploded as it leapt for him in mid-air, and it fell to the ground, forming a pile of mangled flesh and ruined hardware right in front of his feet, dead.

Bitterman shot the creature again, just to be safe. The adrenaline surging within him was gradually subsiding as he crossed over the bio-mechanical carcass and approached the blast door in front of him. He reached for the touch-sensitive panel screen and disengaged the door. The steel bulks that formed the blast door hissed as it slid open, with ominous vapors slithering out from the other side, which was totally devoid of any light. Another hallway.

Bitterman looked beyond the door, into the darkness. He took a deep breath, collecting what little sanity he had left before stepping into the portal and into a new realm of horror.

This happened in a time period significantly later than the previous story. It was a weekday morning, and my parents were just one breakfast away from going to work. I was out in the yard enjoying the refreshing morning air when suddenly I noticed a kitten creeping under my mother’s Mazda Astina, a car that my mother has had for more than 15 years now. Curious, I checked under the car and found that a maternal cat had moved her litter into an open yet dangerous compartment within the bottom of the car, which was directly under the engine. I lay down and tried to coax the kittens out of the hole, but they were afraid of me – they would jump back up into the hole as soon as they saw my hand desperately trying to reach for them.

Then I saw my parents come out of the front door with their car keys, and they were about to drive off to work. I couldn’t even imagine what would happen to the kittens if my mother were to turn on the engine. I tried to warn them that there were kittens hiding under mother’s car, but they just wouldn’t listen – I was, afterall, a small child with a wild imagination. My late grandmother was in the house that day, and she came out when she heard the commotion outside. Gently, she assured me that there were no kittens under the car, but I knew better. I was powerless as I saw my mother getting into the driver seat of her car and turned on the ignition. Her engine roared, but I didn’t hear any meowing – perhaps the kittens had realized the danger and came out just in time. For a moment, I felt relieved.

When my mother tried to back the car out of the driveway, it was then when everyone heard a high-pitched squeak, and my eyes shifted quickly at the car tires. One of the kittens didn’t crawl out from under the the car in time and had his cute little paw run down by one of the huge tires. The kitten limped away, obviously in pain, and I was screaming and crying, at the same time scolding my elders for not listening to me in the first place.

The poor kitten survived the ordeal, but his right paw was permanently crippled, and it had to limp around for the rest of its life. It stayed with us for about a year or two, and the kitten grew up to be a cute little cat until the day it ran away. I never saw it again.

I once killed a small kitten by accident when I was just a small child. I was about ten years old, and we used to have a litter of kittens crawling around in one room in the house, which is where we were watching TV at that particular morning. My younger brother and I were anxiously waiting for The Power Rangers to come up. The Power Rangers was a famous children’s program back then, and we were so excited that we were jumping around the room wildly. I jumped off the couch and landed on the floor, but then I felt something furry and soft squished beneath my feet. I was horrified when I found out that I have accidentally stepped on one of the kittens. The poor creature was paralyzed and severely injured, but it didn’t die - it breathed in short intervals and had a thick line of blood trailing from his mouth. I wept the whole day, and at night I prayed to God really hard for the kitten to heal miraculously. The next morning, I fearfully checked if the kitten was okay – if my prayers were granted – only to find out that the kitten had already died. My father and I buried the kitten at a spot outside of our house later that morning, although that being a long time ago and having grown up now, I've already forgotten where exactly that spot is.

One cold, breezy night, Jamie and Karen are spending some intimate time in a beautiful park. They are sitting on a bench facing a lake, the side of their hips touching each other. The moon is beautifully round and bright, and an opera of crickets chirping complements the romantic scene

“Jamie,” Karen says, her hand slithering over her boyfriend’s lap, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

“What is it, sweetheart?” says Jamie, his arm going around Karen’s back and hugging her as his eyes gaze into Karen’s. “You know you can tell me everything. No secrets between us, right?”

“Owh, Jamie,” Karen replies, her eyes turning away from her before her face becomes a bit down. “You’re so sweet and all, but I’m afraid that you’ll-“

Before she can finish her sentence, Jamie releases his hug from her and stands up from the bench and faces her with a stern countenance. “Karen, please don’t say that there’s another guy.”

“No, Jamie,” she replies with a voice belying hesitance, “I love you, and only you Jamie. You know that’s true!”

Jamie is relieved to hear those words from her, but it still isn’t over. “But then what, Karen? What is it that you’re having a problem telling me?

Before Karen can open her mouth to reply, her eyes catch a faint glitter, like that of a small piece of shiny metal, from afar. She knows what it is, and quickly she grabs her boyfriend and pulls him to the ground before a small metal object narrowly whizzes pass them and hitting the wood of the bench. Perplexed, Jamie gets out of Karen’s embrace and stands up, only to see a deadly shuriken sticking out of the bench.

“Jamie, get down!” Karen yells. Still in bewilderment, Jamie quickly hits the dirt, just in time for two more shurikens to fly just above him.

“Holy crap!” shouts Jamie, panicking. “What the heck was that?”

“Jamie, that thing that I’m supposed to tell you,” she says, her eyes searching the shadows around them. “The truth is, I’m really-“

Her last words do not get to escape from her mouth before she is interrupted by sounds coming from a nearby bush. Two ninjas, dressed in black attire, jump out of the shadows before drawing their deadly katana swords.

“Heiya!” shouts one of the ninjas. “Karen-san, surrender the secret information now, or you shall meet your doom!”

“Come and take it from me!” Karen shouts back as she draws two pointy daggers that before were perfectly hidden underneath her sweater. Jamie gapes. “Stand back, Jamie darling, this fight is beyond you!”

One of the ninjas flies toward her with a flying kick, but she is fast enough to step away from the attack to land a hard stab into the ninja’s crotch. As the ninja falls to the ground and rolls side to side in agonizing pain, the other ninja closes in and swings his katana at her. She manages to intercept it with one of her daggers, and swiftly she uses the other one to impale his arm. The ninja collapses, with blood gushing out of his arm.

The other fallen ninja, after recovering from his injury, comes to aid his partner. What follows is a scene straight from a Jet Li action movie, with two ninjas battling a single woman with killer moves like Neo. Jamie only stands at the side, awed and dumbfounded by this turn of events. Karen has got a lot of explaining to do.

About five minutes later, all the ninjas lie on the ground, their breaths exasperated and their bodies beaten. Karen sheathes her daggers back inside her sweater and slowly approaches one of the ninjas who looks like he is still able to talk. She crouches down to him and roughly snatches him by the collar with one hand, her face looking fiercely intimidating.

“Who sent you, scumbag?!” she roars with one tightly-clenched fist shaking in front of his face. “Who do you work for? The Illuminati? The Secret Neo-Nazi Organization? The Hidden Soviets?”

“That, my dear spy, is something that you will never find out.” Swiftly and painfully, the ninja twists his head, effectively breaking his own neck. The ninja would rather commit suicide than to divulge any information about his secret faction. Karen then turns toward the other ninja, only to find out that he has done the same thing.

The scene turns quiet again, with only the chirping of crickets filling the air. Karen’s fierce face slowly changes into worry as she turns toward her boyfriend, Jamie. “Look, Jamie darling, I need to explain something to you but I need you to be a bit understandi-“

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” interrupts Jamie, with things becoming more clear for him. “I understand that you’re a super-secret agent who knows kung-fu and is working undercover for a the government for god knows what reason. I’m cool with that. I mean, it’s weird and all, but we’ll find a way to live through it.” Jamie smiles as he walks towards Karen, reaching out to hold Karen’s soft, blood-soaked hand.

“But Jamie darling, that’s not what I was trying to tell you. I mean, I know that hiding my secret identify from you was wrong, but it wasn’t it.”

Jamie is let down. “Then what is it, Karen? What else could you possibly be hiding from me that is bigger?”

“Well,” she says hesitantly, her cheeks turning red. “I’m seven weeks pregnant with your baby.”

The grim chamber had been quiet, buzzing only with the faint sounds of electrical currents and small machine parts, before the loud lock mechanism of the blast door leading into the chamber was initiated. It whirred in a series of spins, twists and clicks until the mechanism was complete, and the blast door slowly slid open with steamy white vapor rushing out due to pressure from inside the airlock. The air soon cleared, and a silhouette of a large man was seen at the mouth of the entrance. The man stepped out, shedding light onto his topless, muscular body and his ragged, orange pants, and much lower were bar-linked shackles fastened around his ankles. His head sported a crew cut, his chin was stubbly, and his face bore many scares, along with a stern countenance of a grizzled war veteran. His eyes were dark; his pupils were so large that it almost swallowed all the white, perhaps a deformity caused by prolonged cryogenic suspension. And he had a cigar in his mouth, its wispy grey smoke gently drifting in the dark, moist atmosphere of the chamber.

He had been a prisoner frozen in lifeless suspension in a cryogenic coffin. Now he was about to become a Marine.

The man proceeded to walk calmly across a catwalk and onto a round platform that was at the centre of the small chamber. There were two foot holes fixed on the platform, and the man placed both his feet inside them. As soon as he did, small robotic clamps came from beneath the platform to disengage the shackles before firmly fastening his feet to the foot holes. The clamps then disappeared out of sight, and the platform slowly rose about several feet higher before halting. The man stood idly on the round platform for a while until a pair of tendrils came down from above and grappled the man’s wrist before slowly raising them higher, draping both of his arms just above the man’s head. Soon a whirring sound was heard; it was the power turbine, charging up and preparing to initiate the assembly of the Terran Marine Power Armor.

A computer screen came down in front of the man, showing the current progress of the power suit-assembling process. The word ‘ACTIVE’ was blinking at the end of a string of commands on-screen.

Robotic arms, which were fixed around the chamber and before had been dormant, then began to come alive, retracting from the walls as they were about to start their work on the man. Several of the mechanical hands procured a set of chassis and fastened them onto the man’s torso and limbs. Others helped by placing wires, tubes and mechatronical parts around the chassis with screws and bolts before covering them by welding pieces of armor plating onto the chassis. The plates were ultramarine blue, and they suffered from small dents, scratched paint and other signs of wear, perhaps taken from an older set of armor that had been through combat a few times. The mechanical hands worked from the ground up; the man was half-way through the process, and already his lower half was fully covered with high-tech armor while the machines worked on the aegis along with the insertion of plasma cells that will provide almost perpetual power for the battle suit.

One of the hands had finished implanting an artificial spinal cord to the back of the man’s actual spine. The two rows of needles on the artificial spinal chord automatically and subsequently embedded themselves into the man’s back, making impulse signal contact with his brain He would be able to command almost full control of his power armor just by willing its movement with his mind. Next was the extension gauntlets; due to the bulky nature of the power armor, the pair of robotic gloves would serve as an extension of his actual hands by the manipulation of gyro-servo devices that was placed within his grasp before the machines welded the extension gauntlets together with the armor around his forearm.

The process was 80% in completion; almost all of him was covered with metal while several tubes were pumping cryo-fluids into the armor cooling system. The tubes dislodged themselves and disappeared after they were finished, and the tendrils that had been draping his arms came down slowly before releasing his wrists. A pair of huge, round pauldrons bearing his unit ID on the left side and the insignia of the Terran Dominion on the right side came down and were attached to his shoulders. Once it was done, two exhaust ports at the back of the power armor started to light up; the suit was testing overall system functions for optimal performance. Everything tested well, and all the bonds that constricted the man’s movement were loosened. The man was now one with his power armor.

The finishing touch; an automatic rifle was lowered from above just within reach of the man’s mechanical gauntlets. The rifle weighs 60 lbs and uses depleted uranium shell cartridges for ammunition. It can fire up to 2500 bullets per minute in both automatic and in rounds, and it is also capable of launching a frag grenade that explodes on contact. It is the standard-issue firearm for the Terran Marine Corp.

And then all was done. Standing on that platform was no longer just any man. He was now a Marine towering 8 feet tall and fully clad from head to toe in power armor 8 inches thick, armed with a powerful gun, frag grenades and other devastating gadgetry. But all the armor and firepower won’t be enough once he is in the battlefield. He might have to face against the esoteric, relentless forces of the Protoss warriors. He might have to steel himself against the frightening claws and talons of the nightmarish Zerg swarms. He might even have to battle against other Terran marines, men and women serving their own factions with guns like himself.

No, the prerequisites for being a marine are more than just mere material armor or weapon. It takes stoic courage, guts of steel, and a special kind of sanity. These qualities are both a marine’s true weapon and shield against the horrors of war that await him. Any man can slip into a power armor and go into battle, but only a few can make the return journey alive.

‘ASSEMBLY PROCESS: FINISHED’

The Marine stepped forward, embracing his new amalgamated self. He had been in cryogenic suspension for longer than he could remember, and now he stood as one amongst millions who will bring forth the military wrath of the Terran Dominion. Just as the ice had thawed from his body, the same was with his mind. With the cigar still burning in his mouth, he pondered how he had lived his life before, how he was now, and the role that he was about take in the big picture of things to come. Four words came to him, and he uttered it grimly before bringing the glass visor down to hide his face:

“Hell, it’s about time.”