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Prologue

Karolin awoke to a blurry blue sky. She groped around the dusty campsite until her hand found her glasses. Horn-rimmed with a gold frame. It was really just fancy yellow plastic, but saying “gold” helped impress her classmates. Probably. With sharpened vision, she glanced around the campsite. The fire had been put out, all the other sleeping bags were gone, and all that remained of her friends’ presence was a note written on a piece of scrap paper.

“We are going back to Yttervik,” it read, “Meet us in Salthamn for dinner if you can swim fast enough!”

“Oh no,” Karolin said under her breath, “Oh no oh no oh no.” She quickly rolled up her sleeping bag, shoveled her belongings into her backpack, grabbed her Game Boy before she forgot it, and sprinted down the trail toward the small beach where they had moored their boats.

When she got there, sweaty and wheezing, Karolin saw that all the boats had left, taking all the other partygoers with them. All except for one. A single rowboat sat on the shore holding a single person: a guy about her age in an army uniform. He had one arm propped up on his military rucksack and a comic book in the other. He had been around the entire weekend, but Karolin hadn’t spoken a word with him. She hadn’t spoken with most of the people at the two-night party, but especially not with this person.

“Tack, tack själv!” Karolin gasped. Then she remembered that she was talking to someone in the military. She figured she should probably be even slightly put-together. She pushed her shaggy, dark blond bedhead back behind her ears and pushed her glasses up onto her face. 

The boy said something in a triumphant tone, but in a language Karolin could barely understand. Was it… German?

“Pratar du svenska?” asked Karolin.

“Eh… nein?” the military cadet asked in reply.

“Oh.” Karolin rebooted her brain to run on English. “Is English good?”

The cadet appeared to do the same brain-reboot. “Ja,” he said, “English is good. Better than my Swedish, at least.”

“Thank you so much for staying behind,” Karolin said as she tossed her backpack into the rowboat, “I can’t believe… well, no. I can believe they would leave me here.”

“I don’t leave my comrades behind,” the German boy said, “I counted heads as everyone left. I knew someone was missing.” Karolin plopped down in the boat, and the German pushed off into the bay. “Karolin, right?”

“Y-yes,” Karolin said, a bit startled, “How do you know my name?”

“People said it during the party,” he said simply.

“What did they say about me?” asked Karolin, though she was afraid of what the answer might be.

“Mostly good things,” he said, “From what I hear, you’re a straight-A student. And you fixed the Gunnarsens’ home computer. Håkan is pissed that you beat his high score on Tetris, but apart from that the worst I’ve heard is from a couple of guys who said you turned them down. I didn’t listen to what they had to say about you.”He stopped rowing for a moment and turned to Karolin. “You shouldn’t, either. Men can be fragile when their pride is wounded.”

“But you’re a man, too.”

“Some of us are self-aware.”

“You didn’t hear anything from the girls, then. I imagine they were too busy fawning over you to complain about me.”

“I didn’t hear much about you from anyone. I heard a few words, and that was all.” The German cast a few strokes (of the oars) through the calm waters of the small bay before speaking again. “But those people must have some opinions on you if they agreed to leave you behind.”

Karolin decided that she didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. “I don’t recognize you from graduation. What’s your name?”

“Marius,” the cadet said, “You wouldn’t recognize me. I’m from West Germany. My family just moved here a few months ago. I’m in cadet training through Östertörn University.”

“Oh! I may run into you on campus!” Karolin said, “I’m starting there in some weeks!”

Karolin was pleasantly surprised. She and this Marius character seemed to have some good chemistry.

“I saw you reading a comic,” she said, “What were you reading?”

“A new issue of my favorite just came out,” Marius said eagerly, “It’s-”

Suddenly, Karolin saw a red light coming from the trees by the Yttervik shoreline. The left side of her face broke out in searing pain. Four sharp cracks rang out across the bay. Her hand flew to her face and came away with bright red blood.

“Contact!” Marius yelled. Another four-round volley hit their boat, peppering it with quarter-sized holes. “We’re sitting ducks here! Get into the water!”

With a decisiveness that surprised herself, Karolin jumped over the side of the boat and into the cold water of the bay. An orange ball of fire bloomed overhead. Wooden splinters drifted down past her. The shockwave knocked the wind out of her lungs and rattled her brain in her skull. She swam up to get a gulp of air as her vision blurred and darkened. She felt a hand grab her by the collar. Marius, the saint, held her head above water as her spinning mind gave in to unconsciousness.

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Next Chapter

Welcome to the first part of Marius and Karolin's Bizarre Adventure, a Generation Zero fanfiction centered around the shenanigans my friend and I got up to in the game.

Chapter 1: Break of Dawn

Marius pulled himself and the unconscious Karolin onto shore. Shortly thereafter, the flaming remains of their boat washed ashore. Neither of their bags were on it. Damn. Karolin’s face was marred by a bloody gash on her left cheek. She was incredibly lucky. The bullet that hit her seemed to be low-caliber, and it hit her at a very shallow angle. Any deeper and she might have been dead on the spot. As it was, she probably just needed a good shake and a bandage to get her back on her feet.

Marius scanned the treeline for any sign of the enemy. Whatever it was, it seemed to have moved on. To his left, he could see a house silhouetted against the red and blue lights of a police car. The paneling was riddled with bullet holes. The front doorway was missing its door. He couldn’t hear or see any movement, so he turned to his battle buddy. 

Buddy? He had known this girl for conservatively an hour and two days at most. Was he seriously already calling her “buddy?”

“Karolin,” he whispered as he shook her, “Wake up.” The girl’s eyes fluttered open. She sat bolt upright, coughing up the bit of water she had swallowed and whimpering loud enough for the dead to hear. “Shh! Quiet down, there’s something out there!”

Karolin nodded and toned her whimpering down to a soft volume. For a civilian, she had surprisingly good sense.

“We should get inside,” she sputtered, “We’ll be safer, a-and they might have weapons.”

“Good idea,” Marius said. He grabbed Karolin’s outstretched hand and pulled her to her feet. He took point, carefully making his way up the path from the shore to the house. The front light flickered. Probably because the electrical box on the side of the house was actively sparking.

A trail of blood and oil led from the front hallway into the kitchen. Marius followed it until he came to its source: a mess of orange metal and sparking wires tangled up with the body of a police officer. A pistol laid next to his open hand. Marius quickly grabbed it, flicked on the safety, and checked to see how many rounds were in the magazine. Three. Three in the mag, one in the chamber. Four shots to deal with whatever destroyed their boat.

“What is that thing?” Marius asked Karolin, pointing to the vaguely quadrupedal shape entangled with the officer.

“I have no idea,” Karolin said, “I’ve never seen anything like it, outside of the movies.” She pulled it off the officer to take a closer look at it. Marius took this chance to rummage through the police officer’s pockets for his spare magazines. “This is some Short Circuit nonsense.” She bent down to more closely examine the machine. “It looks to have a fuel tank on the back. The tank is singed and ruptured, so it must be a violent weak point.”

Marius threw up his eyebrows a bit. “Good to know. In case, Gott verhüte, we have to face one of those things.”

As she was bent over, Karolin’s blood dripped off her cheek onto the floor.

“Herregud!” she exclaimed, slapping her hand to her cut cheek, “That looks serious!” She straightened up and whipped her head around in search of a bathroom. “I’m going to look in the cabinets for a bandage!”

“Sehr gut,” Marius said, “I will secure a perimeter.”

Karolin darted into the bathroom, leaving Marius alone in the ransacked house. He walked out the door into the back garden and took a careful look at the treeline. No lights, no movement. Not even the leaves in the trees. A police car helpfully lit up the forest with its spinning lights. He could see a shape slumped over the steering wheel. Ignoring the fact that it was formerly a living person with a life and a family, he figured he could scavenge some more ammo from the body.

Just as he was about to start down the road toward the police car, he heard a noise from the woods. A strange barking noise. Like a computer trying to imitate a dog. He turned to see another one of those four-legged robots. It swept a cone of yellow light across the garden onto Marius. The scanning beam turned red, and it let out a digitized howl.

“Scheiße,” Marius muttered. He ducked behind the cobbled garden wall just before the bullets flew. Four rounds sank into the dirt behind him. Another four rounds followed shortly after. Marius started to get a sense of the time he had between bursts. After a third volley, he popped out from behind his cover and fired at the robot. Its glowing red eye gave him an easy target. He only got a couple shots off before it fired another burst. One bullet knocked his patrol cap off his head as he dropped back down. He let out some mix between a grunt and a shriek.

Too close. He couldn’t bring himself to peek over again.

Marius heard the sound of whirring servos drawing closer. He aimed his pistol past the garden bed, waiting for the robot to come around the corner. All he saw was a flash of orange metal before a pressure wave blasted him off his feet. The robot pounced onto him, pinning him to the ground. It made another computerized bark. Its flank-mounted gun pointed down at him.

Suddenly, a wooden rod smashed the robot across its face, sending blue sparks dancing onto the ground. The blow knocked it aside. Marius rolled out from under the robot and recentered his aim. 

Bang! Bang! 

He placed two rounds into the round fuel tank on its back. Twin gouts of flame burst into a yellowish-green fireball. Marius shielded his face from the blast. When the dust settled, and the ringing subsided from his ears, he saw the instrument of his salvation: Karolin, freshly bandaged and holding a baseball bat in her hands.

Karolin flipped her hair, rested the bat over her shoulder, pushed up her glasses onto her nose, and said: “You’ve just been decommissioned.”

Marius stared blankly at her for a second. “Did you just make an action movie one-liner?”

Karolin smiled proudly. “Was it good?”

Marius shrugged. “It was good enough.”

“What?” Karolin said, “What do you mean ‘good enough?’”

“It was basic. Good, but without much flavor.”

Karolin grumbled something in Swedish and stomped back inside. Marius picked up his cap and followed her into the bullet-riddled sitting room. His heart was still pounding from the encounter. He fell into an armchair across from the sofa where Karolin was sprawled.

“Where do we go from here?” Marius asked her, “You know the land better than I do.”

“Well,” Karolin said, piecing together a mental map as she kicked her feet off the edge of the couch, “There is a church just up the road. Iboholmen Church. We passed it on our way here on Friday. It’s built like a castle. No bullet could make it through the stones. We could use it as a safehouse. A place to fall back to when things get ugly.”

“We should stay away from roads,” Marius said, “Those… things… could spot us easily in the open.”

“You should lead the way, then,” Karolin said, “If I’m walking through a forest in the middle of the night, I’ll trip on every root and divot in the ground!”

“And once we reach the church,” Marius said, “We can make a plan of how to find our friends.”

“Friends is a word you could use,” Karolin said with a hint of bitterness, “But yes, we should find them.”

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Previous Chapter

Organizations/Groups I think the Payday heisters would be in.

Duke would definitely be a Kingsman agent. Im listing this first cause its what inspired the whole post. Dallas and Houston would be Statesman agents. Hoxton would be considered for Kingsman because of Aldstone, but whether or not he makes it in is up in the air.

Jacket would be buddies with the Unholy Trinity from GTA or part of the Creeps from RUINER.

This isn't like. An official group but I think Wolf and Joy would be survivors in Generation Zero.

Wick would be a Dark Brotherhood assassin when the Brotherhood was in its prime (Oblivion Era)

Jimmy is a citizen of the New Sheoth in Shivering Isles on the side of Mania.

I could see Bonnie as a crewmember aboard the Black Pearl.

More to come, feel free to add on :0