<strong> Pvt. Ed Cooper - 1st Squad</strong><br/><br/>Cooper followed the more experienced soldiers down the seemingly endless hallway. Occasionally there was a pause in their banter, but by the time he'd thought of something clever to say, the other partner had already chimed in. He ended up clearing his throat a lot, and investigating the new rifle in his hands. All of the controls and the readout display seemed the same. It looked like the breakdown for cleaning would probably be a little different. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it, but was happy to feel the weight of his original rifle now slung across his back.<br/><br/>By the time they'd reached the misty hallway with the black shell that seemed to grow across the walls, Cooper was officially creeped the fuck out.<br/><br/>He revised his opinion when the sight of the... thing on the dead man's face came into view. The others were standing closer, but he could see just past Mathias' shoulder.<em>Face fucker</em>, the LT had called it. What the hell? Cooper glanced at the other marine's faces, but found their expressions mostly unreadable. Had he just missed a training class or something? There was some kind of... octopus looking thing, clamped across the face of the dead--<br/><br/>No fucking way. The man wasn't dead. He was breathing. With that<em>thing</em>... Cooper turned away, the taste of his last meal rising up in his gorge. The dropship ride hadn't turned his stomach, but the sight of this pulsating alien creature threatened to. He might have vomited, if the sudden explosion of a shotgun shell hadn't startled him out of it. Spinning back around, he saw only a thin gruel of mixed red and gray where the man's head had been. In a way that was better. The thing that didn't fit in Cooper's little world was now violently dismissed from it.<br/><br/>Cooper's world was just about to get a lot bigger, though. His instincts kicked in at the LT's order, and he formed up on Mathias' left flank. Cooper clicked off the safety on his new rifle and raised it into firing positions, ready to target on.... something.<br/><br/><em>What the fuck was going on?</em>