The recruitment agency that dealt with the RED team's affairs had been known to make mistakes at times, but this took the cake. The soldier had seen some messed up teams in his days, but none of them could compare to this.
RED was losing this war, and it was time to defend their very last area. They had only two points left in their control (one in an alleyway that linked the two main paths and one atop a shack near their base) and they had to give it their all, yet they were stuck defending with this.
As he surveyed the scene the soldier sighed, "Why on earth would those maggots do this to us?"
Other than himself, a demoman, and a heavy weapons guy their team was made entirely of engineers. Of the twelve men on the team, nine of them were engineers.
He assumed it to be some sick joke, a team put together for the amusement of the higher-ups. He'd seen it done before and it hadn't ended well: He'd been the one to take out the BLU team made almost entirely of scouts.
Now he was faced with a dilemma: They had no real way of spy checking. Reluctantly he snatched a pyro's uniform and changed. He was no expert, but during the war he'd received some pyrotechnitian training.
Before putting his mask on he hollered at his team, "Defend the damn points with all you have! This is it, the final stand... it's do or die, men!"
They all nodded and talked in agreement, though nobody could make out what they were saying above the noise. Shaking his head the pyro put on his gas mask. As some of the noise was dulled he sighed in relief.
The engineers finally quieted down as the loudspeaker crackled a bit. Seconds later the voice of the announcer stated regally, "Thirty seconds until the mission begins."
As he charged out the door the pyro exclaimed, "Hudda haaa!"
Quickly he made his way through the castle, soon arriving at the first point they'd need to defend. He thought all was well and good until he looked behind him to see that he was all alone.
In a huff he strode to the second point to see where everyone was. As he neared he began to hear the tell-tale sounds of engineers working away. When he entered the area he saw that all of them were building guns, each in a different place to ensure they wouldn't get destroyed all at once.
The heavy and demoman weren't making themselves very useful, mostly just surveying the engineers' progress.
"Place teleporter here," the heavy suggested as he pointed at an empty spot on the roof. Once the teleporter was being built he went outside to the right wall and got another engineer to cater to his needs. "Place dispenser here!"
Over the loudspeaker the voice spat, "Mission begins in 15 seconds!"
The pyro, now almost in a rage about their lack of defence at the first point, ripped off his mask and shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing, men? We need to defend the first point!"
The engineers seemed to ignore him, continuing to build their killing machines. As hard as the pyro tried he couldn't get even one of them to follow him to the first point.
"Mission begins in five... four... three... two... one!"
One last time he tried, "This is our last chance, men! We have to defend the first point if we even remotely want to win this battle!"
By the time he decided he'd have to defend the first capture point by his lonesome and had securely put his mask back on, he frowned in dismay.
"The enemy has captured our control point! Time has been added!" the announcer seethed. The BLU team was pushing hard. He wasn't sure if they'd be able to hold the attackers off for very long, and doubted that this mission would end in success for the defending REDs.
Not much time passed before the BLU team rushed forward, intending to cap this last point as easily as the first. Two sentries pushed them back immediately, though as soon as they were healed they began their push.
Nobody saw the spy slip into the room. Nobody saw him disguise as one of the many engineers. Only a few moments after the crafty Frenchman's arrival shouts of "Spy sappin' mah sentry!" and "Sentry down!" could be heard in the air.
Most of the sentries had been saved thanks to the pyro's flames, but two which hadn't had anyone guarding them now lay in ruins. The engineers' spirits didn't drop, however, as they very quickly rebuilt the two that they'd lost and continued on with the day.
Seeing that it would take more than just their spy to take out the sentry farm four of them charged in: it was an assault conducted by two medics, a soldier, and a demoman. Before the sentries could kill them they popped their ubers, making themselves impervious to the sentries' attempts to kill them. A heavy followed them, taking advantage of the fact that each sentry could lock onto only one person.
A rain of rockets was exchanged between the sentries and the BLU soldier.
"Sentry down!"
The demoman planted sticky after sticky, detonating only when he needed to in order to conserve his precious sticky bombs.
"Sentry down!"
The heavy spun up his minigun and laughed manically as bullets showered the engineers and their deathly machines.
"Sentry down!"
The lone spy infiltrated the base and used the distraction of the ubers to wreak havoc on a good few of the other sentries, electro-sapper in hand.
"Sentry down!"
By the time the onslaught had ended over half of the RED's sentries had been obliterated. Only two remained in operation. And yet the engineers' spirits seemed to not dwindle, as they right away went back to rebuilding their death farm.
Once one of the engineers was finished rebuilding his sentry he abandoned it temporarily to confront the pyro. His southern accent strong he fumed, "We're all doing our jobs, partner. Why is it that you weren't spy checking?"
"Mmm hmmph ha!" the pyro protested. He'd tried hard to make sure all the sentries were safe, but there was no way he could watch over every one of them, not when they were all so far apart.
"Dang nabbit, boy, you should've tried harder!"
Feeling that he shouldn't have to put up with this engineer's ignorance the pyro removed his mask so he could be understood. His level of anger rising he snapped, "Those two sentries that survived? A spy tried to sap them but I prevented that. You can't expect me to be everywhere in this godforsaken castle at once, private. If you still have a problem with my abilities I could easily stick this flamethrower in places you wouldn't want it to be."
The engineer hesitated for a bit before scurrying back to his station. Once a relative amount of quiet had returned to the air the pyro replaced his gas mask, returning to one of the stations he'd saved. He'd taken a few hits from the spy's revolver and needed some quick heals before the next push was conducted.
"Five minutes left in the mission. Five minutes left in the mission!"
The pyro nodded, now hopeful that they'd actually be able to go against the odds and win this battle. He didn't let the possibility cloud his mind, however; five minutes was plenty time to make a decent push and take the point.
The BLU team tried again as predicted, but to no prevail. The sentries kept them at bay well enough and the pyro flamed any spy who stepped near the stations he was protecting. They weren't going to give up so easily, though.
"One minute left in the mission!"
They planned to defy all that went against them until the very end of this match, and apparently their opponents felt the same way.
Again the BLUs tried to push forward, fighting against the clock to obtain control of that final capture point. This time they got a bit farther, their demoman sticky jumping and landing on the point, starting the capturing process, but the sentry that overlooked that particular spot easily took care of him.
"Thirty seconds!"
One last push was made, though it too ended in failure for the attacking BLUs. By the time they returned after the last push the timer had already wound down. While they'd failed their objective, the RED team had amazingly succeeded in theirs.
"Victory!" the announcer cheered triumphantly at the RED team, who were already celebrating, dancing atop their champion sentries.
That was it. They'd done the impossible and maintained ownership of the last point despite the fact that the majority of their team was an engineer. The pyro smiled to himself, his flamethrower held high above his head in a blatant taunt to the other team.
He couldn't believe he'd failed to have faith in the abilities of the Engineer Brigade.
::End::
I felt like taking a short break to get back into one-shots of the TF2 variety. Trying to make them a little less predictable than my first one.
Anyway, I own not the TF2, which belongs to Valve.
Hope you enjoyed it. I hope to be putting out a few more one-shots sometime soon.