BATTLE AT FORT GINGER
Pete the footsoldier made his way slowly through the wreckage of the battlefield, stepping around the remnants of his comrades and enemies alike. He'd never seen such a battle in all his days. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air, a sickly sweet smell that left a gingery taste on the back of his tongue. All around lay large, fist-sized silver balls; the remains of the attack.
Up ahead, movement. Someone was still alive! Pete hurried forward, leaving a trail of crumbs in his wake as he reached the body's side. It was Petey Pepper Pants, one of Pete's good friends.
"Petey Pepper Pants!" he called, shaking the man's shoulders. "Speak to me!"
"Ungh... Pete?" Petey Pepper Pants moaned, blearily opening his eyes. "What happened?"
"It was terrible!" Pete said, pulling Petey Pepper Pants to his feet. "The Nazis hit us with a new weapon... some sort of cannon! Everything was silver; there was no way out!"
Petey Pepper Pants looked around at the wreckage. Behind them was their fortress, tall and mighty, defended on all sides by tall, brittle sticks of red and white, each sharpened to a point. On the top, just visible from the ground, lay a red glittering mound, into which was stuck a tall wooden stick that held the flag of the United States of America. The gate, a rectangular piece secured by Red Ropes of Justice, lay open, waiting for Pete and Petey Pepper Pants to return.
Ahead lay the Nazi fortress. A menacing structure, defended by huge logs covered in large white rocks. They formed a wall, stretching all the way across the horizon, taller than three men. There was a grand archway at the door, built from tall white sticks with blue discs at the top, like signs of evil itself. All the men within wore blue, as well, and even the walls and roof of the building were blue. Every inch of it offended Petey Pepper pants.
A bugle sounded, calling all soldiers back to the fortress. Pete and Petey pepper Pants obediently hurried back toward the welcoming sight of their own American, red-painted home. They were greeted at the gate by Commander Nutmeg, who congratulated them on their survival. "We've got a new plan of action, boys," he said, showing them the grand new structure housed in the depths of the fortress. It was in the shape of a horse, with a crooked blue star painted on the flank.
"Here's the plan, men," Commander Nutmeg told them. "We hide inside this, and leave it in front of the Nazi fort. They'll bring it inside, and when they least expect it, we jump out and attack!"
"Sir, yes sir!" Pete and Petey Pepper Pants saluted, excited at the prospect of battling the Nazis. Eagerly, they jumped inside the structure.
"Yo Solly, any chance a anymo' deaths any time soon? I'm freakin' hungry!" Scout whined, grabbing a peppermint stick off the front of the red gingerbread fortress to suck on.
"Maggot! You just ate an entire Nazi army!" Soldier barked, looking up from his war reenactment. "How can you possibly still be hungry?"
"I dunno, I just am," Scout moaned, crunching the peppermint noisily. "...y'know, that horse thing is neva gonna fool th' Nazis. They're pretty smaht."
Soldier snorted, blocking Scout's hand as he tried to snatch another peppermint stick. "Of course it will. This is an exact replica of the real horse American soldiers used to fool real Nazis! If it worked then, it'll work now!"
Scout shrugged, resting his elbow on the crumb-coated table and his cheek on his frosting-stained hand. "If ya say so," he muttered. "But there betta be some deaths soon, or I'm firin' anotha' round a these silva' ball thingies."
Soldier trotted the gingerbread horse over to the blue gingerbread fortress, then laid it down in front of it, like a sacrifice. "Hey Nazis!" he said, holding Commander Nutmeg up. "Come and see this beautiful American present we Americans made you, here in America!"
Scout grabbed the gingerbread man-version of the leader of the Nazis, Mister Mean Mustache, and walked him over to the horse. "Oh mah," he said in a high, girly voice. "What a beautiful present! Ah must put it in mah livin' room next ta th' giant frog th' french ahmy gave me just yestaday! Ooh my, Ah hope it will fit in th' door!"
The horse was several times bigger than the gingerbread man-sized door, so he lifted it over the wall, placing it inside the fortress, along with Mister Mean Mustache and Commander Nutmeg.
"Oh mah goodness gray-shus!" Scout said as Mister Mean Mustache appeared to admire the blue star. "It's even got a hideous color a blue on it, just like everything ah own because ah hate nice colors like red! How wondaful, ooh!"
"ATTACK!" Soldier cried suddenly, flinging Pete and Petey Pepper Pants over the Nazi fortress wall. Scout yelped and tried to fight back, but the horse took up most of the room inside the gingerbread fortress, leaving little space for three human hands and four gingerbread men to move around.
"Oh mah goodness gray-shus apple 'n pumpkin pah!" Scout screamed as he let lose a handful of tiny silver beads over the entire battle. "Silva' ball cannon!"
Soon the entire floor was covered with hundreds of decorating beads, bouncing everywhere. The Nazi fortress was awash with them, and Mister Mean Mustache had managed to capture Commander Nutmeg in the confusion.
"ENGIE!" Soldier screamed upon discovering his beloved gingerbread commander trapped behind pretzel stick walls. "WE NEED MORE MEN! THEY HAVE COMMANDER NUTMEG!"
"Hold your horses there, partner," Engineer said, carefully making his way around the messy kitchen, trying not to break his neck on any of the stray beads. "Next batch is almost ready. In the meantime, don'cha think you oughta build up them forts a bit more? They're lookin' awful small."
"OH MY GOSH!" Soldier yelped, realizing the truth in Engineer's words. He grabbed a bundle of candy canes and started sharpening them up, to replace the ones Scout had eaten. Similarly, Scout decided to make his dungeon more homely, since it held such an important gingerbread man.
He erected walls of graham cracker and used gumdrops as turrets, holding the whole thing together with white frosting. It certainly wasn't the most beautiful edible dungeon the world would ever see, but Commander Nutmeg would never get out, now.
Then Scout was bored. He watched Soldier lovingly border the U.S. fortress with chocolate kisses, intended to look like spikes. It was boring work, reenacting war with candy and cookies, Scout decided.
He dipped his finger into the bowl of white frosting, stirring it around before pulling it back out and watching the gluey substance drip. Again and again he did it, until he got an idea.
Solwly, he dipped his hand into the bowl, and pulled out a glob of the stuff, all white and dripping and terribly sticky. He threw it at the red fortress, hitting it square in the graham cracker gate.
Soldier yelped, shocked at the sudden sneak attack. He glared at Scout, who tried to look innocent even while getting ready to fire again. "MAGGOT!" he shouted, standing up to look more menacing.
"Oh mah gawd!" Scout screeched, firing again and hitting Soldier's helmet. "Oh mah gawd! It's all ova!" he dissolved into snorting snickers, dropping onto the table. "It's everywhere!"
"YOU'LL BE EVERYWHERE IN A SECOND, MAGGOT!" Soldier screamed, getting ready for a fight. But Engineer stepped in at that moment, bearing a trayful of hot, steaming gingerbread men.
"Whoa nelly," he said, "Cool it, there, Sol. You two promised not to fight if I let y'all do this, remember? And I even baked you up that horse special and everything."
"Mrrph," Pyro said from near the stove, mixing a new bowl of gingerbread dough and sounding slightly offended. "Mrph myrrgh nhya."
Soldier easily forgot Scout's offense, and snatched up several of the new cookie soldiers. "Don't worry, Commander nutmeg!" he howled. "We Americans will save you!"
Scout jumped up and grabbed Mister Mean Mustache. "Oh, no ya don't!" he cried. "You can't eva beat me unless ya can guess the secret numba!"
Soldier stopped, confused. "Uh... six?"
"Nope," Scout said, taking the opportunity to grab two new gingerbread men to add to his army. He painted their bodies blue and tried to give them eyes, but the first looked more like a fish, with its eyes very far apart, and the second looked like a cyclops, with it's eyes too close together. Scout was many things, but an artist was definitely not one of them.
"Nine? It's nine, isn't it!?" Soldier cried, but Scout triumphantly held up his army of three.
"Nope!" Scout said gleefully. "Two strikes, buddy! One more guess, and if ya get it wrong, Hair Fish-Face and... uh... Uncle One-Eye will attack!"
"Hair Fish-Face?" Engineer said, leaning across the table to get a closer look.
"Yeah, 'cause he's a Nazi," Scout said, holding the cookie up for inspection. "Y'know, like Medic always says before someone's name?"
"That's Herr," the helmeted inventor said, pulling on a pair of oven mitts. "It's German for mister... I think."
"Seventeen!" Soldier cried. "Seventeen is the most un-American number ever! It's seventeen, isn't it?"
"Um... yeah," Scout said, bewildered. "It was. Oh well, ah guess ya kin pass. But now ya still have ta beat Mister Mean Mustache!"
"ATTACK!" Soldier screeched, stampeding his army across the table. "ATTAAACK!"
The fight was quick, but fierce. Few survived. Mister Mean Mustache was decapitated, and Hair Fish-Face quickly avenged his death, taking down Petey Pepper Pants and one of the new footsoldiers. But Hair Fish-Face lost his gingery life to Pete, who ripped off both of his arms, which were quickly snatched up and eaten by Scout.
"Noooooo, Hair Fish-Face!" Scout screeched around a mouthful of Nazi and American ginger parts alike, charging with Uncle One-Eye. He collided mid-stampede with Pete and two other American footsoldiers, and there was a big explosion, with sound effects supplied by Soldier. As the ginger men died tragically, Scout and Soldier snatched up more and more recruits off the cookie sheet, until there were no more.
"ENGIE," Soldier cried as one of Scout's men karate-kicked straight through the middle of one of Soldier's men, whom had been hastily dubbed "Tommy Atkins". "WE NEED MORE MEN!"
"What happened to the ones I just made you!?" Engineer said, elbow-deep in flour.
"They died," Scout said smugly, barely coherent through all the dead men he was munching.
Engineer, who always tried to keep everyone as happy as possible, raced around the cozy kitchen as the war raged on, working double time to keep the extra soldiers coming. Pyro was working just as hard though not nearly as happily, and "accidentally" smacked Scout in the head with its yellow apron a few times as it passed. He paid the irritable firebug no mind, though, occupied as he was with stuffing his face full of cookies.
The kitchen was a crowded place, but usually an orderly one, with only two or three mercenaries in it at one time. But never had it been used in such a way before. And so, as Engineer was bending down to slide another tray of freshly baked recruits out of the oven, Pyro, on its way to add an extra dash of vanilla to the next batch, happened to trip over Engineer's outstretched ankle, slip on the hundreds of decorating beads littering the floor, and crash into the table, right in the middle of the war reenactment.
"Scheiße!" Scout yelped, using the only German word he had ever bothered to memorize, for occasions such as this. Both forts had been smashed, but the soldiers both he and Soldier held in their fists still lived.
"FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON!" Soldier yelled, plucking the makeshift American flag out from beneath his teammate's arm. He jabbed the toothpick it was attached to into his ginger-soldier's arm and bellowed a war cry of Justice.
Pyro stared at his former friend with the most sarcastic look it could manage, but Soldier paid it no mind. When he ran out of breath from his war cry, he had to pause for a moment, then launched into a Great and Mighty Speech of Justice and Peace, describing what was to be done with the beast and how American it would look as a rug. Scout was bored by the time the first word had been uttered, and soon was flinging more silver beads, one by one, at the American's face.
Pyro sighed and didn't even bother trying to get up. It was sick and tired of the antics of these two idiots, always doing something completely stupid, for the sake of... it didn't even know what. True, this ginger-war was the only way to keep them from killing each other with the hourly fights they got into, but Pyro had had just about enough of running around like a waitress.
Scout dug Commander Nutmeg out of his shattered cell. "Yo, Solly!" he said, holding the ginger man, now sans a foot, up high. "Th' forts ah smashed, but ah still got ya' commandah!"
"MAGGOT! You will return Commander Nutmeg to me THIS INSTANT! Do you hear me!?" Soldier stretched, swiping across Pyro, the table, and the smashed cookie mess for his beloved Commander, but Scout leapt away, dancing lightly on his feet, sticking his blue-tinted tongue out tauntingly.
Infuriated, Soldier grabbed up a piece of the American fort and flung it at Scout.
It hit its mark, and seconds later, Scout was digging the mock Trojan Horse out of the wreckage, snapping it in half, and throwing both pieces in turn.
Scout had excellent aim.
Pyro scrambled to get off the table when the air became thick with hurled insults and bits of cookie, but landed right on Engineer, who had failed to notice what was taking place behind him until it had escalated too far to do anything about.
Not that he wouldn't try, though.
"Whoa, there! What in tarnation is goin' on!?" he said, voice raised in order to be heard over the calamity.
"Hrrmrpth drf mrffld grfth snngrth mrrpfh," Pyro said thickly, choking back tears. It did not like getting things thrown at it at all.
"Aw, there, there, Pyro, I'm sure they didn't mean to," Engineer said, just as a stray glob of melted chocolate landed right on one of the hydrophobic's mask lens.
Engineer turned to glare at the war reenactors, but neither of them noticed. Having run out of pieces of gingerbread fort to fling, they had resorted to launching candy canes, gumdrops, peppermints and icing. Scout had red icing splattered past his elbows and blue-stained fingertips, and Soldier held fistfuls of chocolate chips, his hands quickly melting them and leaving his sleeve cuffs edged with chocolate. Both of them were covered in crumbs and globs of frosting, dotted here and there with the silver beads.
"Now stop that, both of you-" Engineer started, but abruptly got hit smack in the face with a fat gob of white and purple.
"Now look what ya did, ya hit Engie!" Scout whined, stabbing a candy cane in the inventor's direction without taking his eyes off the enemy. "He would want me ta avenge him!"
"No, I would want y'all to settle down-" Engineer started, trying to comfort Pyro and clear his vision at the same time, but the brawling Americans paid him no mind.
"He would not, he would commend me on protecting Truth, Justice, and the American Way," Soldier protested. "Now hand over Commander Nutmeg!"
"No way, you'll neva' take me alive!" Scout yowled, and with that, he bolted, Commander Nutmeg clenched tightly in his fist as he dashed across the room.
"MAGGOT!" Soldier hustled after him, but slipped a little on the decorating beads. He chased Scout with all that he had, screaming insults and threats mightily.
Still on the floor beside the oven, Engineer helped a sniffling Pyro up, wiping off the rubber of its mask with a rag.
"Don't you mind them, Pyro. They don't mean it; they're just a little... overenthusiastic."
Pyro nodded sadly, upset at the state of its best apron, now streaked with red and blue, sticky here and there with crushed candy cane. Without another mumble it left, to wash out the mess before it set, leaving Engineer to deal with Scout and Soldier without letting the gingerbread men burn.
Scout laughed, holding Commander Nutmeg up high. "Help, help," he voiced, again in his high, girly tone. "Ooh, deese Nazis ah sooo much coolah an' smatah than me! Ooh, ah wish ah was a Nazi!"
At this unspeakable crime against Americans, Soldier gasped loudly. "MAGGOT! DO NOT MAKE ME COME OVER THERE! I WILL STRANGLE YOU WITH YOUR INTESTINES! COMMANDER NUTMEG WOULD NEVER SAY THAT; CLEARLY HE'S BEEN BRAINWASHED!"
"Nu-uh," Scout teased. "Ah heard 'im sayin' it of his own free will! He's, like, totally happy here with th' Nazis! Ah think it's a lost cause, Sol."
"NOOOOOOOO," Soldier cried, with Patriotic Tears of Justice in his eyes. "I... I'LL NEVER GIVE UP, COMMANDER! I'LL SAVE YOU!"
"Mein gott, was ist los?"
At the new and not Totally-Butchered-By-Scout German accent, both Scout and Soldier stopped for a moment, turning to see Medic in the doorway, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Vhat is going on, here?"
"MEDIC!" Soldier and Scout both screeched, rushing to the grumpy man's side.
"Doctor, you MUST help me! The Nazis have captured Commander Nutmeg and they WON'T GIVE HIM BACK! You have to help me get him, before they BRAINWASH him with their evil, un-American, Nazi ways! FOR GREAT JUSTICE! You obviously understand how IMPORTANT this is! WE MUST PROTECT LADY LIBERTY'S HONOR!" Soldier cried.
"Nu-uh! No way, doc, don't listen ta him! He's lyin'! Plus, you're, like, totally a Nazi, right? So you're totally on MY side! We gotta keep dat guy from gettin' his Commandah, see, b'cause he's gonna use 'im ta wipe out th' rest a my Nazi crew! Like, he totally already killed Mister Mean Mustache an' Hair Fish-Face an' Uncle One-Eye! Like, dey didn't even do nothin' ta him!" Scout whined.
Medic sighed and sank into a chair. "I'm very sorry, but zhere is nozzing I can do. You know vhat I vould like right now? A nice talk. Vhy don't ve just sit down und talk, qvietly, like zhe homo sapiens ve are. Ja?"
Scout snorted. "Homo sapiens? No way, nu-uh, man, ah ain't got nut-in ta do wit dat."
Soldier narrowed his eyes at Medic as Medic, in turn, narrowed his eyes at Scout.
"So you DECLINE?" Soldier yelled.
Medic squeezed his eyes shut. He was getting another one of his migraines, and the screaming patriot and whining brat next to his ears really weren't helping. "Ja, I decline."
Soldier set his teeth and pushed up his sleeves, only to have them fall back down. "SO. I might have KNOWN you would side with THEM!"
Scout scrunched his nose. "Wait. Why're ya givin' me da homo sapie-thingie? You take 'im, man! Ah dun' want any paht of dat stuff! Ain't it, like, contagious?"
Medic reached out his hands toward Scout, preparing to strangle him, but Engineer stepped in just in time.
"Heya, doc," he said, cheerily setting down a fresh tray of ginger men, as though he hadn't been standing on the sidelines just moments before, listening to the whole exchange. "Want some cookies?"
"AHA!" Soldier howled. "I KNEW YOU WOULD COME THROUGH FOR ME, ENGIE!"
As Soldier busied himself gathering up new men and storing them inside his jacket, Scout shoved Commander Nutmeg into his mouth. Totally yummy.
"NOW PREPARE TO DIE, NAZI SCUM!" Soldier yelled once he was fully armed, and Scout squeaked and hid behind Medic.
Medic sighed, raising an eyebrow at Soldier, whose arm was up, prepared to throw cookie men at Scout.
"Soldier," medic said calmly. "If you zhrow zhose cookies at me, I vill decapitate you und stuff your body vith wood shavings, zhen sew your head back on und bring you back to life so zhat you can die slowly und painfully while I watch."
Soldier's arm lowered a fraction of an inch as he considered it. Then, with a small shrug and a big grin, he threw the ginger men.
They bounced off Medic's face, leaving crumbs in his hair and all over his clothes. He closed his eyes, took off his glasses, and stood.
In seconds, Scout was running full speed down the halls of the base, Soldier close behind him. Chasing them both was a very angry Medic, who screamed an endless string of German insults at them as they flew through the halls, squealing in the high-pitched laughter of children being chased.
In the Main RED Room, Sniper sat next to a window, reading a book about bird watching while knitting himself a long, red and yellow scarf. Nearby, Pyro sat in front of the fire, poking through a catalog.
Sniper looked up as the cookie-covered trio dashed past the doorway of the room. As their voices faded, he looked at Pyro.
"Whot's that all about, then?"
Pyro shrugged.
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i could have sworn i already uploaded this...