Obstacle Course
As always, when an idiotic misadventure was about to take place, the entirety of the RED team (minus Soldier) was gathered in their rec room, lazily busying themselves with pointless tasks like reading. Seriously, who does that dumb stuff? The Scout, realizing that, in his mind, "books is dumb," and that also he didn't want to be part of the next idiotic misadventure. So with a proud proclamation of "Fuck you guys, I'm outta heah!" the Scout stood up, tossing some old book to the side of the room and began to march out.
Then, as if sensing his misadventure was in danger of being Scout-less, the Soldier burst into the room, a giant smile on his face. "Everyone! I've made something amazing!"
Suddenly the room was completely empty, except for a bewildered Soldier and a fearful Scout.
"Oh, Scout, I knew you'd like the idea!"
"OH GOD NO-!"
Twenty minutes later, the Soldier dragged, surprisingly, the Spy out first to be stuck with the Scout on a tiny pair of rusty bleachers. The American dumped the fussy Frenchman onto the bleachers, supposedly moving on to new interests.
After a moment, the Spy questioned, "Scout, why are we not running?"
"Well I dunno about you," the Scout replied casually, "but he stapled my legs to the bleachers."
"Aha! It's okay, you two, I fixed the stapler!" the Soldier crowed from behind them.
"Oh, merde."
Thirty-three minutes later, multiple cries of anguish from grown men, the line "IT'S YOUR JOB TO HEAL, MEDIC! THAT INCLUDES STAPLE BASED INJURIES!" being repeated a few times, and finally a reluctant heal session led the mercs to be just where the Soldier wanted them to be.
"Gentlemen!" the Soldier crowed. "And Pyro!" he added quickly at the indignant crossing of arms from a certain mumbling mercenary. "I've noticed your performance has been slipping."
"You've been near the bottom of the board last five matches, mate," the Sniper murmured.
"So I have created the greatest, most challenging, manliest, most dangerous, most... erm... manliest solution to this problem anyone could ever come up with!"
"We're gonna arm wrestle a crocodile?" Sniper said with an unbelieving stare, wondering where the Soldier could get a crocodile.
"We're gonna arm wrestle a bear?" the Engineer asked in confusion, because that was truly the manliest thing he could imagine.
"We are going to arm wrestle Heavy?" the Heavy questioned with an innocent frown plastered upon his face.
"NO YOU IDIOTS IT'S THE TITLE OF THE STORY!"
Everyone stared at him.
"The wot...?" the Demoman questioned, wondering if the Soldier had been stealing from his supply.
"Oh see, zhe story-" Before the Medic could launch into an explanation of the fourth wall and books, the Soldier slapped a hand over the German's mouth and gestured to the very large set of obstacles behind him.
It was really impressive for something the Soldier would make, honestly. Official looking, tall and strong and was that a pile of raccoon corpses-
...
"Yeah no, fuck that," the Scout summed up all of the mercs' thoughts.
"I will give each person who completes this course a hat."
It was impressive how fast seven men and a Pyro could move when promised headgear. The Soldier cackled maniacally, hurrying over and grabbing a rocket launcher that was conveniently on the ground. He aimed upwards, firing straight up into the air.
After a moment, the Demoman asked, "We supposed to go, or...?"
"Oh, uh, yeah sure, go ahead," the Soldier replied.
The mercs set out at a brisk pace (a brisk pace being seven of them barely jogging and the Scout running ahead and laughing at the rest), unaware of the obstacles ahead due to the way they were running. Or something. They were just surprised when they came up to THE WALL.
"Up and over it!" the Soldier suggested, and the mercs' sprang into action, all silently allowing the Heavy to take up position at the base of the wall and toss them all up.
The Soldier's cry of "No!" made them all pause. "You maggots rely on the Heavy too much! So, I want the Scout to toss you all up!"
"Wait what," the Scout questioned flatly, eyes widening as he glances at all his teammates. The rest of the team offered nonchalant shrugs, a few sporting small smirks. The Scout gulped, hesitating slightly before he wandered over to the wall and got into his position.
The Sniper and Spy were easy enough, though the Scout had paused and wiped his hands off on his trousers after he tossed the Sniper over the wall. The Pyro, Engineer and Medic were more difficult, straining his muscles, but he managed to somehow get them over too. The Demoman had the bright idea to whip out a stickybomb launcher from somewhere and explosive jump over the wall.
The Heavy and Scout froze, locking eyes, silent understanding coming between them. The giant bear began his sprint, eyes narrowed, focused on the wall, and the Scout closed his eyes, turning away and shaking slightly. The Heavy came closer and closer to the wall, when finally...
...he ran right past the Scout and around the wall.
The Scout shook a moment more, before stopping and opening his eyes.
"Huh," he said finally. "I guess that works too."
The Scout jogged around the wall, hurriedly catching up with the rest of the group. A few of the mercs spared sort-of-pitying glances at the youngest mercenary as he struggled to hold his tired arms up. He responded by glaring at them and crossing his arms with a huff, not noticing when they fell back down again.
Finally they came upon the second obstacle: The Hurdles. The Soldier had procured a trumpet from somewhere and was blaring it loudly for moral support. The Heavy subtly ran over to the Soldier and punched him in the face, before grabbing the trumpet and tossing it away.
The team, unwilling to go through the effort of jumping, allowed the Heavy to rush forward and knock each of the hurdles out of the way. The Heavy cheered in triumph, leading the charge to the next obstacle.
"HALT!"
The team suddenly stopped as the Soldier appeared before them, hand outstretched before gesturing behind him, to a series of targets modeled after their BLU counterparts.
"The accuracy portion of the test!" the Soldier explained with a grin. "With a twist, though - you can only use your melee weapons!" He suddenly dragged a table with all of the mercs' melee weapons. The mercenaries crowded around it, grabbing each of their respective weapons (the Heavy took a pair of severed hands in a mixture of horror and confusion).
It started off easy enough - the Pyro's fire axe sailed into his wooden counterpart with ease, the Engineer's wrench bounced off his target but still knocked it down, and the BLU Spy target was very susceptible to thrown butterfly knives. The Scout and Demo likewise downed their targets with ease.
The Sniper and Medic both found problems in the fact that their weapons found themselves stuck in a still standing target. The Heavy found himself in a similar situation; his pair of severed hands merely bounced off the target.
The three failed mercenaries stared at the still standing targets.
"Let zhe Heavy fix zhe problem again?" the Medic offered.
"Oh heck yeah, mate."
The Heavy shrugged, calmly walking over to the standing targets and ripping them apart with is bare hands. The mercenaries hurried onward, everyone letting the Heavy take lead because he would probably deal with any problems they ran into. Finally they stopped - a crate had appeared before them! A crude sign with the word "HATS" was leaning against it, and a giant lock mocked the mercenaries
"As you can see, this is a crate," the Soldier stated. The other mercenaries struggled to withhold sarcastic responses. "There are hats inside of it. It is locked. But! There is a key to this lock! And your final task is to get this key!"
He stopped after that, prompting the Engineer to question, "So, uh, where is the key!"
"Oh, it's just resting safely in this pit," the Soldier said nonchalantly, gesturing to what was, in fact, a square pit, roughly fifteen feet deep. In the center, lodged in the dirt, was a very large key.
"This pit," the Soldier continued, "of DOOOOOOOOM!"
He pulled out a PDA from his jacket and pressed a button. From somewhere, a dozen flaming tires were catapulted into the pit (some missing the pit entirely). Afterwards, multiple parts of the wall opened up and dozens of snakes slithered out, because snakes instinctively made things hard for the protagonist. Suddenly, spikes burst from two parallel walls, and the walls began closing in on the key.
Every mercenary stopped and turned to the Heavy.
"...No." And then the Heavy turned and left.
"Well shit, he was our last chance, wasn't he?" the Scout questioned. Every nodded and then, coming to a group conclusion, grabbed the Scout and tossed him into the pit.
"AGH WHAT THE FUCK WHY-!" The Scout stumbled to his feet into the pit, dodging around the numerous snakes and flaming tires. He shot a middle finger up at the mercenaries and started to make his way towards the key when he remembered something.
"Hey wait, I can double jump!" So he did just that. He double jumped out of the pit, glaring at the mercenaries. He turned to leave but stopped, turning back and shoving the Spy into the pit before dashing off to join the Heavy in some other dumb misadventure.
The Spy was calm as he righted himself. He was a professional, of course; he could handle any life threatening situation, and he began to calmly strut towards the key.
Then three snakes attached themselves to his leg via their fangs and he screamed, flailing his arms and running around madly. The mercenaries chuckled, the Sniper wishing he had brought a camera with him, as the Spy accidentally stumbled into the key. By pure chance, his hand looped around it and he managed to realize this was what he was after, so he dashed towards where the group was standing above.
"Help me up!" the Spy screamed, shaking some snakes off of him. "HELP ME UP!"
"Do we hafta?" the Sniper questioned.
"I AM ON FIRE AND HAVE AT LEAST THREE DIFFERENT VENOMS RUNNING THROUGH MY VEINS YOU DAMNED IDIOTS NOW HELP ME UP THIS INSTANT OR I WILL STAB ALL OF YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP!"
The mercs shrugged and the Engineer, being the moral high ground on the team (which wasn't saying much) took pity on the Frenchman. He reached down, grabbing the Spy from the pit and tossing him up onto the ground. The Frenchman flopped around in the grass, trying to dislodge the snakes and fire from his body, and the Sniper grabbed the key from the poor Frenchman, hurrying over to the crate.
"If zhis box is full of gibuses, Soldier," the Medic quietly threatened as the Sniper set to unlocking it.
"What? Gibuses? Why, of course not!" the Soldier gasped, reeling back as if physically hurt. "You wound me, Medic. I have only the best of hats-!"
The Sniper let the lid of the crate drop, turning silently and striding towards the Soldier. The American turned to the sharpshooter, grinning with triumph, before the Sniper tackled him to the ground, wrapping his hand's around the Soldier's throat. As the Sniper silently tried to kill his teammate, the rest of the team wandered over to the crate and peeled the lid off.
"Mann Co. Caps?" the Spy mumbled with disdain.
"THEY'RE NOT GIBUSES!" the Soldier cried out, before the rest of RED set upon the task of sending the Soldier to Respawn. Multiple times.
I wanted to give up on this but by the halfway point I'd spent nearly a thousand words and 3 weeks on it.