A/N: If I could post outgoing links in here, I would, but instead, I will just tell you to google "Meet the Pyro" because it is awesome. If you have trouble finding it, add in the terms "Valve" or "Team Fortress 2." I don't really play TF2; I never cottoned much to first person shooters, save for L4D. I've always preferred adventure and platform games, and roleplaying games especially. But Team Fortress 2 is a hilariously cartoon-styled FPS from Valve, the same company that brought us the Half Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead franchises, as well as one of the first digital distribution systems, known as Steam. But enough with the history lessons, already! If you haven't already, go watch "Meet the Pyro" before you even comment on this. DO IT! You know you wanna!
low whistle sounded through the hub, lazy and sweet. The melody, unless he as mistaken, was 'Do You Believe In Magic,' an old tune by The Lovin' Spoonful. But the tempo and key were far lower than Stanford knew them to be. Whoever was whistling was way off, and that usually would have annoyed the Englishman. But somehow, hearing such a cheery song so slow and deep set him on edge. There was something…wrong about it. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, but Stanford was terribly creeped out.
He was supposed to be alone in the hub. The rest of the team was out at Zeke's for dinner, but Stanford had unexpectedly run out of hair gel and opted to stay behind. Now that this eerie music seemed to be following him everywhere he walked, though, he wished he had thought his decision through. Even Sage was nowhere to be found as he made his way closer and closer to the source of the sound. The empty base only served to frighten him more, and every so often the music would stop for a bit, and Stanford would think he heard shouting.
"Perhaps I should call for help," he whispered aloud, just to have something to hear besides the spooky noises, but he shook his mop of uncombed hair. "No! I must be brave! If someone's in the base, I'll deal with it…"
Retreating back to Tezz's laboratory, Stanford grabbed a ring from a display case. Tezz had warned his teammates not to play around with his prototypes, but there was no way the royal was going ahead unarmed. Stanford had heard Tezz mention this ring in passing; he had worked diligently to weave microcapacitors into the ring so that, using the heart-shaped hadron crystal set into the ring as an energy source and the two metal points sticking out on either side of the crystal as electrodes, Tezz had been able to craft a rechargeable stun gun concealed in plain sight. No one would suspect a simple ring to pack enough punch to potentially stop a weak human heart, but Tezz was proud enough to say that he had accomplished just that; with only a few more tweaks to the design, he would be able to send one to his sister Teresa as a gift.
Well, Stanford was unsure as to whether Tezz had properly tested the ring, but he would make sure to tell the electromagnetics expert about its performance later.
Quietly the royal redhead dashed from corner to corner of the hallway, keeping out of sight as best he could. 'If you can see them, they can see you,' Agura had told him as they brushed up on guerilla tactics. Stanford took that to mean that since he had yet to spot an enemy, they could not see him either. Eventually, he realized he was getting close to the extension Vert had recently put in, and Stanford's heart pounded in his chest. The noises were getting unbearably loud and coming from directly below the Wheeler house. He heard gunshots and explosions, muffled cries for help.
He heard Spinner's voice.
Stanford crashed through the door, letting out a primal scream. (Actually, he sounded like a little girl, but he told himself later it was very primal and manly.) He swung his fist wildly and felt it connect with something hard as the ring discharged. There was a flash of light and a slight jolt going through his arm, and Stanford and the room's occupant fell to the floor.
"Dude, what the hell!" Spinner screamed. "You fried my gaming computer!"
Stanford, still partially numb from the feedback on the shock ring, only mumbled and lolled his head to the side.
"I was in the middle of a match, you douche-poodle!" Clutching at his hair, Spinner howled in frustration. "Oh, cruel fate, why do you mock me?"
The royal looked to where Spinner had been seated; indeed, the once proudly overclocked Origin tower was smoking and sparking, the plastic housing of the case beginning to bubble and melt. In his panic to protect the base, Stanford had completely ruined the computer. Yet as unstable as he was feeling just then from the electric shock, his mind could not quite comprehend what that meant.
"Wha… What were you playing, anyway?" Stanford asked feebly, trying to get his legs to work.
Spinner sniffled. "Team Fortress 2. I don't play that often because it's full of cheaters, but Valve finally released a Meet the Team video for the Pyro class and they've been doing stuff leading up to it the past few days. There are new weapons for the Scout, the Sniper, and the Soldier, and obviously stuff for the Pyro, too. And they put out a new map and game mode! It was soooo awesome!" The gamer gave Stanford an accusatory glare. "Until someone destroyed the only thing that brings me joy and gives my life meaning!"
"Alright, I'm sorry! I'll replace it, jeez." Stanford wobbled on his feet, hugging the wall for support. "And anyway, why weren't you in the game room? Why'd you come all the way down here? We're practically in Mrs. Wheeler's house."
Spinner shrugged. "Sherman's been all clingy and overprotective and he wouldn't stop bugging me. I told him I was taking a nap so he could go with the team." Suddenly, Spinner perked up, smiling hopefully. "Hey, if we go to the games room, you wanna check out the 'Meet the Pyro' vid? The cinematography's superb! Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE watch it with me?"
Stanford let out an awkward little laugh. "Alright, old chap. I think I can spare a few minutes to watch some silly little video. It's the least I could do since…well."
"Yay!"
The elder Cortez was taking this remarkably well. Stanford felt rather silly for being frightened earlier, but he was glad Spinner showed no signs of freaking out. In the two weeks or so since the incident with the Sheriff's evil former deputy, Spinner had finally begun to readjust to human contact. He was still quiet, and occasionally a little… Well, he was kind of creepy at times. But asking a friend to watch a video was normal, right? It was not even like the time Spinner had tricked him into Googling blue waffles or two girls one cup! This was just a trailer for a video game.
Really, how bad could it be?
"Guys, we're home!" AJ called, carrying in a pizza box. "We brought you leftovers! Spinner, Stanford, we're back!"
Vert twirled his keys and whistled as he made his way into the hub. "Fellas? You still here?" When he received no answer, he and Agura shared a look.
"They're probably fine," Sherman forced himself to say, no matter how worried he was. Ever since Spinner was attacked, Sherman had become fiercely overprotective. Leaving his brother at the hub had been a huge step for the younger Cortez, and he hoped he had not made a mistake. "Spin's probably in the game room," he muttered, before frantically calling his name and hurrying towards that area. "SPINNER! We're home! Did you have a nice nap?"
His teammates followed after and found the brainy and brawny young man standing dumbstruck as he stared at the carnage before him. Spinner had patched Sherman's laptop into the LEDTV and appeared to be playing Team Fortress 2. From the way everything kept burning and exploding as his character ran around, as well as the frightened vocal cues from the other player characters, he was most likely playing as a Pyro. And yet, despite the frantic mercenary action of the game, Spinner seemed to be in an almost manic state of glee, singing happily as he played.
Stanford rocked back and forth on the floor, his green eyes wide with fear. "Death. So much burning death. Burning death and rainbows and kittens and baby giggles ohgodwhy!"
"That Sniper's a Spy!" Spinner shouted into his headset mic, only pausing in his song long enough to set the player on fire. "Burn, you red motherfucker! DIE DIE DIE! Meshuggrenade, Atomic_Beatdown, Preacher's Son, converge on my location! Let's rush the base and end this."
Agura looked down at Stanford, nudging him with her toe. "Dude, what the hell happened to Stanford?" She knew for a fact that he had stayed home dues to lack of hair gel, but Stanford's crimson tresses were standing straight up like he was some punk-rock reject. "Is… Is his hair standing on end from sheer horror? Seriously, what's going on?"
"Just a sec, guys," Spinner said dismissively. Within the span of a single minute, the gamer and his three nerdy little gamer friends had retrieved the enemy's intelligence from the RED base and taken it back to BLU's headquarters. Not long after, the match was declared over with BLU victorious. "Yes! Alright, guys, I gotta go. I've got some IRL stuff to deal with. See you at the Dragon's Wing on Sunday, okay? Yeah, you, too." Spinner took off his headset and turned towards the rest of the Battle Force 5. "What's up?"
Agura pointed to Stanford, still in the fetal position on the game room floor.
"Oh, him!" Spinner laughed. "He's fine. Just ignore him."
"Burning and unicorns and death OHGODWHY!"
"Spinner," Sherman asked, "Why are you playing on my laptop?"
Spin hooked a thumb in Stanford's direction. "The royal pain wrecked my desktop with Tezz's shock ring. By the way, Tezz, I think it needs some work."
"So you terrified him?" Sherman asked in a scolding tone.
"He fried a twelve hundred dollar gaming computer!"
Sherman turned towards the royal. "Stanford, you assclown!"
"So many rainbows… Make it stop. Make it stop!"
At this point, Zoom had taken to poking the nearly catatonic royal with a stick, just to see if he would react. "Man, what did you do to him?"
"Oh, we were just watching the new 'Meet the Pyro' vid."
"That's right!" Sherman exclaimed excitedly. "It's day three of Pyromania, isn't it? Wow. Was the video that bad?"
Spinner closed out the game client with a grin, opening the Team Fortress website. "It was awesome, as a matter of fact. The animators have really improved their techniques, especially for such a cartoon-y style. And the creepiness is comically offset by these really out-of-place sequences in some kind of candy-coated wonderland. You gotta see it!"
Skeptical, the team sat down to view what Spinner had brought up.
Three shadowed figures anonymously expressed their distaste of a sick and twisted individual: A large Russian admitted his fear, a scrawny boy from Boston called him a freak, and a smoking Frenchman philosophized.
Do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart
How the music can free her, whenever it starts
And it's magic, if the music is groovy
It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie
I'll tell you about the magic, and it'll free your soul
But it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll
And just as suddenly, the slasher flick overtones of the masked maniac were abandoned for something out of an episode of My Little Pony. Pudgy kittens, sheep and unicorns floated through the blue, rainbow streaked sky, and the enemy team members were giggling cherubs. Candy sprouted from the ground—the lollipop was an axe the Pyro swung, nailing the Heavy in the face—in the sprawling meadow, rolling hills with green grass—EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE OH GOD WHY!
Overall, the video was creepiness intercut with sickening sweetness, and the silly parts only served to make the scary parts that much more unsettling. Were these happy scenes set to the melodic sounds of The Lovin' Spoonful simply the product of a fractured psyche, vivid hallucinations conjured up by a broken mind? And yet there was such a story told, something so hilariously creepy, that they all enjoyed it. Stanford seemed to have desensitized after a second viewing and was more at ease, snickering at the creepy cooing babies with huge heads that had once filled him with terror. Afterwards, Spinner managed to convince his friends to watch the videos for the other eight classes and even the joke video for the Heavy's sandwich!
Zoom cracked up laughing, mimicking the Boston accent of the TF2 Scout. "My blood! He punched out ALL my blood!"
"Go on tiny baby, cry some more!" Tezz replied in a gravelly voice.
The alarm sounded and Spinner rolled off the couch. "RED Spy in the base!" he cried, brandishing his game controller as a weapon.
"Sounds more like a battle zone," Vert corrected. "Cortez bros, you and Stanford mind the base. Everyone else to your vehicles. Let's get this party started!"
After a quick laugh at Spinner's expense, the team regrouped. Once again, it was time to save the world.