My sincerest apologies for the delay, my dear readers; exams are just awful things for stalling the writing process

However…

It's offense class tiiiiime! :D

Chapter Five – The Depths

~THE DEPTHS~

He'd done it again, folks. Dived into murky water, or in this case a dark trapdoor leading to who-knows-what.

I do. I know what. I'm the author.

Nevertheless, Isaac was once again fortunate to land on someone who was (inadvertently) nice enough to break his fall. This time, though, it wasn't someone with the bulk and ample squishiness of our resident Heavy Weapons Guy.

"Oh jeez, that's a rib fracture…"

Isaac glanced down briefly, then out of general politeness clambered off of the Scout. Yay – new batch of morons! The kid waited for Soldier, Pyro and Scout to come to their senses (to the highest extent they could manage) and prepared for some lame but almost conceivable excuse of how one of them could possibly know his name. Soldier abruptly sat bolt upright and pointed directly at him;

"You." Here it comes. "… What's your name?" Oh. Isaac introduced himself, wondering how the helmeted fellow could even see. Assuming he could. Soldier paused for a moment as though mentally assessing the name, then simply shrugged and hopped to his feet to give the place a look-see. He would use his extensive knowledge of the American language to describe this place in a single, perfect word… Grey.

There was a fabulous abundance of grey! Grey stone floor, grey stone walls, of all things! SO MUCH GODDAMN GREY!

… That's literally all the description you're getting of the Depths. It's just grey, dude. (Unless, naturally, it's seen in Pyrovision.)

"How'd we get here?" Scout asked in manner that suggested he didn't really care – he was just obligated to find out. Isaac offered them a vague, definitely-not-his-fault explanation and then, trying not to stare at the Pyro giddily dashing about to explore the bland room, went for a hat-trick in using the 'point at the door' strategy.

The three mercs all but charged at the door, practically attacking each other on the way with their childish need to get there first. Sounds like a success.

Just before they headed through they found their complimentary weapons: pistols all round and Soldier still had his shovel. Isaac caught up to them just as Pyro started fawning over the tiny gun and Soldier complained how he probably couldn't rocket jump with this thing. 'Probably'. How loose is his grasp on reality? Next he'll be thinking there are, like, wizards that can make people do the dance from Thriller, or a freakin' Horseless Headless Horsemann or… Oh.

The party entered the next room and were instantly confronted with an old classic – attack flies. For some reason the REDs turned to Isaac for official instructions on what to do here, so the kid made a general 'have at it' motion and opened fire. Being back to killing things provided a nice sense of familiarity, in an odd sort of way, so that halted any potential-though-unlikely bouts of homesickness. Basesickness. Homebasesickness, caused by missing the Homebase sale.

Anyway despite their remarkable Annoyingness Factor the buzzing flies were soon dealt with in a few shots each, leaving the room in silence for a few moments before Soldier cried a victorious 'Yay!' and highfived himself. This proved a slight issue because he had forgotten he was holding both a gun and a shovel and those were two things that probably shouldn't have been smashed together.

Moving swiftly on, they headed north and jump-kicked into the next room, figuring they were on board with this whole fighting-monsters-in-a-random-cave thing. With a child. Fortunately though they had the presence of mind to stop when they encountered these, uh, wiggly creatures.

"Heh heh, look at them squirm," Soldier sounded amused, while Scout just let out a less-impressed 'ew'. Isaac chose to stand back and see what the monsters were gonna do (as it was probably not nice) but Pyro made its Cute Thing Ahead noise and flounced after the nearest one. The wiggly lil' guy moseyed back and forth, not causing any trouble in the neighbourhood, until it caught sight of the happy pyromaniac.

Abruptly Pyro turned a one-eighty and started running with its IN DISTRESS! noise as the mutated levitating leech with an alarming number of pointed teeth sped after it.

"Woah, jeez, didn't see that comin'," Scout informed the others, pausing to make a 'like whaaaat' expression before opening fire on the closest leech. "Um, how come you're all runnin' as fast as me?"

From where it was frantically pouncing sideways to avoid one of the hungry-looking monsters, Pyro yelled something about either different game mechanics or the best brands of tea in the world. I'm going with the latter.

The offense classes and Isaac formed the spectacular system of standing still and shooting, to running away like sissies, to standing in a new spot and doing the same again. Failsafe! Plans have always been their strongpoint. Remember when they had a lamp for a lawyer and attacked a bear with someone else's femur?

Regardless, they soon took care of the sudden leech infestation and decided to go through the big golden shiny door opposed to the dull brown one, as per Pyro's instructions. Once they found out there was a free item inside, Scout called dibs and there wasn't anything the other armed guys could do about it. Well that's how Scout got a new belt.

It was an awfully long belt ('This thing is like a mile, you guys!') so he had to wrap it around his waist an inordinate amount of times and tuck in the end, muttering 'Better safe than sorry' a lot. Eventually they passed through the leech room again to go somewhere new and exciting! And fast-pace because speed-up-belt fun.

Now. The things in this next room sported the absolute perfect name for a true and dedicated fan of TF2. Pooters. Isn't that just marvellous. If only Heavy were here. Poot.

"Well," Soldier laid down the official verdict. "They aren't especially good-looking." And he was quite right. Like an unhealthy majority of the creatures down here, they resembled flies, clear wings beating jerkily to keep them aloft. They had unusually-shaped peachy-brown-coloured bodies, like somebody had mixed a lot of colours of paint and thrown it across the wall, figuring the splatter made a vague fly figure. In actuality the mercs hadn't really the time to observe much of this, as evidently pooters had the ability to shoot at them.

~PYROVISION~

Oh, golly! A game of dodge ball with these nice butterflies! Pyro squealed in excitement and clutched its mini rainblower in preparation for playing. This was gonna be fun! Pyro flounced sideways to evade the first shot, laughing along with its teammates and happily retaliating!

~REALITY (OR THIS DISTORTED VERSION OF IT)~

Pyro brutally shot the nearest pooter right in the face, and the poor bug was reduced to nothing but gory-things. The others heard the merc's giddy laughter and sidled to the left for a bit of elbow room and/or the distant possibility of relative safety from its wrath.

By the way, remember that. Wrath. Okay? Sneaky foreshadow, he he.

Anyway the pooters' aim was nothing too spectacular and honestly they didn't even seem to fully realise what was going on, so the lot of them were soon dealt with. Not to mention the loot they acquired from the little fight was none other than a key – prefect seeing as there was a locked door at the back of the room. This got Scout a tad excited.

"OH! OH! I WANNA DO IT! GIMME THE KEY I WANNA DO IT. SOLDIER. SOLDIER! DON'T YOU FREAKIN' DARE!" Scout bolted after the suddenly very determined Soldier, both dead-set on getting to unlock the door with the kickass silver key. "ISAAC! TELL SOLDIER TO QUIT IT!"

Isaac let out the sigh of an impatient parent and marched after them, dragging the distracted Pyro along with him. Scout had caught up to Soldier and the pair of them flung uncoordinated punches at each other to try and claim the title of Key… User? Key - key door-opening… guy. Key Door-Opening Guy. Isaac simply plucked the key from them on the way past, and oblivious the REDs continued slapping mostly at the air but occasionally scoring a hit. Half the time on themselves.

They abruptly halted upon the distinct click of the unlocking door, and adopted looks akin to betrayal as Isaac and Pyro sauntered through into darkness. Pouting severely, the offense classes shoved past each other and charged after them.

Pyro had picked up on the shopping music straight away, and whipped a shopping basket out of nowhere. It paced between the only two items in the place and hummed along, wondering if they actually needed money seeing as the shop was technically unmanned.

… Huh. Why do you need money?

Isaac chose not to ponder exactly where the team wallet was being kept and somehow took out the coins they'd gotten from the Greed fight. Five wasn't an awful lot, seeing as that nifty-lookin' ladder there was evidently worth fifteen.

"Hurry up and pick something," Soldier grumbled, "This music is too… catchy." It was already starting. The involuntary dancing. Soon, it would be too late. Argh.

Obliging, Isaac picked up the item they could afford – one of those helpful blue soul hearts which I now realise is the equivalent of overheal – and their money vanished. A heartbeat later Soldier dragged the lot of them out of the shop and violently slammed the door on the music. That had been close. He'd nearly been trapped forever by the catchiness.

Subconsciously moonwalking, Soldier led the party through the next door, encountering an odd little thing named a vis in the room. Four of them, actually, all peculiar wee monsters consisting of a stomach and a pair of lil' feet.

"This place just gets better and better," Scout said, sounding awfully insincere about the matter. "See, lookit, now they're shootin' at us. And now I'm thinkin'; let's get outta the way. OH CRAP LET'S GET OUTTA THE WAY!"

Evidently the vis could fire a giant red beam of death from their stomach-things. Who knew. The mercs and Isaac dodged to the side, only to get in line-of-sight with another vis and have it shoot at them too. Frankly this rendered the space quite uninhabitable, so the team had little interest in staying. Surviving, on the other hat, was something they were very interested in.

"UNLEASH HELL!" Soldier suggested loudly, which proved to be quite a good idea. Gold star for you, Solly. "HURRY, MEN! GET OUT THE BATTLE TIC TACS!"

Scout blinked. "Ya don't mean 'tactics'?"

"No," Soldier replied casually, taking some mints out his pocket.

Then they got their act together and shot the ever-loving crap out of the vis, which were having the worst time trying to line up a shot anyway. Really it was the nice thing to do. The shooting. Hm. The party made their merry way out of that room and passed through one containing a bunch of independent, sentient brains wandering around. Certainly odd, but stranger things had happened.

Like fighting a personified sin, for example.

Wrath seemed to be a cranky fellow, and he had a fondness of chucking explosives everywhere. Pyro stood in front of one for a while, wondering why the airblast wasn't working, and was promptly launched into the far wall with an alarmingly loud fluffy-impact-noise. The battle probably wouldn't have taken so long if it weren't for the layout of the room, which led to Scooby Doo-like dashes back and forth between a load of rocks littered across the floor.

The rocks were grey, by the way. Like everything. Even Wrath was dressed in grey.

Isaac for one retained his fed-up attitude toward these particular mini bosses. There had to be a sure, quick-fire way of ending the fight in a highly dignified, thought-out manner worthy of being recorded in the history books. Ooh! Got it.

In the aforementioned dignified manner he turned around and violently punted Wrath's last thrown explosive into the monster's own face. Pyro backflipped around the room in some kind of goal celebration, crashed into both Scout and Soldier, and the three of them smashed through the next door, leaving Isaac to grab their post-battle loot (a tarot card) and hurry after them.

"Heh heh, they don't have heads," Scout observed the next group of monsters with a very mature chuckle. Know what's awesome? People who actually chuckle in real life. Makes my day, really does. As much as noting the laughing habits of the best video game characters in the universe is great.

ANYWAY. No, these monsters didn't have heads. In fact they were more or less just hoppers, complete with considerably unnecessary bit of pre-battle blood spatter. Delightful, and puzzling. The lot of them went ahead and got the party started by springing about the room like drunken gazelles playing The Floor is Lava. The mercs and Isaac on the other hand debated whether joining them in this would be fun and/or remotely beneficial, before realising they'd be better off simply attacking.

"Remember when all we killed was the BLU team?" Soldier sighed wistfully, "Feels like it was yesterday." It was, in fact, yesterday. "And we killed other stuff I guess. Ah, Halloween." With Soldier suddenly stuck in a bubble of nostalgia and robot-related thoughts the only thing that could revive him was a decent kick to the head. Fortunately, these particular monsters were good at providing just those.

Somehow said kick turned on the weird and wonderful mechanics of Garry's Mod and Soldier quite spectacularly soared through the air, limbs altogether wildly out of proportion, and his involuntary flailing took out literally all the monsters. Scout and Pyro had built up an immunity to the shock this sort of event would usually induce in people, and Isaac had had to learn pretty quickly, so the team carried on like nothing had happened. They soon reached the next door.

The door, which likely had the intention of scaring folks away (or at the very least serving to unnerve them) only encouraged the REDs of the party to charge in all the more enthusiastically due to its haunted house-like wonderment. Freakin' man children. Isaac followed after them with the beginnings of a 'Boss Ahead: Caution' sort of warning, but the lot of them had already vanished into the gloom.

~BOSS ROOM~

The team rushed into the room with an air of great overconfidence and a hint of 'ooh, dark in here' vibes, as per usual. 'Usual' as in when they were, y'know, in dark places. Ramble is a funny and relevant word.

"WAIT A MINUTE." Soldier abruptly stopped dead, critically scanning the perimeter from behind a helmet he couldn't even see through. That really is a problem we ought to get that fixed. "This is clearly the perfect place... for an ambush!" He glared at the mercs on either side of him like they might prove to be the culprits of such a cowardly form of attack.

Pyro took only a moment's thought about that to get all flustered and panic while shooting at the roof, dislodging a sizeable chunk of the ceiling. Isaac dodged the untimely friendly fire and was in the process of pointing out the whole boss room concept when he was again interrupted. By the boss, in fact, which is a tad unfortunate if given a little consideration.

Loki - and not the one from Marvel, okay? - could only be described as a small, red, devil-looking thing on a severe Bonk rush. We're talking that time in Dare Games when Scout broke the universe level rush. However, he quite lacked the general scariness of an average dungeon boss.

"... Huh, that's it?" Scout sounded slightly bewildered, as though cheated out of a good fight. "Yeah, real scary. What can it even - JESUS CHRIST IT'S EVIL KILL IT GUYS KILL IT!"

Evidently Loki, for all its tiny size and wee high-pitched noises, could shoot at them and do so very swiftly. The mercs fluked out in the sense they dodged the shots just by standing where they were, and they also had a nice view of poor Isaac hitting the back wall and the 'overheal' soul heart shattering within seconds.

Pyro mumbled something like 'Aw, Hell no' with all the attitude in its system whipped up its pistol in slow motion, gladly firing at Loki in retaliation.

Loki was only mad because they had strayed into its newly refurbished boss chamber. It even had a spiky tile zooming around the place.

Whatever, a mad Loki was a fast Loki, and because it's such a rare boss I don't really remember how to defeat it. Fought it, like, once. Either way after Soldier had to fire a warning shot at Scout for dashing around yelling 'GOTTA GO FAST' the boss continued to claim more of Isaac's HP, to the extent the team decided they needed an Escape Plan. Not the pickaxe, nice as that would be, just the plan.

Hm. Not a pickaxe… BUT MAYBE A SHOVEL!? *courtroom drama sound*

Soldier yelled incoherently and stabbed his shovel into the floor, fully prepared to hack their way to freedom, when a trapdoor simply came into existence the moment the blade touched down. Scout held the official verdict.

"Lame."

The trio of offense classes summoned Isaac (in the process of frantically dodging another blast of shots) to the trapdoor, through which the four of them fell into the depths… II.

Stats;

Isaac – base, 4 HP

Scout – speed up, the Belt 3 HP

Soldier – base, We Need To Go Deeper!, 3 HP

Pyro – base, 2 HP

Team in possession of XXI The World

THE BEST REFERENCE I'VE EVER MADE EVER IS IN THIS CHAPTER :D Tell you what, if anyone gets it before I post the next chapter then I'll give the first person to do so a TBoI emoticon over Steam :p It's creepy. Fair warning.