A Shadow of His Former Self

"Come in, Blue Command. This is Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha. Do you read me?" Tucker asked. The radio squeaks rang through his helmet, and sweat trickled down his forehead both from the stress of the day and the pounding heat of Blood Gulch that was starting to tax his cooling fans.

Caboose sighed and scrubbed at a tiny spot on Tucker's armour. "Okay, that is the last of it. Your armour is clean now!" he called.

"Did you get all the black stuff off?" Tucker asked.

Static crackled over the Blue Team's collective radio, and the all familiar voice of Vic crackled over the radio. "This is Blue Command. Come in, Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha."

"Hello, Command! We need help!" Tucker cried.

"Roger that, Blood Gulch. What is your request?"

"I don't know what the technical military term is for it, but, uh, we're pretty fucked up down here," Tucker explained. "We need men!

"…Dude, how long have you guys been down there?"

Tucker blanched and he did his best to prevent himself from vomiting inside his helmet. "No, no, no, n-not like that!" he protested. "We need more men to help us."

"Roger that. Did you get the tank we sent?" Vic asked.

"Yeah, that got blown up too," Tucker explained sheepishly.

"Wow. Sucks to be you."

"Yeah, we know."

"Okay, here's what I can do," Vic explained. "The nearest Blue forces can be there in sixteen days, or I-"

"Sixteen days!? That's almost two weeks!" Tucker protested.

"OR I can hire a nearby Freelancer and get him there within a few hours," Vic explained patiently, ignoring Tucker's abysmal arithmetic skills.

Caboose was a simple soul, so he immediately commented, "I like the "in an hour" one."

"Yeah, me too," Tucker agreed. "Roger that, Command. We prefer the quicker solution."

"Ten-four, Blood Gulch. We'll contact Freelancer Tex and have them there post-haste. Command out."

Tucker heaved a sigh of relief. "Whoever he is, make sure he can fix a tank," he suggested.

"What's a Freelancer?" Caboose asked.

Now would normally be the time for us to deliver some exposition, but fortunately Tucker was feeling kind enough to do so for us far more simply and easily than we would have. "Freelancers are independent," Tucker explained. "They're not Red or Blue. They're just guns for hire who'll fight for whoever has the most money."

"Like a mercenary," Caboose mused.

"Right. Or like your mom when the rent's due."

"...Oh, that's funny."

"Yeah? You didn't think that was too obvious?"

"No, no, not at all. It- It was good."

It was then that they heard a familiar voice whisper, "Tucker... Tucker..."

Tucker and Caboose swivelled around in shock to see the source of the voice.
A soldier in MJOLNIR armour was standing in front of the Blue Base, but he was neither Red, nor Blue, but white. He also happened to be completely transparent.

"Who the hell are you!?" Tucker asked, but as he'd already noted, the voice was a familiar one that he had a feeling that he remembered from rather recently.

"I am the ghost of Church, and I've come back with a warning!" the ghostly figure cried.

"You're not Church!" Caboose chided the figure. "Church is blue. You're white!"

"Rookie, shut up, man!" Church snapped. "I'm a freakin' ghost! Have you ever seen a blue ghost before?"

"Yeah, that's definitely him," Tucker commented.

"Now I gotta start over again," Church complained. He cleared his throat…somehow, and resumed speaking in a ghostly voice. "Tucker... Tucker...! I've come back with a warning!"

"Is it really necessary to do the voice?" Tucker asked sceptically.

"Yeah, it's kinda annoying," Caboose added.

"Fine," Church grumbled. "Okay, here's the deal: I've come back from the dead to give you a warning about Tex. Don't let-"

"What's the warning?" Caboose asked.

"Shut up for one second and I'll tell you!"

"Oh, sorry."

"Seriously, man," Church said in exasperation. "I mean, I'm coming back from the great beyond here. Do you think this is easy? It's not. It's not like, just, you know, pop in and out whenever I feel like it, it takes a lot of concentration."

"Sorry," Caboose whispered again.

"I mean, it's bad enough that you killed me to begin with but now I come back and I can't get a word in edgewise, man," Church chided Caboose. "Okay, here's the deal-"

"Is this the warning?"

"Alright, that's it," Church growled. "I swear to god, Caboose, your ass is haunted. When we're done here, I'm gonna haunt you."

"Yeah, you're even starting to bug me," Tucker admitted.

"Okay, Tucker," Church began. "You remember that I told you that I was stationed on Sidewinder before they transferred me here to Blood Gulch, right?"

"No."

"Sidewinder? Isn't that the ice planet?" Caboose asked.

"Yes," Church replied.

"Cool! What was that like?" Caboose asked.

"Um… it was cold."

"That's it? Just cold?" Caboose said in disappointment.

"What do you want from me? A poem?" Church asked. "It's a planet made entirely out of ice. It's really... fuckin'... cold."

"Will you just let him talk?" Tucker complained.

"Alright, well..." Church continued. "One day, when I was there, everything was just like normal. I remember… I was out on patrol with my partner, Jimmy. That Jimmy was a real good kid. Everybody liked him."

"D'ya think I was a good kid, Church?" Tucker asked hopefully. Anything to brighten up this stinker of a day would be nice.

"Tucker, don't get jealous, man," Church replied without missing a beat. "Just listen to the story, okay? Like I said, the guys were hanging around, waiting for some action, bitching about the cold..."

He remembered it like it was yesterday, chatting with Jimmy while ignoring the incessant bitching.

"Man, it's fucking cold."

"I hope we get some action."
"Anyway, Jimmy was in the middle of telling me all about this girlfriend he had back home."

"Yep, as soon as I get back, I'm gonna get down on one knee and ask her to marry me," Jimmy had said proudly in that deep Southern accent of his.

"And that's when Tex showed up."

Church had seen a blur out of the corner of his eye, and he'd turned in surprise, but hadn't seen a thing. He'd started to wonder if the cold was playing tricks on him…

"Private Mickey was the first to go. He was halfway across the base when all of sudden he started screaming bloody murder..."

"Bloody murder! Bloody murder!" Mickey had screamed, quite literally. All his blind firing had done nothing (it hadn't even produced any team kills, luck that had sadly run out on Church's part). He went down, and then another soldier fell to the ground in a senseless heap from a blow to the back of the head.

"The whole thing was over before it even started."

Another Blue soldier collapsed dead, and both Jimmy and Church selected a space of air and opened fire, hoping to hit their unseen assailant with the bullets.

"Poor Jimmy was the last one to go. Tex walked up to him, pulled Jimmy's skull right out of his head, and beat him to death with it."

"Wait a second… how do you beat someone to death with their own skull?" Tucker asked in confusion. "That doesn't seem physically possible."

"That's exactly what Jimmy kept screaming," Church replied.

"This doesn't seem physically possible!" Jimmy's deflated head had somehow managed to scream, before letting out a groan of "Hurk! Bleh..."

"Bottom line is, these Freelancers, they're bad news, and Tex is one of the worst," Church explained.

"If he's such a bad-ass, why didn't he kill you?" Caboose asked.

"To tell ya, I don't know why I'm not dead," Church admitted. "Coulda killed me at any point. ...But maybe it's because Tex and I have run into each other once before."

"Where?" Tucker asked curiously.

"You, uh... you remember that girl I told you about, back home?" Church asked, and Caboose wisely decided to shut up at this point, lest he piss Church off supremely again. "Well, let's just say that Tex is the real reason why we never got married." Then he felt something, at least as much as a ghost could feel anything, and he knew that his time was up. "Guys, I'm fading fast, and I don't know when I'll be back. Just listen to my warning. Don't let Tex get involved here."

"Okay," Tucker replied.
"I mean it, Tucker," Church warned him. "No fighting, no scouting, nothing. You'll regret it..." he warned them as he faded away.

The two Blue soldiers contemplated the existence of a ghost for a moment, something that they considered for all of three seconds before Tucker latched on to the most important thing that he'd gleamed from the conversation with the dead. "So...! Tex and Church were after the same girl."

Caboose felt a lot better after what he'd said now. "I told you his girlfriend was a slut."

Neither Blue soldier saw the new arrival, who had arrived just in time to hear Caboose's comment. Clad in black armour, this soldier held no allegiance, no mercy, and little restraint, and could hold one hell of a grudge. To put it simply, the Blues were fucked.