Roomier Than It Looks

With a gasp and the whine of the teleporter, Tucker stumbled onto the hill from the exit node. His armoured was covered in black grit and slightly smoked a little.

"Are you okay, Tucker?" Church asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Tucker replied, wiping grime of his pistol. He ran up to the top of the nearby hill where he could see the Blue Base. "Come on, Caboose!" he called.

"Does it hurt?!" Caboose asked.

"No, not at all!" Tucker reassured him.

"Okay! Here I come!" Caboose called, and he ran into the teleporter.

Church waited for a few seconds, and then he asked, "Does it hurt for real?"

"Ohh, yeah. Big time," Tucker replied. They turned to the teleporter, and they waited for Caboose to emerge.

"Owwwchie," Caboose moaned as he emerged from the teleporter, his armour charred black. He turned slowly to Tucker with a look behind his helmet that Tucker didn't think he'd like to have seen, especially since Caboose was pointing his pistol at Tucker. "You lied to me."

"Ah, dammit," Sarge cursed as he peered into the distance from the top of Red Base. "Lopez, c'mere," he called. "Do you see something out there?"

Lopez looked through the scope of the sniper rifle, and then he turned to Sarge and lowered his head.

Down beside Tex, Grif and Simmons were currently occupied in the task of guarding Tex. Given their usual track record of course, they were barely performing their task, but they were doing it well enough that Tex wasn't trying to escape, and bickering as usual.

"There's no L in it, it's pronounced both," Simmons said patiently.

"That's what I'm saying. Bolth," Grif replied.

"Both," Simmons growled.

"You sound like such an ass the way you say it," Grif commented.

"Grif!" Sarge yelled. "Quit your yammering and get your keister up here. Need some help. Got more of them Special Ops fellas headed toward the base."

"As in... more than one?" Grif asked in surprise. "Uh, maybe we should bolth go, sir," he suggested.

"BOTH," Simmons snapped.

"Seriously, man, like an ass," Grif replied.

"Well, well," Sarge commented, and Grif realized what he was in for. "Another brilliant idea from the think tank," Sarge said. "Why don't you both come up? Leave the prisoner alone. We could just put her on the honour system - have her guard herself."

"Good point, sir," Grif said, attempting to slowly backpedal.

It didn't work. "YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT IT IS!" Sarge roared. "Now get your ass up here. We got just enough time for me to spraypaint the bull's-eye on your back..." He realized what he'd said, and quickly added, "Ah, by bull's-eye I of course mean camouflage. Now move it, cupcake."

"Yeah..." Grif said, and he sighed heavily. "I'll be right up."

Church had discovered that his ghostly form didn't just come with what appeared to be a fully functional suit of armour – he could even use the radio – but in addition, it also came with a ghostly sniper rifle. It couldn't shoot bullets, or maybe it could, just ghostly ones, but it did allow him to use the scope to spy on his surroundings. "Hey, Tucker. Come in, man," he called. "You there? This is Church. It's working. The orange one is coming out of the base. I repeat; the orange one is coming out of the base."

"Roger that," Tucker called over the radio. He and Caboose were crouched behind a rock, and they were preparing to sprint between cover.

"Oh, oh oh oh, Tucker, Tucker, Tucker!" Caboose cried. "Is that… Is that Church?" he asked.

"Okay, now just keep moving around outside of the base, and draw their attention," Church said, but Caboose was blabbing in Tucker's ear and he missed the whole thing.

"Tell him, that I... that I said... for me to say hi...?"

"Whoa, wait, wait, hey. What?" Tucker asked turning in the direction of the cliffs. "I missed that, Caboose was talking to me. Shut up man, I'm on the radio."

Cut to Church.

"I said, just keep movin-" Church tried to tell Tucker.

Unfortunately for them, Tucker wasn't listening and he was instead yelling at Caboose. "I'm not yelling, I'm just telling you to let me finish talking to Church. ...No, I'll tell him you said "hi" later. No, you can't talk to him. How could you possibly talk to him on my headset?"

Church severed the connection and groaned, "Oh my god. I can't believe I actually died for this war."

Grif peered through the scope of his own sniper rifle across Blood Gulch, but he didn't spot Church up on the nearby hill (not that he ever did when Church was alive). "I don't see any-" he began, but then he saw a black armoured soldier running across the field. "Uh oh. Yep, there's one." To his surprise, the soldier stopped beside a rock, and he just stood there in the open.

Now, normally Grif's first instinct should have been to shoot the soldier, but he wanted to make sure that he had the whole picture and didn't want to piss Sarge off by possibly screwing up one of his plans. That and the likely probability of him having been too lazy to load the rifle. "...Why is he just standing there?" Grif asked in confusion.

"Caboose, get behind the rock. They can still see you," Tucker called from behind another rock.

"They can't see me. I can't see them!" Caboose replied.

"That's because you're facing the rock."

Caboose turned and he looked at the Red's base. "Oh. Right," he said, and he ducked behind the rock.

Tucker rolled his eyes and he did his utmost not to faceplant. "Real smooth, dipshit."

"They're definitely Special Ops," Sarge commented. "I ain't seen troop movements this coordinated since my days on Sidew-"

Before he could spin one of his glorious tales from his days at Sidewinder, Church's spectre entered him from behind. "Wa-kika-herger!" Sarge groaned as his mind shut down and Church took possession of his body.

"Sir, are you okay?" Grif asked in surprise.

Church cleared his new throat and bit back on the Southern accent in his throat "Uh, who you talking to, Red? Me?" he asked in a surly tone.

"No. I'm talking to Lopez," Grif replied. "Because, you know, that's real rewarding."

He dodged a swing from Lopez, and snapped, "Hey, what'd I tell you about that?"

"Oh, uh I-I'm fine, that's... I'm just so mad about, these uh, god damn Blues out here," Church stammered. "They got me so god damn mad, I could spit!" he cried, and before he could tell himself that this was an extremely dumb idea he horked one up and spat on his visor.

"...Um, sir? Did you just spit inside your own helmet?" Grif asked in disgust.

"Uh, yeah. I guess I did," Church replied.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Go ahead."

"That's really fucking gross."

With their distraction successfully run (or so they assumed since Church wasn't barking orders at them) Tucker and Caboose were crouched behind a rock, waiting for- "Hey, Tucker?" Caboose asked.

"What?"

"I'm having a really good time... with... you."

"That's great, Caboose," Tucker muttered in annoyance before Caboose could finish.

"Yeah, it's like we're real soldiers," Caboose said excitedly.

"Would you please go hide behind another rock?" Tucker asked, ignoring the implied insult in Caboose's statement.

Church strolled into the basement to see the maroon-armoured soldier holding Tex at shotgun-point. "Hey, man. What's up, yo?" he called.

Simmons barely recognized Sarge's voice, and he turned around swiftly in surprise and pointed the shotgun at Church. Trying to prevent himself from crapping his pants at the idea of having pointed a gun at his superior officer, he asked, "Uh... hey...? What's going on out there, sir?"

"What's, uh... why nothin'. Why would you ask if somethin's wrong?" Church asked gruffly.

"I think that's a perfectly normal question in a time of war," Simmons noted.

"Yeah, well, I don't know," Church said, frantically trying to shift suspicion. "You're starting to act kinda suspicious there …other Red guy. So I'ma keep my eye on you," he finished lamely.

"Sarge, I'm starting to think that-" Simmons began as he turned around to keep an eye on Tex, but he never finished his statement; Church took advantage of Simmons' obliviousness to bash him over the head and knock him down. "Ow, geez, the back of my head!" Simmons yelped before he passed out.

"What the hell are you doing!?" Tex yelled in surprise. Sure, she was currently being hired by the Blue Team, but seeing team members fight like that was just wrong.

"Tex! It's me, Church! I've come to rescue you," Church cried, but he couldn't make Sarge sound enough like himself as he'd like.

"You're kind of short to be Church," Tex noted.

"What?" Church asked in confusion. "Oh yeah, right. The armour." He concentrated and he tried to step to the side without stepping to the side. Somehow his mind figured out how to make this impossibility work, and his spectre stepped out of Sarge's body.

Sarge choked as he instantly regained consciousness. "Hurk! What in Sam Hell? Where the- Who spit on my visor?" he asked in confusion.

"Tex, there's not much time to explain, so I'm just gonna give you the summary here, okay?" Church explained. "I'm a spirit now, and I'm trapped in the physical world. I possessed this Red guy so that I could sneak in to the base and rescue you while the rest of our guys run around out in the middle of the canyon dressed in black armour that they got from going through the teleporter."

"...Okay," Tex replied.

"What? That's it? Okay? You're not surprised by any of this?" Church asked.

"No. It pretty much all makes sense," Tex reassured him.

"Not even the whole "Church is a ghost" thing?" Church asked in disappointment. "That didn't do anything for ya?

"I can see right through you, it's pretty obvious..." Tex noted.

Church considered the statement and he shrugged; it did kinda make sense. "Okay, well, let me hop back in this guy, and we'll get outta here," he suggested, and he stepped back into Sarge's body. Sarge (who had simply stood there in utter confusion) groaned as his mind shut down again. "Huuurk!"

"What're you doing?" Tucker asked, raising an eyebrow upon seeing Caboose with the fucking sniper rifle again.

"One of the Reds has Tex," Caboose explained as he spotted the pair through the scope. "I'm going to shoot him, and kill him, and free Tex. Then Church will forgive me for killing him, and we will be friends."

"Oh, come on. You don't actually believe any of that, do you?" Tucker asked.

Scarily, Caboose did seem to believe him as he trained the scope on the red-armoured soldier's head. "Ohhh, we're gonna be best friends," he said, and Tucker shuddered.

"Alright, I'll make one more distraction, then you run up to the teleporter and escape," Church said to Tex. "Ready? One... Two... Three!"

A booming retort echoed through the canyon, and the bullet pierced Sarge's helmet and dropped him to the ground instantly, leaving Church's spectre standing there clueless as to what had happened. He hadn't even felt the pain.

"What the? Where did my body go?" Church asked in surprise. Then he realised who the only other person in the canyon was that would shoot him (or rather, his current body) with a sniper rifle was, and he yelled, "Oh, you've gotta be KIDDING me!"

"Tucker did it!"