A/N: Back again. Last we left off, Simmons had been cast out of Red Team and now has an adorable murder-tank as a roommate and Tucker is away questing.
Paradox Effect
Summary: Dying sucked. Dying and being killed by the same teammate again? That sucked even more. Dying and being sent back to Blood Gulch as a girl? That REALLY sucked. Now, Leona Church will have to put up with Tucker's perverted looks, Caboose's stupidity, and worst of all, Tex's laughter…
*Chapter 49*
Grif lifted his head from his pillow at the sound of Wyoming swearing angrily outside. He yawned and stretched, noted the presence of sunlight beating down on him mercilessly, and already wished he could go back to bed. One of the most annoying things about Blood Gulch apart from the Blues and excessive heat had to be the fact that it never actually got dark during the night here. Twenty-four hours of sunlight was a bitch to deal with and really fucked up one's internal clock the first few weeks. Grif stumbled around half-dead the first month of his deployment until his body adjusted to sleeping when the sun is blazing overhead. Now, he could sleep wherever the fuck he wanted if he put his mind to it.
Just not when there's an angry British Freelancer in his hearing range swearing black and blue about tripping over the fucking sprinklers for the umpteenth time. Why did they even have those again?
Oh, right. Simmons put them in so he could grow a garden.
In the middle of a desert canyon.
Grif wasn't by any means an expert on farming - or anything else besides sleeping and eating, really - but he was pretty sure that wasn't how gardening worked. He had mentioned that to Simmons, funnily enough, only for him to be laughed at and told he didn't know what he was talking about.
No, Grif was pretty fucking sure you couldn't just put a cabbage seed in the sand and water it every now and then hoping it'll grow.
He closed his eyes and went back to sleep. Anything related to Simmons wasn't his problem anymore.
Blue Base was completely silent, its occupants nowhere to be seen. Blue flags scattered around the outside walls were the only indicator of this being the exact base owned by some of the biggest assholes in the galaxy, but while they weren't here, this was now Simmons' base.
He had spray-painted half of his armor blue so the tank wouldn't blow him up thinking he was an enemy, though it wasn't a very good job. The paint was still wet in some spots, and he left a trail of blue paint everywhere he went, but that wasn't the important bit. The important bit was he had taken over Blue Base. And had a tank on his side. This was a decisive victory for Red Team.
He immediately tried to get into radio contact with Sarge, but, as usual, there was a problem.
It was nearly impossible to get a call through. Shitty service in this damn canyon was always a pain in the ass.
When the call finally did connect after several death threats and five minutes of ranting, Simmons was elated. About fucking time, too. "Sarge? Sarge! This is Simmons! Come in!"
Static crackled over the radio. The person who spoke on the other side was not Sarge. "Hello, Red Army HQ. We won't stop until every Blue is dead."
Donut. Okay, Donut wasn't the worst person to answer the phone. "Donut, let me talk to Sarge."
"For help in English, press or say 1."
"One." Silence. "Oneeeee."
More silence.
"Goddammit..." Simmoms pressed the '1' key.
"For unconfirmed Dutch-Irish, press, '1-2', as in, 'also'."
"DONUT!" Simmons raged.
"Oh hey Simmons. What's up?" the pink-colored idiot cheerfully asked.
"Donut, put Sarge on," Simmons insisted.
"Oooh yeaaaah..." Donut chuckled awkwardly. "Sarge is kind of busy right now. Things have really picked up since you left. Let's see... do you mind if I put you on hold?"
Simmons could literally fucking hear Sarge in the background saying to just leave a message. "Dammit Donut, I can fucking hear him! Stop screening my calls!"
"Sorry Simmons, but Sarge isn't available right now," Donut lied. "I can ask him to call you back, but it's really better if you have an appointment."
"Look dumbass, would you just tell him that I've captured Blue Base..." Simmons looked to his right, where the tank sat waiting to be given the order to fire. He wisely dropped his voice to a whisper so it wouldn't hear him. "And taken possession of their tank."
"Simmons... Blue Base... tank. Tank."
"Are you seriously writing this down?"
"Look, I have to go. We have a conference call with Grif in five minutes. He's pitching ideas for how to use your rations, including but not limited to deep-frying all of them. If anything comes up, we'll call you. Oh, and Simmons?"
"What...?"
"This job is the best! I can't believe you quit!" With that happy last comment, the call ended.
The entire left side of Simmons' face spasmed angrily. His hair greyed.
Something inside him snapped.
"That's it."
The former executive officer of Red Team stalked over to a nearby weapon and hoisted it over his shoulder with a grunt. Heavy, but heavy was good. It was a sign of reliability.
If it didn't work, he could always hit them with it.
"I'm going to kill them all. Sheila!"
The tank's cannon swiveled towards him.
"Lock and load. We have somewhere to go." For good measure, he aimed in the general vicinity of Red Base and fired a warning shot.
This'll teach those assholes not to fuck with the nerd.
Tucker was not a happy man.
This quest he had been dragged into had put him through the most miserable places known to man. First it was the desert. Hot, dry, and fucking sand got everywhere. He discovered just how much sand rubbing between his balls sucked and had no real desire to ever experience it again. Oh, and the heat. Fuck the heat. His suit's cooling fans gave up trying to work and left him to nearly dehydrate during their trek through the Burning Plains to kill a dead monster. Not fun.
The swamp, or as Andy tried to call it, the Wet Plains, was equally unpleasant. Tucker had secretly hoped they would stumble across hot nights, exotic fruits, and uninhibited people. There was a complete lack of two of those and an overabundance of the remaining. Take a guess as to which one it was.
He'd felt enough hot weather to last a lifetime.
So when their party of an alien, a Freelancer, two idiots, and a bomb ended up somewhere either really far north or really far south, he was grateful for the sudden gusts of frigid air and dusting of snow. It was a relief from the humidity of the swamp and the searing heat of the desert. However, there was a problem walking through the tundra, and it was in the shape of a large building with at least fifty armed guards patrolling its walls. Machine-gun towers dotted the perimeter and Tucker swore as he hunkered down next to a giant piece of ice. Next to him was Caboose and the alien, Tex scouting out the base with her rifle.
"Charging in is gonna be suicide," Tucker muttered, using his impressive eyesight to help scout. The guards were more idiotic Red and Blue troopers, no problem for a Freelancer, but the turrets would still rip them to shreds.
"One person can sneak in more easily than four," Tex pointed out.
"You have an idea?"
"Yes I do. And keep it down!"
"Please, we're like a quarter-mile away."
"I think I heard something!" someone yelled in the distance, from the structure.
They all pointedly hid back behind the chunks of ice.
"And how are you going to sneak into the base?" Andy asked snidely. The rift between Tex and Andy hadn't patched itself together. He was still too happy to insult her any chance he got, and Tex wanted nothing more than to blow him up sky high. It was like they were pre-destined to hate each other. Like how seemingly every woman Tucker ever met wanted to beat the shit out of him.
"Watch me." Tex chuckled and vanished into thin air. Oh yeah, he forgot about that camo unit.
"I can't; you just turned invisible," Andy deadpanned.
"Yep, and I still managed to check out her ass." Tucker smirked. "Because that's how I roll."
A snowball came up and smacked him in the face.
Wyoming hated Blood Gulch, he decided as he finished making the modifications to his rifle.
It didn't have much to do with the fact that it was a dreary, searing hot desert canyon in the ass-end of nowhere. What made him hate it was the lack of intelligent company save for his AI. Unfortunately, Gamma wasn't exactly the most personable artificial intelligence fragment, often referring to humanity as 'shiznos', an old alien racial insult for humanity. Gamma's prejudices for humans ran deeper than most inter-species hatred had any right to, and Wyoming could count the amount of times Gamma nearly started a fight by calling another agent a shizno.
Yeah, having another voice in your head wasn't as easy as the Director and Counsellor made it out to be. Go figure.
Still, could be worse. Could be like Simmons, who was exiled for reasons that Wyoming didn't understand. Nor did he have any desire to know. When it came to the Reds and their lack of brainpower, Wyoming had perfected the art of turning his brain off and imagining himself in a much happier place. He didn't like being this far out in the galaxy and he especially didn't like being here without beautiful sandy beaches and cocktails with little straw hats.
"There are beaches here, shizno."
So? Who the fuck wanted to see them?
"Incoming fire."
What?
Wyoming turned around, saw the rocket soaring across Blood Gulch towards Red Base, and sighed.
"Son of a bitch..."
Simmons let out a cackle of victory as the rocket he had fired as a warning shot struck its target. It wasn't like it was a particularly impressive shot, with his target being the size of a fucking bunker, but that wasn't important. He was here to get revenge on his team and he didn't care how it was done.
"You like that!? Have some more, you dumb Blue bitch! I mean Red! Fuck!"
"Defenses established, Sarge!"
BA-BOOM!
"Cancel that, Sarge. Defenses have been destroyed."
Grif wasn't surprised to see Simmons had finally snapped; he'd been waiting for his teammate to crack for the longest time, yet somehow Simmons always persevered and never gave in to his anger and frustration. Until now, as he was currently cackling like a madman every time the Blues' tank fired a shell at Red Base, pausing in his laughter only to fire off a rocket for good measure.
Grif lit a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and sighed. "Dude, the fuck are you doing? Have you finally lost it?"
Simmons grumbled something Grif couldn't hear, and his former teammate glared down at him from his position on top of the cliffs facing Red Base. "I'm attacking the Blue - fuck, I meant Red - Base! What does it look like I'm doing!?"
Grif waited for the tank to cease firing before giving his answer. "Attacking your own base, huh? That's cool." Not. "Dude how long are you planning to keep this up? Sarge isn't miraculously going to stop being a moron. Why don't you come back to base?"
"This is what you get for not listening when I told you there was a tank, you dumb Blue bitch! Fuck! I mean Red! Goddammit!"
"I listened to you."
"You told Sarge you didn't see a tank!" Simmons screamed desperately, pointing with the rocket launcher to the armored death machine firing holes into Red Base. "There's the fucking tank, asshole!"
"Ooooooh. You said listen to you, not agree with you." Grif chuckled awkwardly and flicked away some ashes. "Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny at the moment, but now Donut's my boss and everything kind of sucks now."
"Well too bad! This is what you get, you Blue bitch! God-fucking-dammit I mean Red!"
Sarge let out a wail as the next shot from the tank destroyed his chemistry set.
Simmons and Grif both ignored his distress. "Come on, just come back to base. I'll let you boss me around again. It'll just be like old times. Come on, buddy."
"I dunno. I think you're just telling me what I want to hear."
""Of course I am. See? It still works."
"...will you help me clean my armor off?" Simmons asked.
"I'll say I'll help you, but in reality I'll just make Donut do it as Sarge's new whipping bitch," Grif said.
Simmons let out a wistful sigh. "Ah, good old Grif. At least someone gives a fuck-"
"SIMMONS!" Sarge barked as he came out into the canyon, shotgun in hand. "What in Sam hell are you doing, private!?"
"Sarge!" Simmons cried out in relief.
It was short-lived.
"I can understand you're going crazy seeing imaginary tanks," the old man began.
"THE TANK IS RIGHT FUCKING THERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!"
"And I can certainly understand why you'd attack your own base."
Simmons stopped ranting and froze. "Wait, what?"
"But painting yourself blue? Dear God, man, don't you have any shame?"
"You should also know he did a shit job!" Grif chimed in.
"You two treasonous bastards. I expect this kind of treason from Grif, not you Simmons!"
"Oh up yours." Grif rolled his eyes.
"What was that, private?"
"Ugh. Up yours, sir."
"That's better!"
Simmons screamed angrily at the sky.
A/N: Here lie buried Sanity, Reason, and Logic. They'll be sorely missed.
