A/N=N/A: There really isn't any order I'm posting these in, although upon consideration, I probably should have done them in order of the Meet the Team video releases. I'm resorting to consultations of numerology and Wikipedia for justification. I'm also running out of novel ways to write "author's note." (Any suggestions?) Also, I'm running out of ways to sucker punch the fourth wall. (Please?)

Oh well.

I mean, I can't get much worse. I'm setting myself one-hour limits on this.

I believe these stories are short side adventures that lean heavily on the fourth wall. Like the literary equivalent of the Jarate comic. Oh dear. Did I just call this stuff "literary"? Goodness gracious. I've crossed a line, haven't I?

Now I present the incorrigible Soldier. Sorry that there's actually not too much Sollybirding – there's just a lot of Sollyness.

(Some of you – and by that I mean all five of you loyal readers – may be wondering, "What? Another chapter? Already? Doesn't s/he/they have better things to do?"

...I may have a tendency to procrastinate schoolwork. Just a tad.)

Soldier's Sollybird

Soldier surveyed his territory with a careful eye, watching his target with grim satisfaction. The scum-sucking fruit basket in question was 512 hammer units – I mean 9.75 meters – away from the entrance of the RED base of operations, which housed the precious Intelligence. Soldier shot another rocket at his feet, screaming his pride incoherently, and prepared to rain down flaming justice upon the son of a veryniceladywhowasnottoblameforheroffspring'scurrentshortcomings – the spy of the BLU team.

He missed.

Not one to admit total incapacitation, he called out, "You call that breaking my spine? Because that was pretty effective!"

As he lay bleeding out with his femur shattered and his skull fractured, still calling futilely after the retreating back of his target, he saw the Spy enter the building. The one building no one should ever enter if they didn't proudly wear Mann Co. coats made in China in the colours of purest red – the intelligence room.

"No!" he gurgled. He attempted to crawl towards the building, but his vision cut out before he could move an inch.

When he respawned, the battle was over. The intelligence had been taken from the other team, and the eight of them had hunted down and killed eight fleeing, disarmed BLU mercenaries. But the BLU Spy was still unaccounted for.

In the War Room, the entire team, save for Demoman had convened.

"MEN, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" He wrested a power drill away from a reluctant Engineer, and held it aloft. "HOWEVER, THIS IS! DO NOT BE CONFUSED AS TO WHICH ACTIVITY AND/OR INANIMATE OBJECT I AM SPEAKING OF AT THE MOMENT!"

Soldier then launched into a long-winded explanation of the situation ("BLU Spy is in the base"), somehow incorporating his pretending-he-was-part-of-the-army days. Gleefully, he described each gory detail of every neck snapping, evisceration, dismemberment, and exsanguination he had ever witnessed, caused, experienced, or imagined. In the middle of a story about a disemboweled ally, a pineapple, and his dramatic rescue, Demoman walked in.

"Demoman!" the other mercenaries shouted in relief.

"All right, Soldier, get on with it," slurred Demoman. "By the by, which one of ye louts painted a toilet sign on the War Room – " He promptly fell forward in a dead sleep.

"All right, unconscious Demoman, I will! OUR HONOR IS AT STAKE!"

"Honour? Without a 'u'? Isn't that inconsistent with the rest of us?" inquired the Spy.

"I refuse to speak that word in that un-American form! Only commies use that alternative spelling!"

"They probably aren't the only ones…"

"Do you even know what communism is?" asked Engineer.

"Sure I do! It means wearing red hats and hating America!"

"By America, you mean the United States of America, right? Not South America or –"

"There's only one true America!"

"…Right."

Engineer suppressed a sigh. "Well, none of us are in the humanities. We aren't really an authority on the subject. But your rejection of all the tenets of an entire ideology must not be predicated on a knee-jerk reaction to jingoistic mentalities and societal pressures, Soldier – it must be educated, it must be –"

"Round! Soft! No, round!"

"…Well-rounded, yes."

Medic fetched the dusty encyclopedia that he usually kept in the fridge next to the baboon hearts, leafed to section C, and scanned the page.

"Competition between jellyfish and peanutbutterfish…common misconceptions about the Pacific Northwest Tree octopus…communication between humans and the Invisible Pink Unicorn…ah! Communism!" He cleared his throat importantly, and began to project the lecture voice that most egomaniacal – or just maniacal – doctors develop as a part of their maturing process.

"Broadly speaking, communism is a sociopolitical and economic ideology that aims to create a society that completely eliminates the conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. Everything is equally owned – there is no state, no money, and no social classes. An early branch, Marxism, was delineated in the Communist Manifesto, which was written in –"

"Oh yeah, the Communist Manifesto! Wasn't it written by those two old farts, uh…Marx and Engels or something?"

Slowly, the eight classes turned to face Scout. Medic set down the encyclopedia.

"Yes, in fact. It was."

"What are you all lookin' at me for?"

Engineer inconspicuously took out his spiked wrench. At least he probably thought it was inconspicuous. (It's a spiked wrench! Ain't no way that friedbucketsofchicken thing was going unnoticed.)

Scout blanched. "Hey, wh-what're you doing with that?"

"Nothing, Scout! Ve're just a group of friends having friendly conversation!" exclaimed the Medic, frantically signaling "Get me my freaking bone saw" to Heavy, who simply shook his head in exasperation.

"Accent," muttered Spy.

"SPHUY!" yelled Pyro, who was never very much one for subtlety or subterfuge.

Scout scrunched his face up in confusion. He was not one for subtlety either. "Oh! Don't worry! I have no idea what the Communist Manifesto is! But that history teacher in the high school I went to earlier wouldn't shut up about it –"

"WHAT IS YOUR HISTORY TEACHER'S NAME? IS IT COMMUNIST?!"

"You – ach, Dummköpfen..."

To alleviate the tension, Engineer asked, "So, why are nouns capitalized in German?"

"Vell, it's like this, you see –"

"NO ONE IS GOING TO ANSWER A QUESTION THAT CONTAINS THE WORD 'GERMAN' IN IT!" Soldier paused in reflection. "OR 'NOUN'! I HATE GRAMMAR! But 'capitalize' is okay, because it reminds me of 'capitalism', and capitalism is the food of freedom."

Engineer sighed. "Continue, Medic."

"Danke. Nouns –"

"AND STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Soldier paced the entire length of the meeting room table, wrestling the others out of the way, deep (or perhaps shallow) in thought. It was almost like Engineer was encouraging pro-German discourse. And that set forth an American train of thought in his incomprehensible mind.

Hippies = 2 syllables

Hippies = slappable

Therefore, slappable = 2 syllables.

He shook his head. This equation wasn't helpful – slappable was not a word.

Socialism = 9 letters

Communism = 9 letters

9-9=0

Pies are round, like zeros

'Pies' sounds like 'spies'

Yes, we're getting somewhere…

"Uh, Soldier?"

"Shut up! I'm trying to work here!"

Engineer = less than 11 letters

Communist = more than 2 letters

11-2=9

Communist had 9 letters!

Commie = communist for short

Engie = engineer for short

Engie rhymes with commie!

Engie is a commie!

Commies sent pies! No, wait –

Commies sent spies!

SPIES!

The entire train(wreck) of (il)logic led to only one possibility –

That yellow-bellied, yellow-hatted, y-

"You." He spat the word with enough venom to kill a thousand elephants even if the venom in question had an LD50 of 6.022X10^23 g. He grabbed the Engineer – or should he say BLU Spy?! A few of the mercs stepped forward, but was warned away by Engineer, who prepared to swing his spiked wrench.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're accusing Engineer of being a spy? But why?" asked the Scout.

"He has an accent."

"And we do not have accent?" rumbled the Heavy.

Soldier chuckled. "No, Heavy, though I am finding it difficult to understand you through your speech impediment that coincidentally makes you sound like a Siberian commie. I would never mock you because of silly things like speech impediments. You can't help it. You should not be ashamed of it! If anyone makes fun of you, just tell them, 'I am a proud red-blooded American and you can go shove your mockery up your–'"

"Vat about me?" Medic asked. "Don't I have an accent?"

Soldier chuckled even louder. By definition, it was probably close to a full laugh. "No, Medic, it is clearly your lack of education in the beautiful language of America. Miss Pauling told me your sad story of being raised by dyslexic goats. We can hardly blame you if you are too stupid to understand the ins and outs of American. Besides, I can't make fun of the mentally inferior of our great country – that is ableist and insensitive and weak!"

Medic's eye twitched. "English was derived from a proto-Germanic dialect, you Scheisskopf, and you are speaking very inaccurate English if you compare it to English from England -" Heavy quickly dragged the protesting Medic away and held a large hand over his mouth.

The Spy did not want to join in what he (rightly) considered to be blithering nonsense. But Scout, quickly catching on to a pattern, opened his rather large mouth and asked, "What about Frenchie here?"

Soldier chuckled even more loudly. At this point, we would probably call it guffawing. "No, Scout speaking for Spy, if Spy were a spy, Spy wouldn't call himself 'Spy'! I would see it coming so fast I couldn't even react to me reacting to it! I wasn't born yesterday!"

"What about Demo?" clamoured Scout. Demoman snorted, stirred a little at the mention of his name, and went back to snoring. "He is drunk! You can't sound more American than that!"

A murmur of assent went around the circle, everyone tacitly going well, yes, that does sound very American.

"What about me?"

Soldier chortled, roared, and cackled in endless mirth. "Ha! You must be joking! You, a Spy?"

Scout looked at him expectantly.

Soldier looked back at him. "You make me sad."

Scout looked away, pouting.

Soldier turned back to the Engineer. "Also, he tried to attack me!"

"Vell, maybe it's because you grabbed him first!"

"Hrrdur –" began Pyro.

"Enough talk. Your words are just sound illusions."

"But-"

"SOUND. ILLUSIONS!"

With one deft movement, Soldier brought his shovel down on the neck of the Engineer. Engineer's face went blank – no time even for surprise to register – and he crumpled to the floor.

Silence.

Then chaos.

"SOLDIER! YOU KILLED ENGINEER, GOTTVERDAMMT!" shrieked Medic. "DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY EXOTIC BLACK-MARKET ORGANS IT IS GOING TO TAKE ME TO FIX THAT?"

Scout rocked back and forth in the corner, whimpering quietly. Pyro grabbed the sides of their mask and wailed mournfully. Demoman woke up for the third time, and stayed awake, gaping at the corpse that had appeared on the floor. "NOOOOOOO!" flashed the Dispenser's display. "MOTHERRRRR!" Heavy stared at the Dispenser in shock, then back at Soldier.

"I did you all a favor, ungrateful maggots! He was clearly a spy! This was a triumph!" Soldier declared, triumphantly.

"Oh yes, it was a huge success!" said the Spy sarcastically. "Do tell! How did you so brilliantly determine that it was Engineer that was the spy among us?"

"It was obvious!" Soldier began pacing around the room, still basking in his postmurder glow. "He was the only one using an American accent to lull us into a false sense of security."

"So let us recapitulate. You're racist, hypocritically ableist, zealously patriotic to the point of bigotry, xenophobic, and a misguided linguistic imperialist to top it off."

"Yes! Exactly!" declared Soldier proudly. He paused. "What is bigotry?"

In the midst of all the commotion, Engineer walked in.

"He's still alive!" cried Scout.

"You doofuses," laughed Engineer. "You know respawn is still on, right?"

"Ohhh! Respawn!"

They all laughed it off. The laughing Medic snuck behind Soldier and stuck him with a needle. They all laughed as Soldier was dragged away, insensate, to the infirmary. They all laughed too hard to notice the Scout quietly taking the Demoman's Stickybomb Launcher, filching several stickies, gently securing them to the center of the underside of the table, and slipping outside.

Everyone, save the elusive Scout, was engulfed in an explosion.

The BLU Spy, holding both teams' Intelligence briefcases, looked back at the flaming remains of the RED base and smiled. "Payback, connards."

~~LA FIIIIN~~

Screen cuts to black. Canned applause. The curtain falls down, revealing an embarrassed stagehand. Wait, stagehand? I thought it was a sitcom…!