Ridiculously long A/Note: Merry non-denominational holidays to everyone, regardless of creed or system of belief! Peace on earth, goodwill towards sentient creatures, long live the Force and may it prosper. I hope this brightens your day or at the very least doesn't dim it.

Well, I am halfway-ish through this compendium. I really must thank you all for being so nice (thanks especially to Crimiduck and DragShot) – I realize that only stories with considerable clout get flamed, so I should be left with polite commenters and silent judgers, but still – this, it's a rambling soup of words. The humour is forced, the tone is inconsistent, the characterization is flat and the content is unoriginal (idk if you've noticed the random in-game voice responses). I butcher everything I touch, but not quite badly enough to earn the "so bad it's good" status.

But even so, as the creator, I cannot help but feel a sense of pride in the little monstrosity I have spawned. (I think it's called the IKEA effect.)

Such is the strangeness of life. (Also, the fact that I care more about these fictional characters than I care about some real people in my life, but that's another kettle of fish.)

Anyway, I tried to (mis)use slang from the Australian Slang Dictionary. Real Australians may laugh and/or weep at this.

In this installment, we plunge into post-Mann vs. Machine hijinks.

Sniper's Snipe Hunt

It was dawn. The pale sun had cast its first watery rays on the desert, warning the desert creatures back to their burrows because once the sun's up, the desert gets hot as f&%$. Like, enough to sublime ice cubes.

The Sniper was in his camper, brewing a pot of coffee for the day ahead. Soldier had gone on a mini-rampage following the loss of the intelligence the previous week, and had only just begun to calm down.

Sniper wasn't hiding. Shut up. It just wasn't prudent to stay inside. Soldier could get very messy if he wanted to.

Almost on cue, there was the sound of an explosion from the base.

The beans percolated slowly in the -

"SNIPER! OH GOD HELP"

Sniper started, lifted the corner of the curtain cautiously, and peered outside. He had heard much inarticulate shouting as of late, and this particular shout seemed to have been issued from the mouth of the Scout. He could hear something that went like

"SNIPER YOU ILLEGITIMATE CHILD OPEN UP FOR THE LOVE OF THE JUDEOCHRISTIAN DEITY"

and

"SNIPERRRRRR!"

intermingled with what sounded like blubbering, as well as a persistent banging on the door.

Sniper closed the blinds and turned up his radio to a station playing music just loud enough to drown out the knocking, but not enough to disturb his train of thought. He ignored the faint yelling outside, and it soon ceased. He smiled.

His walkie-talkie suddenly crackled. "SNIPER! I SAW YOU! DON'T IGNORE ME!"

Sniper sighed and picked up the walkie-talkie.

"What is it, mate?" he shouted cheerily over the music.

"SNIPERYOUGOTTAHELPMEROBOTSOLLYKILLEDEVERY-"

"Whoa, what?"

He opened the door to the camper.

The Scout was dressed in red, although not the usual red of the REDs' uniforms. This red was not red dye. It seemed to have resulted from a blend of fifteen different human organs mashed up into gristle and sprinkled generously in an aerosol over the Scout's shirt, duffel bag, hat, headset, and terrified face.

Sniper blinked.

"What happened?"

"ROBOTSOLLYKILLEDEVERY-"

"Yeah, yeah, I got that part," Sniper said.

Scout gulped, shifting nervously from foot to foot, and explained at a slower, if still incomprehensible, pace. "RobotSollycametothebaseandkilledeveryoneandthey'renotrespawningandIDON'TWANNADIE!"

"Mkay, mate."

"'Mkay'? What do you mean, 'mkay'!? A ROBOT INFILTRATED OUR BASE AND KILLED EVERYONE!"

"I always knew this day would come. Man pitted against machine, finally forced to confront the reality...of the horror...of their own creations." Sniper slowed down his speech and looked off meaningfully into the distance for exactly five seconds for maximum dramatic effect. "Our teammates probably aren't dead, anyway. Respawn still works on the weekends. Just takes longer." He looked at the Scout. "Why are you the only one alive, anyway?"

"I ran."

"So you turned tail and fled, huh?"

"I did not! It was a tactical retreat!" The Scout had been bouncing up and down with nervous energy, and was now practically doublejumping. "Are you going to help me or not?!"

"Alright. Come in."

Sniper had never regretted a decision so quickly in his life. Well, maybe that one time with the alligator and the jar of Jarate – but this one was up there with the rest of his regretted decisions.

"After we lost the briefcase, Solly totally lost his –" Scout drank another full mug of coffee in two seconds flat – "mind, right? So Doc puts him on some crazy knock-out medicine, and then we think that's that! But then, we see his shadow in the door of some room, so we go in to look, right? And it wasn't him! It was some giant metal robot thingy armed with a rocket launcher! It killed Medic on the spot!" Scout paused. "I wonder why it didn't aim for me first…"
"They're probably programmed to target the most important classes first," Sniper observed. Scout glared at him.

"Sorry."

"It's all Solly's fault! If he hadn't gone on about killing Nazis and slapping hippies for so long, we would've found out that that BLU scumbag of a Spy pretending to be mewas the BLU Spy…pretending…to be me…and none of this would've happened!"

"Robot attacks have nothing to do with Soldier's possible mental illnesses."

"Yeah…funny thing, actually…the robot looked exactly like what I always thought a robot version of Soldier would look like."

"Huh," Sniper said. "Curiouser and curiouser. I didn't think the robots would show up so soon."

It took a second for the realization to sink in, but sink in it did. "What?!" shrieked the RED Scout. "YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS?!"

"Yeah. Weren't you at the orientation meeting?"

"What orientation meeting?"

*cue flashback accentuated with mellifluous whole tone scales*

Time: only a few short days after BLU Spy's triumph. Summoned to a ceasefire meeting for reasons unknown, the BLU Heavy, Medic, Engineer, Pyro and Scout meet with the RED Demoman, Spy, Soldier and Sniper. Miss Pauling shows up, bringing news of Redmond and Blutarch Mann's deaths. They watch Saxton Hale's message (taped while he wrestles a yeti). After being unceremoniously fired and rehired in the space of ten minutes, they prepare to face off against the metallic menace of Gray Mann's robot army.

*end flashback in epic guitar riffs*

The Scout stood, stock-still, a twitch developing underneath his left eye. "And you four numbnuts didn't think to tell the rest of us about this?"

"Nope."

"WELL, YOU MIGHT HAVE JUST GOTTEN THE ENTIRE TEAM KILLED! AND NOW WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"Bloody – it's just one robot, innit? We should be able to take it."

There was more than one robot.

"Bloody hell...those bludgers're fast, aren't they?" the Sniper said, dumbfounded. The base was practically swarming with the mindless, steel-plated critters.

The Scout responded most eloquently with a drawn-out, desolate wail.

SIX HUNDRED SIXTY-FIVE RESPAWNS LATER – on a hill somewhere

"Alright, alright, this time, can you not, you know, shoot me in the head? That'd be great!"

"Well, you keep buggering off willy-nilly into my crosshairs! Maybe next time, instead of running straight into the swarm where the robots are densest, you could actually think things through instead of being a total dipstick? And stop stealing the money from my kills!" (Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention. The robots drop money when they're destroyed. It's a nice perk.)

"Oh yeah! Okay! Blame everything on me! Excuse me, mister got-our-whole-team-murdered-and-blew-it-off-with-a-flippant-remark-about-respawn – " Scout took a few seconds to regain his breath. "– and-is-now-assigning-all-the-blame-to-me! You said they were gonna respawn! Where are they?"

"I don't know, hiding from you because you're so loud?" yelled Sniper. His insults were deteriorating, he noted, but he couldn't care less. "I don't know why you're blamingme! Why not Solly or Engie or Demo or th' spook?"

"Oh please! They're not here! I am blaming you because it is convenient to project my lifelong frustrations and insecurities onto you!"

"That's oddly specific!"

"Yeah! I know! I'm kind of losing it here!"

"Wait! Is that Demo?" Sniper pointed wildly in the distance. "See? I didn't get anyone killed!"

It was – the Scotsman was clambering over a distant knoll with his grenade launcher. It was a welcome sight – a faint beacon of hope – out there was a fellow creature, with warm, feeling flesh instead of cold, shining, passionless –

"Aaaaand he's down. What's your plan now, numbnuts?"

"He's probably got the wobbly boot on," the Sniper responded, harassed. "But look where 'e came from! The others must be hiding out over there! That pack of wusses!"

"That's it. I'm joining the BLU team!"

"What?"

"Our team won't help us! What else am I supposed to do?"

"Well -" Sniper glanced behind them, at the milling masses of machinery. "Wait for me!"

AT THE BLU BASE

The RED team sans Scout and Sniper was sitting across from the BLU team, congregated in the BLU War Room. The tension could be cut with a knife – but not a dinky knife like a butter knife. A REAL knife. Like a machete or something.

Negotiations had been in process for about two hours, although no consensus could be achieved, due mainly to the current existence of the two Soldiers.

"You lily-livered waste of skin! You're a disgrace to the uniform! Your father was a guinea pig and your mother smelt of raspberries!"

"Oh yeah? Why are you wearing COMMUNIST RED CLOTHING, THEN? Besides, red is so tacky! It's one errant bleaching away from PINK!"

"What're you gonna do? Dye me?"

"Would you take your firmly lodged head out of your arse and listen to reason fer once?" the BLU Sniper exclaimed in exasperation.

"Ha! Zat's funny. A Soldier, listening to reason? Ze only thing he listens to are ze voices in his 'ead! Und maybe ze audiobook file of Sun Tzu's The Art of War on loop."

"Sun Bin's was better," muttered BLU Scout.

"BLASPHEMY! You know nothing about the intricacies of military strategy! 孫子 is the Supreme General!" both Soldiers shouted at once. They glared at each other.

"Is your medic always so insensitive?" the Engineer furtively asked BLU Engie. "Why is his accent so thick all the time? D'ya reckon your Soldier's crazier than ours? Is his name really Jane Doe?"

"No, that's a furphy," replied the BLU Sniper, while sharpening his kukri. "Medic's name is Jane. Solly's Janette. We call 'im Jane for short."

"Shut up! You're more of a designated marksman anyway!" BLU Medic trailed off, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu.

"What's a designated marksman?"

"Well, they're similar to snipers. The terminology, it's mostly bureaucracy. They provide mid-range support and accurate fire – they're still a support, but less specialized, and they mingle with the fireteam. They are marksmen, and they're sometimes called snipers by dolts who don't know their dates from a hole in the fourth wall."

"Huh. So they're pretty much the same thing as a sniper."

"Yeah. Their gun sights have lower magnification, though."

"Back to the subject at hand," cut in the RED Spy. "Let's rename the proposal to something less inflammatory, say 'RED and BLU merger'. 'You all suck eggs' is not, how do you say, cool."

The members of the BLU team all admitted that that wasn't, in fact, cool. They looked out the window, where the RED base was currently being teabagged by a giant robot Demoknight.

"So it's a deal?"
"Yes." They shook on it.

"SON OF A CUSSING CUSS WORD! WE ARE NOT GOING TO COOPERATE WITH THESE SLIMY BLU LADIES!"

The response to the RED Soldier's outburst was unanimous: Archimedes flew over and obligingly pooped on his head, batting him with his wings, followed by the rest of Medic's doves. Five birds in total smacked him in the face before he reacted.

"THAT'S IT! I AM GOING TO WRITE A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF BIRDS AND FREEDOM AND SUE YOUR ASSES FOR TAX EVASION!"

Responses to that statement was more mixed, with "You're not the full quid, are you?", "Shut up, Soldier!" and "Aww, you gonna cry?" being among the most prevalent.

"MY TEAR DUCTS WERE SOLDERED SHUT TWO DECADES AGO!" With that, Soldier picked up Archimedes' scattered feathers and tried in vain to throw them at the various offenders.

"Gentlemen! Let us stay on topic, shall we?"

At this time, the RED Sniper and Scout burst in, panting from exertion.

"All right! You cowardly sneaks better have a good exc – What in the devil is going on here?"

"Ve ah one big family now!" yelled the BLU Medic. "I am going to stuff you mit baboon organs, ja!"

"What?"

"Sniper! Scout! We thought you were dead!" the RED Demoman exclaimed. "Especially you, me boy."

"What did I tell you? The robots only go for the important classes," the RED Engineer laughed. "If anyone was to survive, it'd be the Scout. Sniper is a surprise, though."

"Hey!"

"We've merged," explained Engineer, ignoring the Scout. "We're gonna face these mean metal mother hubbards as one big team. I know we haven't consulted you two yet, but we thought that was the most pragmatic solution."

"I DIDN'T!"

"Shut your trap, Soldier," the Engineer said jovially.

The BLU Pyro tugged on the RED Spy's sleeve, causing him to flinch, a rare reaction (to say the least) for the Spy. Pyro whispered into RED Spy's ear, much against the latter's wishes. Spy reluctantly nodded. "Pyro here has prepositioned that we rename our merger into something less, as he put it, mind-numbingly boring. How does –" he sighed. "How does 'Let's Make Purple' sound?"

"Makes sense. Red and blue does make purple," remarked the RED Scout.

A murmur of assent went around the War Room. RED Soldier had calmed down and was sticking feathers back into Archimedes. The two Demomen were swapping scrumpy bottles and laughing raucously. The Medics were comparing surgical techniques on a semiwilling RED Heavy. Sniper looked from side to side; daring himself to wake up from this horrible nightmare where robots ran on money and RED and BLU didn't fight and the universe didn't make sense anymore.

"Alright", muttered Sniper. "Let's make purple."

~~~FIN~~~

Wasn't that nice? They're all working together now. It's a Smissmas miracle! I'm thinking of starting a spin-off series dedicated to the finer details of RED/BLU cooperation titled "Let's Make Purple". Should I do it? If no, blink twice. If yes, blink no.