Okay guys I had probably important stuff to put here but then THE NEW COMIC. YAY.
But as always I gotta say thank you so much for the reviews! :D
Chapter Five – Derp
~SOMEWHERE AT LEAST SORT OF NEAR A MOUNTAIN~
Having remembered the name of this story, the nine mercs (apparently they reached some kind of 'not killing each other' agreement) opted to just continue their hiking trip rather than pursue wondering exactly what they witnessed today. Deliberately avoiding height order and splaying out obnoxiously over the whole path, they started determinedly for the mountain yet again.
C'mon guys. Been four chapters.
Subconsciously stepping over the cracks in the path they were suddenly on, Pyro hummed a cheerful little tune and gradually raised the volume to try make at least someone join in. Just before the pyromaniac could start screaming through the gasmask at the team, Engy realised he still had sandwiches and practically chucked them at everybody.
"HOORAY!" the childish, bloodthirsty mercenaries chorused, chomping into their breakfast/lunch/nutritious snack.
They all paused thoughtfully.
"… There's a car battery in mine," Spy noted, thinking he didn't really care for the electric-y taste. Engy beamed, nodding proudly over his culinary excellence, blissfully unaware as his fellow REDs awkwardly exchanged glances. Heavy didn't though because he was busy removing a screwdriver from between his teeth.
"We need an escape plan!" Soldier tried to whisper, which was ideally a slightly quieter version of shouting. He searched in his pocket for a pickaxe while the others racked their grey matter for a solution.
Unfortunately it was Demo who took the initiative.
"ENGY LOOK IT'S A HAMSTER!" he yelled, pointing at the sky. Before Engy even had time to feel confused the Scotsman took out a firework and launched his sandwich into space.
This started an unsubtle chain reaction of mercs disposing of metallic sandwiches.
"OH WHOOPS I DROPPED IT!" Scout lobbed the sandwich at Heavy's face. In retaliation Heavy proceeded to punch Scout in the face with his own sandwich, smushing it into non-existence. Soldier panicked and just swallowed his one whole, Medic bribed Archimedes to fly off with his, Pyro set its snack on fire and Spy – suddenly wearing a top hat – made his disappear while yelling;
"TA-DAAAA!"
Sniper sort of just stood there, nibbling around what seemed to be a piece of a teleporter.
"I think we can all agree there was no way of preventin' that," he commented lightly.
Dear sweet Engy shrugged like he truly believed that was merely a series of freak accidents, Teddy face-pawing in his ammo belt. He headed off, whistling a happy little tune because the mental image of that makes me smile like a right moron.
The team, not questioning how the Hell they got away with that, followed after him, all whistling now. Different songs like, but what can you do.
~AND THEN THE THING HAPPENED~
"Civvie ahead!" Soldier abruptly stopped short, sensing the pedestrian on the path heading toward them. Pedestrians plural actually- a wee family out on a walk it seemed. The mercs tried to communicate a whole lot of things trough telepathy, an ability they didn't even possess. This mostly consisted of 'what the heck d'we do now?' and 'for the love of God don't do anything stupid'.
The REDs weren't the best at interacting with other members of their own species. Assuming Pyro's human of course. They weren't sure what the protocol was here- say hi, walk on past, dress in drag and do the hula? ...Make more references apparently…?
"HELLO!" the nine of them blurted, somewhere in the region of ten to twenty paces away from the family. The civvies, a group consisting of two kids and presumably their parents, awkwardly waved, the adults none-too-discretely moving the kids to the very edge of the path in order to avoid the red-clad blokes.
Unfortunately the team had gone the same way in an attempt to evade them.
"Crap, crap, craaaap…" The flustered mercs all but leaped to the other side, promptly tripped, and blocked the entire way through when they landed in a pyramid.
"DON'T PANIC!" Demoman cried, panicking, "EVERYONE- DIG!" He clawed at the ground in a fury, his not-remotely-thought-through plan to burrow out of the nice people's way. Soldier whipped out his rocket launcher – to help, of course – and succeeded in launching the whole team directly skyward.
"Oh, dis is bad." Heavy sighed, pirouetting. Briefly shifting in the air to form the TF2 logo, the mercs thought about how cool they must look from above and forgot to consider the landing part of their endeavour.
"WE'RE GONNA DIE AGAIN!" Scout proclaimed helpfully. "Ohwait I can double jump screw you guys." He appeared on a tree branch not two seconds later, and everyone flipped him the bird as they plummeted…
And landed right behind the civvies, who ran off unharmed along the path.
"… SUCCESS!" Many victory highfives we shared.
Wow, there must've been some divine intervention there. Almost as if a galestorm had something to do with it and pushed them out the way cuz they were falling so fast it was like an inferno and there wasn't a waterspout to put it out.
Alright Okamilover I can't think of any more of those. Hopefully that was sufficient.
Anyway the branch Scout was sitting on broke and knocked out half the nice wee family, so the REDs ran for it.
~SIGNIFICANTLY CLOSER TO THE MOUNTAIN~
"I've been waiting a stupid amount of time to say zhis," Medic commented, "But IT'S HIKING TIME!"
"AW YEAH!" The nine mercs and co punched the air all-victorious-like and charged the mountain. Of course they had spent the better part of a week getting here and that (plus the trauma) was catching up on them a little.
So after about half a minute's run later they slowed to a jaunty powerwalk.
"Don't ye just feel so relaxed," Demo said, very tensely.
"Ah've never felt so carefree," Engy lied, clinging to that last thread of positivity unwoven from the blanket of Happy Place with the desperation of a bloke hanging dangerously above certain doom.
Wow what.
"We should've taken the tank," Scout grumbled, trying to trip up Heavy for entertainment only to break his toe. "… Freakin' ow."
Heavy chuckled darkly, the intimidating image only slightly faltered by the wee robin on his head.
Now our buddy Spy had been trying to suggest a game of 'I Spy' for several minutes but so far he'd been unable to word it properly. He was fairly certain it was the best joke ever and he didn't intend to mess it up; if only he could stop laughing to himself and have to awkwardly cover the sound by coughing.
He sadly stopped trying to make the hilarious Spy joke when Pyro assumed he was choking and helpfully Falcon Punched the Frenchman's back. On the plus side he was propelled up the mountain a bit, so, that was nice.
Or it would've been, had he not encountered the next obstacle for the mercs to face. A giant-ass rock blocking the path, much like the REDs had been doing earlier. How'd that family get past this…?
"SCREAMIN' EAGLES!" Soldier yelled quite suddenly, moving to rocket jump. Regrettably he'd taken out his shovel rather than rocket launcher by mistake and the result was unsatisfactory for rock climbing.
After Medic had once again removed Soldier's shovel from his gut, the nine of them made a plan.
Oh man I typo'd that as pan and thought of the pan weapon now a train of thought later I wanna go bother some people with the holy mackerel.
Anyway. Unlike previous plans this one was simple. Like previous plans, it was destined to end in crushing failure. This sense of familiarity proved most unwelcome.
Basically, Heavy would boost Pyro over the rock, and the offense class would go ahead and airblast said rock safely down the hill. Failproof.
"FLY TINY PYRO!" Heavy lobbed Pyro javelin-style through the air, wincing at the sickening crunch of oddly-cute pyromaniac hitting the ground on the far side.
"Hey, uh, wasn't Py supposed to have this?" Scout interjected, suddenly in possession of the flamethrower. Everyone blinked at it once or twice.
"…Damn." Engy muttered, but before the mercs could go rather insane or get a tad violent, they heard the distinct sound of a jackhammer. "Pyro brought a jackhammer. 'Course. Should've expected that."
Well in fairness they probably should've expected that. However, that 'distinct' sound of a jackhammer was in fact not the sound of any form of power tool known to man. Unless one counts old dodgem cars with loud engines as power tools, of course.
"Zhis displeases me greatly," Medic said quietly, watching unhappily as both the boulder and speeding Pyro sailed in their direction.
CUE BOWLING MUSIC!
"STRIKE!" the administrator yelled somehow, laughing darkly as the mercs flew off in different directions. Archimedes tried to catch Medic, only to think the better of it and wisely fly to safety. Fortunately a few members of Soldier's raccoon army appeared and provided a form of fluffy crash mat. With teeth. Minor detail.
Detail. Cuz raccoons have tails. LAUGH DAMN YOU.
~MAYBE TWO THIRDS OF THE THREE THIRDS MAKING UP THE ENTIRE MOUNTAIN~
"We must be the worst at this," Sniper observed, clinging to the side of the dodgem car with the others, "Hikin'. We're God awful."
Now, maybe some of his teammates disagreed with this, but no one responded due to a combination of exhaustion, sandwich-poisoning, and probably a great number of other ailments. Also I swear if one person says something about how dodgems don't work like this- I MEAN DUDE THAT'S WHAT YOU'D QUESTION ABOUT THIS STORY!? THAT OF ALL THINGS?
"We must be close!" Soldier yelled, covering the speedometer (clearly showing one mile per hour) with his foot, "Quit whining!"
All seemed to be going well enough now, in spite of everthing.
But gradually the path got steeper.
"Mmph…" Pyro sounded thoughtful as the dodgem car slowly began to tip backward, as if puzzled by the implications. More understanding of the situation, the eight other mercs clawed to the front of the car in a frantic attempt to right it. When the front started to buckle under the weight Spy punched Heavy in the head until he let go and fell to the dirt.
Earlier in the fic it was said that nothing looks quite as ridiculous as a Heavy giggling and running with both arms in the air. That statement was false. A pouting Heavy chasing a dodgem car covered in mercenaries up a hill at one mile an hour truly is.
Just as the ground began to level out a little, they drove over a small stone and the ensuing wee hop-motion opened the hood.
"What does this thing even run on!?" Engy stared into the depths of the car with horrified curiosity. Some kind of engine appeared to be consuming some kind of fluffy substance resembling marshmallows, making a noise like when a puppy farts.
Pyro didn't answer, but everyone could tell it had on a knowing smile under the mask.
Then it crashed into a ditch at the side of the path and the car violently exploded.
At least Heavy managed to catch up.
~THE PEAK!~
Conveniently, they had broken down (andburstintoflames) at the very end of the footpath. Which ended at the top. That left one mere step until their mission was complete. They had braved tank rides, police, bridges, non bridges, lost hats and other misadventures, but here they were.
"Is good day to be RED team," Heavy proclaimed proudly, ignoring the wreckage of the bumper car and scattered teammates. "MUSIC!" he cried, triggering an emotionally moving soundtrack to burst to life all around them.
"What the crap." Scout deadpanned, deciding he'd really rather not get back up and face the music. Medic though just wanted to go home so kicked everyone to their feet and into a neat line.
"Is it over?" Spy asked blearily, trying to take in the supposedly nice view as quickly as possible. He also sapped the music player using his Spy powers.
"Reckon so," Sniper said, paying little attention to the surroundings. Basically all they could see in a complete circle was a bunch of grey clouds. Not even fancy ones, just a wall of dull cloud. "… W'could all pretend it was worth it."
…
"Well let's head back!" Soldier said brightly, managing to avoid shooting the sky in frustration. As one, the REDs turned and looked back the way they came, the unappetising logical way to the car park. *Collective sigh*
"Hey Sniper," Demo innocently glanced off to the side, "Which direction's the tank from 'ere?"
Without much thought, the crazy-good-eyesight Sniper pointed it out, then a moment too late realised his mistake. "KABLOOIE!" The Demoman detonated his sticky bombs, flinging the mercs skyward.
"Air's thin up here," Spy noted, sounding uncomfortable. Ultimately no one paid much mind because they were all making sure they remembered how to breathe. Then started the descent.
Scout grabbed his boombox and blasted a bit of slow motion music as the mercs aimed for the tank that was rapidly getting bigger. Oh wait they were getting closer I see what happened.
Soldier just had time to frown at the multiple parking tickets before the nine of them crash landed through the roof and into his tank.
"…" He glanced around, surrounded by the blank expressions of his dazed teammates. "Well." No one reacted. "Home we go!"
The offense class shoved in the keys and reversed off, flattening both a minivan and a fence en route. They trundled in relative silence back along the road, the Road Trip After the Hiking Trip trip. Emphasis on 'trip' as in 'trippy'.
They reached the teleporter back at respawn with surprisingly little trouble, some almost-talented driving manoeuvres sending the tank into the base garage near two thousand miles away. One by one, the mercs clambered out of the new full-size sunroof and stood waiting in a perfect circle. It had to be a perfect circle because why on Earth would they stand in an oval. That's just silly.
"I'm going to need at least a week in complete isolation from all of you," Spy announced after a lengthy pause, shuddering. "To recover from that."
The team nodded in understanding with various musings of 'fair enough'.
"At least we didn't cause any permanent damage or anythin'," Engy commented, following the others as they headed straight for bed.
The tree they used as a bridge would proceed to fall, open that gorge further, and cause the mountain to retreat violently into the ground.
But hey, small details.
The End!
Medic, having returned to the infirmary with Archimedes, halted in the middle of the room. He rummaged through his pocket, finding the Thing From the Drawer. He hadn't needed it after all.
"Soon." He placed it back in his pocket, ready for use another day. "SOON."
The (Real) End!
Wow. We're finally here :p Thanks so much for reading! You folks really are awesome!
Also I doodled a Balloondoonicorn and am gonna make it the cover of That Just Happened, if ya wanna see it :p
But yeah thanks you guys! See you in the next spinoff! (And happy belated birthday, Team Fortress!)