A/N: Here we go. The Reds didn't do anything wrong, right?
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 47*
Simmons didn't think of himself as an unreasonable person.
Which was good, because he thought it was perfectly reasonable to turn tail and run for the safety of Red Base upon seeing the barrel of a tank cannon being aimed in his general direction. Grif had also chosen the option of life and ran alongside with him, or rather jogged as fast as his barrel ass could move. Which wasn't very fast, if Simmons was being honest. He reckoned he could crawl faster than Grif could run.
What was unreasonable was Sarge's reaction to the news about the tank.
The old man burst into raucous laughter, Simmons stunned silent and Grif wheezing for breath next to him. Donut came outside to see what the noise was all about, the pink soldier taking one look at Sarge laughing his ass off and raising a wine glass to his lips. "What's going on?"
"The tank from Blue Base is coming for us."
Donut looked past Simmons and frowned. "What tank?"
Simmons seethed as Sarge's laughter grew louder.
"The tank the Blues have!" the maroon-colored soldier snapped. "You know, the one that killed Church and has an AI in it?"
"Oh sure." Sarge snorted. "You saw a mysterious tank, which has somehow disappeared faster than it appeared. And only you can see it."
"Goddammit!" Simmons groaned. "Donut knows what I'm talking about!"
"Yeah!" the pink soldier chimed in.
"Ah, Donut's impressionable," Sarge scoffed. Donut nodded in agreement like the submissive sub he was. "Hell, he'd probably eat dirt if you told him it tasted like chocolate."
Donut gasped dramatically. "That's not true!"
Simmons' eyebrow rose. "That's where you draw the line huh?"
"No, it's not true that dirt tastes like chocolate, right? Right?"
Never mind.
As much as he loathed to say it, Sarge had a point about Donut. 'I'm surrounded by idiots.'
Still, he still had one more desperate card to play to prove that he was not insane like Sarge was not-so-subtly suggesting. "Yeah, fair enough. But Grif saw it too. What do you have to say about that?" Desperate, but two against one idiot made the difference.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't see a damn thing," Grif lied.
Simmons' brain fizzled and it took a few seconds for the gears to click back into place. Once they did, a desperate and strangled scream left his lips. "WHAT!?"
"Tank, you say?" Grif asked innocently. "What tank? I was too busy following our sergeant's orders."
"Oh really?" Simmons growled. "And what were his orders?"
"Scout the canyon and make sure those dirty rotten no-good Blues don't sneak up on us. Seeing as they're not here shooting at us, I consider it to be a successful recon." Grif's breaths were just a little too fast to be anything other than him hiding his laughter.
"Good work, soldier," Sarge barked.
"Wow. That might be the first time you've ever complimented me. I'll take it."
"Can it, dirtbag."
Lopez came out the base, punched Grif once in the head, and walked back in without saying a word. Grif groaned as he clambered back to his feet and Simmons glared at his teammate.
"Huh. So that old codeword still works." Sarge chortled. "Good to know."
"You literally just said you saw it five minutes ago!" Simmons raged.
"Yeah, but it's a lot funnier this way." Grif chuckled.
Son of a bitch...
Tucker was not a happy man. He was hot, tired, and wanted nothing more than to spend the next twenty years somewhere in the Arctic Circle.
Before today, he would have said the most fucked up thing to have ever happened in Blue Team's existence was Church getting blown up by a tank, shot through the head, and a bitchy woman who was essentially a carbon copy of him in his place. Now, he would say getting dragged into some alien's bullshit quest because he's apparently a chosen hero. For not the first time, Tucker wondered what like would be like if his team didn't constantly get fucked over by fate giving them the finger every chance it got. Maybe Leona would be unaware she was a meatbag for an AI or living a simple life growing pumpkins.
After what seemed like an eternity walking down the beach and burning to a crisp in a fucking desert, they came to a stop in a large tunnel that carved through the desert rock. Tucker was grateful for the stop, if only to regain some of the breath he had lost on the journey so far. The alien was still holding onto the bomb, who insisted on being called Andy for some reason. Caboose was humming a happy tune, not fazed at all by the heat. Tucker was envious of it.
"Dude, how are you not dying?" he wheezed. His helmet's cooling fans did little to help. The alien was still naked from the waist down, and somehow not getting sunburnt in the process. Bullshit alien genetics.
"Ah, it's not so bad!" Caboose said cheerfully. "Nice and warm, perfect for making toast. Are you cold? I could get you a blanket. Or a hotdog."
"Caboose, I'm not cold, I don't want a hotdog, and if you put fucking mustard in my sheets again, I'm going to kill you."
"Honk blarg. Blarg blarg honk blarg."
"We've reached the Burning Sands," Andy translated. "This tunnel leads to the den of a desert monster, that only the hero can slay."
Great.
Tucker sighed and wondered if it would be a bad thing if he conveniently died and didn't have to do this. He then asked himself if he cared all that much. "I guess you mean me."
"You are that chosen hero from the prophecy, right?"
"Oh, for sure." Tucker's voice dripped with sarcasm thick enough to choke on and his sword came to life in his hands. "Boy are you guys going to be disappointed..."
"Just remember to go for the weak spot in the armor," Andy reminded.
"Where was that again...?" Tucker was a little lost on that part.
"We went over this!" Andy groaned.
"Yeah, it turns out paying attention to lame biology lessons isn't one of my superpowers." Tucker rolled his eyes and all three of them dropped into a low crouch as they approached the end of the tunnel. Tucker could feel the scorching heat already. "Fuck me, man..."
"Blarg!"
"Quiet!"
"Honk!"
"Get down!"
Tucker and Caboose both dropped low to remain out of sight. Tucker could see the sands dipped down into some kind of crater, probably the sand monster's lair.
"Honk honk blarg blarg honk."
"Let's do this right so we don't fuck this up and all die."
"Blarrrrrrrrrrrg!"
...
"Oh. I wasn't supposed to translate that part. Um, he says, 'don't worry. We'll be fine'."
Tucker was not filled with confidence. 'We're so fucked. Sorry Leona, but we're all gonna die.'
He regretted not looking at her ass more when he had the chance.
The alien leapt into the hole, Tucker behind him with his sword out and ready to die. He landed, prepared to swing, and stopped.
The crater was completely empty.
"Blarg?" The alien looked around in confusion.
"The monster is dead? Already?"
Tucker followed the alien's finger, rubbed his eyes, and looked again just to be sure.
A lonely cow skull protruded from the sand, a spec of white bone lost amongst tan and blue sky. Tucker groaned and looked skyward for salvation. Alas, it was not meant to be. "That's your monster!? You've got to be fucking kidding me!"
"You guys did kill this thing, right?" Why did Andy sound so desperate?
"That's a fucking cow skull! I kill ten of those things every time I eat lunch."
Fuck this quest.
Wyoming wasn't sure what to expect when Sarge suddenly called for a team meeting outside, but self-preservation instincts honed in by constant life-or-death scenarios told him that it wasn't anything he couldn't fight his way out of. There was no screams of agony, but they were incredibly angry and Wyoming identified the one screaming as Simmons. 'Oh for fuck's sake... what now?'
Wyoming came outside, his rifle in hand, and joined the semi-circle consisting of Donut, Sarge, and Grif. Simmons was about fifty or so yards away from them, near the middle of the canyon, and the British Freelancer sighed. "Alright, I'll bite. What happened?"
"Men. Donut," Sarge added after a pregnant pause. "One of our members has sadly gone insane."
"The tank was real" Simmons raged.
"And he's been ordered by a judge to stay at least fifty yards away at all times." Sarge ignored the strangled scream to leave the man's throat.
"That wasn't a judge! That was Donut wearing a powdered wig!"
"Over- ahem." Donut's voice deepened comedically. "Overruled. Shame on you. Grr."
"This means that our XO position is currently unoccupied, and we will be holding a series of tryouts to determine who will take up the position of second-in-command here in Blood Gulch Outpost No. 1," Sarge said. "Simmons is disqualified due to the previously mentioned insanity, and Grif is ineligible."
"Good. I don't want to compete anyway." Grif snorted.
"Because you're ineligible."
"No. I just don't want to compete."
"Of course you don't. Because you're ineligible."
"Oh whatever..."
"And Wyoming isn't an official part of Red Team, so he is ineligible as well," Sarge finished. Wyoming let out a sigh of relief. He had seen what being Sarge's XO entailed and wanted no part of it. But wait... that left Donut and... well, Lopez?
"So Lopez is competing too?" Grif asked skeptically.
"You want an XO who speaks in a dialect you don't understand? By all means, Private," Sarge drawled sarcastically. Okay, never mind. Sarge wasn't that desperate. But wait, that left Donut as the sole competitor. Wasn't XO practically guaranteed to be his?
Donut seemed to think the same thing. "I guess that means I take it because I'm unopposed. Which is the way I won, 'Most Likely to be Fabulous' in high school."
Sarge banished those hopes and dreams quicker than lightning struck. "Actually, I managed to find a few competitors. One of them is a wrench used by Lopez, and the other a mysterious skull of unknown origin."
Wyoming stared down at Donut's feet and saw the skull next to him, the wrench resting against the cheekbones. His brain fizzled, died a horrible death, and was reluctantly brought back to life.
Wyoming mourned the lack of good alcohol. He wondered if Leona's copious alcoholism was just her way of making sense of this canyon. Blood Gulch probably made a lot more sense drunk off your tits.
Fuck it, he was taking every last drop of beer out of the fridge, retreating to his room, and hiding away with the booze until logic took hold once more.
"I bet the Blues don't have to deal with anything this irritating..."
Simmons sobbed as his former team turned their backs to him. "How did everything go so wrong? I had a superior officer who genuinely cared about me; I was on my way to making my dad proud; I had the respect and admiration of my peers. Howwwwwwwww!?" No one answered him and the maroon soldier sighed in despair. "Maybe that stupid tank was just a figment of my imagination."
"I don't think so~."
"Shut up; you ruined my life."
His despair at being cast away from Red Team meant he wasn't thinking properly, and it took his brain a few seconds to compute the fact that a tank with a giant cannon was directly behind him.
Aimed at him.
Simmons whimpered.
A/N: Poor Simmons. But his vengeance shall be swift and glorious.