//------------------------------//
// Campout 
// Story: Happy Campers 
// by Okhlahoma Beat-Down 
//------------------------------//

Mission begins in 60 seconds.
Cli-clik.
Vrrrrmmmm.
Shink.
Wsssssh.
"I'm movin' this!"
The shutter door flew open, as nine men, all indentical in team colour, stormed out with weapons prepared. A large, gorrila-like hulk of a man waddled out of the spawn, a huge brown and gunmetal gatling gun gripped firmly in his gloved hands. His legs were humorously small for his size, giving him the appearance of a penguin carrying a deadly, oversized Thompson submachine gun. His head was completely bald, and a light grey tint where his stubble peeked through were the only hairs on his face, besides his thin black eyebrows and eyelashes.
"Follow me, doctor!" he called, raising a hand to his mouth as he 'ran' to the doors of RED base. Heavy, being the member of the team with the expressed purpose of tanking damage and dishing out almost endless punishment from his giant guns, was not known for his speed. The Scout, however, had the job of running into the enemy base, smacking BLUs to death with a baseball bat, running really fast, and just generally being the go-to-guy if the RED Sniper wanted to piss off the BLU Sniper. A sudden hissing noise came from behind Heavy, and he felt the familiar sensation of rejuvenation he feels whenever his good friend, the Medic, uses his healing weapon. Smiling, the Heavy turned to the German doctor behind.
"Ja." the German smiled back, nodding. The two of them did this every day they had work. To both teams, the sight of an enemy Heavy and Medic pair advancing across the battlefield, a stream of energy flowing from the Medic's Medi-Gun to the Heavy in front was a nightmare to behold. Not only that, but the contrast between the two was quite noticeable. The Medic, like most German men of 1968, was quite tall. His black hair was always curled nicely above his black circular glasses, and his white lab-coat always had a collar where a red tie peeked out. Black boots adorned his feet, and he would always be wearing red gloves on the battlefield. However, when not on the fields of combat, Medic would usually be found in the surgery room, as he, ahem, 'fixed' the wounds of the previous battle alongside his trusty dove, Archimedes.
"We go together, doctor!" the Heavy shouted. Everybody on the team was used to his loud Russian voice, so nobody really complained.
"Javohl, I am charged!" the Medic replied. Über was invaluable to the pair: if it was full, and there was too much shrapnel flying, Medic activated it, granting temporary invulnerablity to the pair. Usually, this meant the other team would flee, because two figures glowing red with yellow eyes was pretty damn scary. However, it wasn't always the Heavy who was übered; sometimes it was the coloured Scotsman, Demoman, needing protection so he could place bombs in guarded places, or the Soldier, wanting a way to crack some skulls with his trusty array of gardening tools. Just then, a stout man carrying a toolbox moved up beside the two, followed by a much taller man carrying a sleek black rifle.
"G'day." said the taller man, tipping his hat to his smaller companion, who tipped his hardhat in return.
"Howdy, pardner." he replied. Heavy and Medic rolled their eyes, and listened for the announcements.
"Dumkoppf campers." Medic muttered to Heavy, who nodded with a frown.
"Da. Real men fight, cowards sit behind toys and sit in trees." Heavy replied. The Engineer shifted his toolbox on his shoulder, and nudged the Sniper stood beside him. The tall man looked down at him. He was used to looking down at things; mostly because he was damn tall, but quite often to see the BLU Spy he'd just killed and/or humilated in some way.
"Darned Russians." he chuckled. Sniper grinned.
"Bloody Germans." the Australian laughed. Engineer nodded. His overalls, filled with pencils and such other equipment that a designer of automated sentry guns, long range teleporters, and health and ammunition dispensers might need, were pressed against him quite tightly. His left hand, still bare from when Pyro decided to wear his rubber glove as a hat, had hardened from years of being hit with a wrench in idle boredom, thus making a protective casing of rubber unnecessary. His right hand, however, he concealed: underneath his rubber glove was a mechanical hand, named 'The Gunslinger' by Mann Co., supplier of weapons for both teams. Engineer had to saw his own hand off to use the thing, and, since Medic was kind of useless at re-attaching limbs, the Texan was stuck with it. It did, however, give him a slight more damage resilence, so he usually had it out when a tough battle was ahead. It also made that hand rather bad when he was in his workshop; it wasn't uncommon for Sniper to have to come and saw his hand apart from the steel.
Sniper, however, was a direct inverse to Engineer. Sniper was tall, much taller than the rest of the team, and was the only one who possibly had the guts to piss in a jar and throw it at his burning teammates. While it was quite disturbing the first few times, eventually it became nearly a necessity in the heat of battle. Not only that, but Sniper had spent years of his life as an outdoorsman; tracking animals in the outback, shooting them, then returning back to his camper van to have a beer, a snooze, and a browse of the gun catalogues. His hat, dusty and worn from years of being attacked by wild animals, had a fold on the left hand side, and his sunglasses further served to block sun from his eyes. A brown vest adorned his torso, 4 spare bullets in his top pocket, and a sheath across his back for his kukri meant he was quite well prepared for whatever the BLUs could throw at him. Just in case a Scout manages to get near him, which is quite often, the Australian kept his Father's WWII standard issue submachine gun. After the pair gave their gear a quick pat down and test, they gave each other a thumbs up.
Mission begins in ten seconds.
Sniper raised his Machina, held it up to his eye, and zoomed in on the doors of the other base. On the top floor of the BLU base, which was nearly a perfect resemblance to RED base, the doors to the opposite side remained closed. However, the wire fence that served as the door in question was still see-through, so Sniper decided to see what the other team were up to. Surprisingly, the BLU team Heavy, Engineer, Medic, and Sniper were doing pretty much the same thing the RED team was doing. The Sniper was even zoomed in on the RED door, before he noticed his rival Sniper was too. Smiling, he waved to his red rival, and the RED Sniper returned the favour. There was no real hatred between the teams, except for the spies, because everybody hated the two backstabbing Frenchmen. In fact, the RED Demoman and BLU Soldier were once best of friends, except the Administrator broke that down to a simple friendship. It was only on the battlefield that there was really any TRUE hatred. Scouts pissed off Snipers, Spies annoyed the hell out of everybody, Demomen planted bombs in the most impossible places, and most importantly for the purposes of this story, Snipers and Engineers camped in irritating Sentry nests.
"Y'all ready to go to work?" Engineer asked Sniper.
"You bet, mate." Sniper grinned, before the announcer spoke again.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1!
The shutters suddenly swung open, allowing both teams easy access into and out of the base. As per daily ritual, the two Scouts immediately charged out of both bases, defied physics by double jumping onto the bridge, before beginning to beat each other senseless with wooden and metal bats. The RED Medic and Heavy wasted no time in jumping off the top floor of the base, Heavy's gun firing rounds rapidly, before a loud electrical noise meant the Über was due to activate. Both team's Heavys and Medics activated at the same time, and began hammering each other with bullets. Of course, none of them had any effect, thus making it a pointless exercise until the über ran out. Usually, that ran out at the same time their ammunition did. So, both switched to their shotguns and peppered each other with pellets. Both would yell out in pain, as their wounds were healed by their Medics. Eventually, the shotgun ammo ran out too, thus leaving both Russians to begin punching each other. Meanwhile, their Medics had decided to sit on the walls of the bridge beside each other, watching their companions duke it out as the two Germans had a chat. Of course, their companions could fight for hours on end, due to the stamina regeneration provided by the Medi-Guns.
Engineer and Sniper both immediately ducked to avoid the BLU Sniper's arrows from his Huntsman, before Sniper took the opportunity to squeeze a round off at the enemy. The round never hit, usually because both teams weren't in the mood for killing. The common excuse was usually that the winning team would get piss-drunk the night before through Demoman's supply of Degroot scrumpy, invite the losing team over, and then they'd all get piss-drunk and have massive hangovers the day after. However, today both teams had decided, via a secret messaging system in the form of Pyro's shouting, decided they might stop the Administrator from getting angry and turning off the RESPAWN by having a fight. It only took the Soldiers, Pyros, Heavies, Demomen, and Scouts to constitute a fight. Sniper had decided he might just fire for effect, especially considering that the Administrator knew where his parents lived.
"Crikey, that was close!" exclaimed Sniper, crawling alongside Engineer to their usual spot. The central balcony of Teufort's bases were ideal camping spots, mainly due to their elevated location, direct line of sight to nearly everywhere inbetween the bases, and it was opposite the other team's balcony. The moment the two friends got behind the wall that shielded them from incoming fire, they breathed a sigh of relief and sat against it. "You OK, mate?"
"Yep," Engineer replied, dropping his toolbox on the floor. The built-in gyro sensors immediately kicked in, as the metal container flipped open, revealing a small cuboid structure. Engineer began to smack the metal object with his wrench, and it immediately began to extend upwards. After around two seconds, the cuboid was now shaped like a cereal box with a screen, knobs, and dials, before a small cylinder of gas extended from the side. It slowly reached up, before metal clamps locked it in place, and a belt of ammunition extended from the side. The screen blinked on, with a meter showing the newly-erected Dispenser's functionality. "Never better."
"Good," Sniper coughed, before popping up with his Machina, firing off the shot, and hitting a Soldier square in the head. His victim yelled out in pain, before Sniper sat back down. "Can't be losin' my best friend, can I?"
"Thanks, buddy." Engineer laughed, before pulling out two bottles of beer from a compartment on the Dispenser. "Who's the poor fella who got hit with that one?"
"Ol' Tin Hat." replied Sniper, opening the bottle with the side of his rifle. "All rockets, no brains, eh mate?" Both Texan and Australian laughed at the joke. Soon, the conversation turned to it's usual fare: spies.
"When do y'all think the slippery Frenchy's gonna arrive?" Engi asked, drinking some of the beer, before smacking the Dispenser with his wrench a couple of times.
"Pretty soon, I'm guessin'." Sniper nodded, before pointing to his back. "No problem for me, I've got my...bloody hell, I forgot to grab me Razorback on my way out!" He facepalmed, before Engineer tapped him on the shoulder.
"Well, why's that kid out there usin' it as a shield?" asked the Texan. Sniper immediately looked up, and peeped over the window ledge. Sure enough, the Scout had the wooden shield attached to his left arm in a shield, and it seemed to be working. The BLU Scout was firing his Shortstop at the RED Scout, every round harmlessly impacting the shield. Finally, the RED Scout drew his Flying Guillotine, the meat cleaver glinting wickedly in the sun, and chucked it at the BLU Scout. The poor teenager had no time to react: the blade dug straight into his chest like an arrow, and blood began to pour out of the gaping hole in his shirt. The BLU Scout stared at it, groaned in frustration, before falling dead and sliding off the roof of the bridge. RED Scout, of course, was celebrating.
"WOO, HOO-HOO-HOOOOO!" he cheered, raising his arms in the air. "Beat it, bozo, let a real Scout get t' work!" RED Sniper just growled, before looking over to BLU base. The BLU Sniper was also watching the Scout, before he glanced at the RED Sniper. Promptly, RED Sniper began to speak with BLU Sniper, only using lipreading.
"Shoot the 'ooligan, would ya?" he said to the BLU Sniper.
"Ya read my mind, mate." he smiled, before disappearing below for a moment. After a few seconds, the BLU assassin popped back up with a Huntsman. He held the bowstring back, before releasing an arrow that nailed the Scout in the head. He cried out in shock, before following his BLU rival off the bridge and into the waters below. RED Sniper stood up, and performed the Schaudenfraude, before waving to the BLU Sniper. Both were friends, except friends that had, on many occasions, nailed each other in the head with high-calibre bullets and flaming arrows, and on a few occasions beat each other to death with frying pans.
However, that didn't stop the two from passing some friendly gestures on the battlefield, on one occasion high-giving in the middle of the battlefield and just ignoring each other for the rest of that battle so they could focus on shooting the Scouts. Both of them hated the irritating Bostonians. Both of them were friends with the Engineers of their teams, thus making their bond as Snipers even closer. Ironic, especially considering how their job was to be far away from everyone.
"He was askin' for it." Engineer laughed, drinking more beer. "Still, he'll be back."
Sure enough, the Texan was right. The teenager ran out of the doors, and just before he was going to jump off the edge, he looked to the two campers. Grinning, he ran up to the Engineer.
"Need a dispenser here."
"Nope."
"Need a sentry here."
"Nope."
"Need a teleporter here."
"Nope."
"Need a dispenser here."
"Nope."
"Need a dispenser here."
"Nope."
"Need a dispenser here."
"Yeah."
"Frickin' un-believable!" Scout yelled, before frustratedly going off and yelling 'Medic!' several hundred times. Engineer grinned, pulled out his PDA, and pressed a button. A toolbox spontaneously appeared in his hands as he stood up. He pulled off the same procedure as he did with the dispenser. This time around, however, a tripod appeared, slowly folding out, spinning, and extending into a small, level one Sentry Gun. It made a few beeps every few seconds, as it made a circular arc of aiming. Suddenly, there was a loud chirp, the sentry rapidly spinning around. It fired twice, loud chunk-chunk sounds clearly explaining that the sentry had fired, and the loud scream of a soldier falling from his rocket-jump and breaking both of his legs on the floor clearly explaining that he had nailed the bastard.
"Good shot, mate!" Sniper said happily, giving the sentry a thumbs up. The sentry chirped in reply, before continuing its aiming circle. Engineer grinned.
"Ah built that." he chuckled. The Sniper grinned back, raised his bottle, and held it up.
"Cheers, Truckie."
"Back atcha, Slim."
Both bottles clinked.