Team Fortress 2: Macintosh's Misadventure

by McSlendy

Chapter II: RED To The Rescue

Horseapples.

Not a day had even passed in wherever the heck Big Macintosh was, and already a human's life was at the mercy of his hands.

Heh. Hands.

Though he wasn't showing it, the ex-pony was panicking. The unconscious battered human lying in front of him looked like in need of serious medical attention after that brutal beating those blue-wearing humans gave him, and that view wasn't unfounded since he had checked the human's pulse after listening to his heartbeat (which he reasoned was the same as putting one's hoof to another pony's neck, so no need to blame Lyra this time) and noticed that it was getting faint. Big Macintosh was no way a doctor, especially when it came to saving human lives; but he knew the best he could do in this situation was to find help for the human, and hopefully not too late.

But the problem was, he didn't know where to go find help. The locale of this Egyhooftian place was completely unfamiliar to him despite what he read about the previous Equine civilization, and it dawned on him that he was like a little foal lost in a vast mall being in this place. Or like a stallion looking for his marefriend in a large town festival. Or something else along those lines, whatever would help him sleep later tonight... if, that is, he could get any sleep after considering all what's happened so far. He was far from home and he had no idea what he had to do. Chances were, the human he had saved would probably be dead by the time he found humans friendly enough to help.

"Eenope!" Big Macintosh thought. "I didn't rescue this human just to let him die on me! I've got to find some help, now!"

But before he could move, the voices of charging men filled the air, and he could hear the sounds of boots crushing sand closing in on him. Every second that passed made the blond more and more nervous and wary. Eventually, out came more humans wearing blue, though this time the variety of their appearance and clothing stunned Big Macintosh. He was overwhelmed by some of their looks; one of the humans in blue was in a sharply-dressed suit with a black tie, another was wearing what appeared to be a fire-proof asbestos suit complete with a black gasmask, and another human with an eye-patch on his left eye was wearing a vest with what seemed to be six explosives strapped to the sides of its front. There were more humans, but they were being covered by the ones in front of them, leaving Mac to imagine what they looked like. He could pick out a human wearing a nice hat amongst the small group, but that was as far as he could see from where he was.

"Uh oh." The blond said to himself.

They did not look friendly.

"There he is! That's the guy who knocked Heavy and Medic out cold!"

The owner of the voice pointed, glaring at Big Macintosh as he and the other humans slowed down to a standstill. Big Macintosh realized he was the third man that he failed to knock out earlier. Apparently, he had called for help. But that quick? And why did he look so familiar now that he got a closer look at him? A thought about the human unconscious at his feet wandered into his mind, but it was ignored due to more pressing concerns in the form of not-so-friendly and armed humans in front of him. But, said pressing concerns didn't stop Big Macintosh's instincts from telling him that something was off here... though then again now was not the right time to think about it.

In seconds, the hostile humans surrounded who they thought was a new member of RED.

"What are we waiting for?! Let's get him already!" The one who looked like the human he saved barked. "Get the bastard!"

Yelling, the BLUs charged Mac, with a hardhat-wearing human's robotic hand clenching ominously as they closed the distance.

"Horseapples!"

+

The moment the mysterious stranger in red was punched in the face after he narrowly avoided a swung bottle from the BLU Demoman, the RED Engineer decided it was high time to act. Pushing himself away from the wall of monitors, he bolted up from his seat and burst through the camera control room's door, the force reverberating throughout the empty corridor. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him into his base's living room, where he hoped everyone else were staying at together.

What he saw over the cameras could no longer be ignored. He recalled the events that led to his actions as he ran through more corridors. A civilian, one that the Engineer couldn't fathom how, had gotten into their battlefield and by chance had saved his team's Scout from certain death by a beating, by defeating the BLUs responsible for his predicament. Then he saw the Scout's rescuer being horribly outnumbered, and the rest is living history as the Engineer thought of how to make his teammates help him help the civilian without mentioning the Scout, whom they all truthfully - including himself - still hated for that prank he pulled off earlier in the morning.

Why he didn't alarm the rest of his team earlier while the Scout was being beat up was simple: he had gone out to take a long leak during his break at his turn of monitoring the cameras, and by the time he got back at his post he only saw how Big Macintosh had taken care of the BLU Heavy and Medic. At least he had a good excuse if his teammates ever asked why he didn't go to them sooner, but no doubt he'd be chewed off by the Soldier of all people for not having an iron bladder when he hears about it. Oh heck, why was he thinking about this now? That'll be something he'll have to worry about later!

Concentrating, the Texan knew he had to rouse his fellows into action, to save both the brave civilian and their stupid Scout.

"Fellas! Gather 'round, and fast!" He yelled into the room as soon as he arrived, panting. "We have a situation on our hands!"

But he only received startled stares in response, the most memorable amongst them was the Demoman's, who was about drink another bottle of his favorite vice; His Scrumpy, as he loved to call it. Then a finely suited masked man - the enigmatic Spy - calmly approached him from the shadows from the kitchen and living room combined.

What he said to his ally wasn't so calm, though.

"Engineer, if this is about the Scout being in serious trouble, then leave us be." He began with a low growl. "The prank he pulled off on us all was not at all funny! And also, do you have any idea how much the little rascal ruined my favourite suit by placing a scorpion on it?!"

The Engineer wisely ignored him. Then he yelled: "There's a civilian on the battlefield, y'all! And he's being attacked by BLU!"

The spacious room instantly fell so silent, one could swear they can hear a pin drop miles away if one were to ignore the nearby howling desert winds. The silence was so tense, everyone could hear the Pyro - their resident masked pyromaniac - mutter something about the suddenly silent popping corn kernels in the microwave, which everyone had conveniently forgot used to belong to the Scout. Then the Soldier - RED's crazy de-facto leader - stood up so abruptly, his chair was sent flying backwards to the coffee table where the Sniper - their team's lone wolf and long distance support - had made a stack of cards to pass the time in boredom.

Which fell when the furniture collided to the tune of the American's reddening face.

"WHAT?!" The Soldier bellowed, ignoring the Sniper's resulting annoyed sigh. "A civilian being attacked by BLU?! I will not stand for this! Not while I have air in my lungs! By God, I will save that civilian! And all of you are coming with me!"

Everyone exchanged glances as the Soldier then ran out of the room like a man possessed, screaming his lungs out in an overdrawn battle-cry as he wielded his shovel. But no sooner than a few seconds had passed he returned back to the room, looking slightly sheepish while scratching the back of his head.

"I forgot to ask... Where's this civilian at?" He asked quietly.

The Engineer rolled his eyes and motioned everyone else to follow him, with the Heavy dragging an uninterested Medic along with him and with the Pyro bemoaning the ruination of his popcorn, alongside the Demoman who frowned at losing some of his precious drinking time. The ignored, infuriated Spy pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed as they filed out, only following suit after a pat on the shoulder from the sympathetic Sniper on his way out. The last in line, the Soldier gave one cursory glance at the room before hurriedly catching up with his team.

+

Big Macintosh was having the worst day of his life.

From landing in the middle of a desert because of Twilight's spell, then finding out he had turned into a human, followed up by saving a real human in the ruins of a previous civilization from being beaten up even more, to being beaten up himself, he knew that this bad day of his had trumped all the previous days which he called were the worst days of his life, and that was saying something. His arms currently being held by a helmeted man and a dark-skinned one who wore an eye-patch, he couldn't do much to fight back, and right now he was being punched in the stomach by a rather not amused hardhat-wearing human. Each punch hurt as much as they looked.

The blue-wearing humans took their time with him, occasionally taking turns to punch him wherever and whenever they wanted. Big Macintosh was hurting all over by the time the hardhatted one had his fill, but somehow he still managed to remain perfectly conscious despite his suffering. Eventually it was the red-clothed human's look-alike's turn. He had a smug look on his face as he looked down on him, clenching his wrapped hands into fists.

"Who's the tough guy now, huh, tough guy?!" He taunted him as he raised his balled up fist in front of Big Macintosh's face.

He snorted at this, despite the pain he felt everywhere. He had to admit, it was funny hearing the young human before him taunting him despite the fact that he looked like the human equivalent of a pony wimp. He barely looked like he had any muscles. Or maybe it was funny only because his adrenaline had just started to kick in. Either way, Big Macintosh started to stifle his steadily rising laughter.

"Hey, what's so funny tough guy?!" The Scout growled at him, and at this Big Macintosh could no longer hold it in.

"I find it kind of funny that you need your buddies' help just to beat me up. Heck, I think that without them around I can drive you down to the ground and make you crawl back to mommy."

Big Macintosh, despite the shock he instilled into the now gaping human was unsure what caused him to say that. It really might have been the adrenaline talking, but then again he really didn't know. He, of course, knows that he is - or was - a stallion of few words, and he knew it was completely out of character for him to say something like that even if it was a taunt of sorts owing to his personality. Whatever caused him to say that he though seemed to work somehow by temporarily stopping his beating, which was a blessing while it lasted. And he could hear murmuring from the other humans that sounded like 'The man's right, you know.', and 'Yeah, I agree, the Scout doesn't stand a chance against him one-on-one.'. Woah. Whoever these humans were, it sounded like they really didn't like the human in front of him.

That only made him enraged. "Wanna bet, you wuss?!"

Without thinking, Big Macintosh replied:

"Eeyup."

"Alright, that's it! I'm gonna show this bozo who's the boss around here!"

The dark-skinned human suddenly burped out of the blue, then asked his teammate concernedly: "Are you sure about it, lad?"

The look-alike nodded vigorously as he cracked his knuckles and grit his teeth. The black human took this as a 'Yes!', so he sighed and motioned to his other teammate to let go of the blond's arms at the same time he will. "Alright then, it's yer funeral, lad. Don't say we didn't try to stop you."

The two humans holding Big Macintosh quickly dropped their hold on his arms simultaneously, quickly backing away from the battered RED before he'd get the chance to grab them or something. After quickly checking up on the unconscious Heavy and Medic and making sure they were alright, they wordlessly joined the rest of their team while they were forming a wide circle that the soon-to-be combatants wouldn't run from. All the while, the look-alike was glaring down Big Macintosh, who held up his fists defensively.

"I'm gonna headbutt you! I'm gonna headbutt you! I'm gonna headbutt you!"

With that, the blue-wearing look-alike launched himself at him, snarling.

Big Macintosh didn't even need to think twice about what he said he'd do to him.

+

Meanwhile, in a dark office lit only by the many screens of monitors showing a multitude of areas around the Egyptian complex, Administrator Helen smoked her eighteenth cigarette as Miss Pauling the Assistant nervously looked on, both watching the one-sided battle of Big Macintosh and the BLU Scout coming to a close. The chain-smoking older woman in the room continued to eye the end of the fight with interest as Pauling re-checked the information she had on the mystery civilian on her note board for the umpteenth time - which was, so to speak due to his completely unexpected appearance - absolutely nothing at all. In other words, she kept looking back at the blank sheet of paper she had on her note board.

To her, this man was like the Spies of both the mercenary teams the Administrator employed to carry on the Mann brothers' feud; a living mystery more mysterious than the Spies themselves as he had appeared out of nowhere and such, only this time he had a face they could possibly identify given time, effort, and resources - but unlike the Spies - they had no information about the stranger's name or even on his background to begin with. Miss Pauling, with the slightest bit of justifiable hesitance, looked over at the silhouette of her boss, who was sitting on her chair facing the wall of monitors and beeping computers like she had no care for the world.

"Administrator?"

"Speak."

"The information about that civilian you requested... Our databases doesn't have any. He's a ghost on the system."

The older woman continued smoking as if she didn't hear her Assistant. Miss Pauling did not see her lips curl into a smirk.

"Interesting."

+

"Who's next!?" Big Macintosh found himself yelling triumphantly at the humans, who were slowly backing away after seeing how brutally he put their teammate down.

The BLU Scout could only meek out a weak groan as he tried moving. Everywhere on his body hurt like hell, especially his legs, and the combined pain was bringing him into tears, not that he wouldn't admit it. The new RED was absolutely merciless during the fight - the RED actually freaking stomped on his legs when he tried to roll away from him too early, and also the RED had punched his face so many times he could barely feel the trickle of his own blood dripping off it. The Scout groaned again, before his good eye began to twitch and he felt like fainting from it all. He tried to heave himself up to save face, but found that the act of doing so only washed him over with more pain.

"Mommy..." He whimpered pathetically, before the calming darkness rushing from the corners of his eyes claimed him.

+

"Attack!"

The RED Soldier cried as he ran towards Point A, followed closely by his similarly yelling brothers-in-arms. The Heavy began to rev up his minigun, and the Sniper took up a vantage point behind his team to scope for targets. The Demoman began to aim his stickybomb launcher to shoot into the air, while the Pyro let loose a maniacal giggle while brandishing his flamethrower. The Medic applied his medigun on his Russian comrade to overheal him, the Spy cloaked to go who knows where, and the Engineer cocked his shotgun and aimed. All of them were ready to fight to the death, like it was another ordinary day in their lives as mercenaries for Reliable Excavations and Demolitions.

But what they saw silenced them into shock.

"What the hell?" The decloaking Spy summed up everyone's reactions in those three words.

The very same civilian the Engineer told them about was towering over the unconscious bodies of the entire BLU team. He was breathing heavily as he limped his way to the unconscious RED Scout and fell on his knees, no doubt feeling the after effects of his adrenaline rush - extreme exhaustion and a heightened sense of feeling pain, if the bruises on his arms and face were anything to go by, not to mention the ones hidden under his clothes. The Heavy noted that he failed to notice the REDs gaping at him not too far away despite their earlier yelling and battle preparations, even failing to hear the usually reserved Sniper gasp a rather distinct 'Holey Dooley!' that normally would've gotten everyone's attention.

With a final wheeze for air, the unknown civilian toppled over and fell flat on his back right beside their Scout.

There was a moment of silence, before it finally dawned on team RED. Instantly, they realized two things:

One, this civilian fought the BLUs on his own, and unbelievably, won.
Two, their Scout seemed to be barely alive, not that anyone cared.

Still under the thrall of their shock, the rest of the stunned REDs turned to face the Engineer, who was the reason why they were here, watching the aftermath of the civilian's fight against their enemy. The Demoman, believing himself to be drunk, couldn't help but pinch himself, and when he registered the slight pain, he gave a disbelieving look at the bottle of Scrumpy he brought along. Everyone else had nearly similar reactions after they saw it for themselves; even the staring Spy was at a loss for words.

"Uh, Engineer, mate?" The Sniper finally broke the ice, looking back and forth at the civilian and the Engineer. "Did he actually need any help in the first place?"

The Texan could only gape at the unconscious civilian in response.

Author's Note:

... Crap, I just realized I posted a beta version of this chapter earlier. Oh well, now here's the full version.
Enjoy.

*Updated as of 26th of June, 2014.
**Updated as of 16th of July, 2014.
***Updated as of 5th of January, 2015. Man, I really have a problem with updating my stories and stuff.

Comments

[McSlendy]

I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the info.

[Noble Wings]

I bet you Big Mac is going to be cloned or be a vsh hale... :D