Chapter 1: Welcome to the Shitshow
Chapter Text
The Combine soldier's head exploded like a piñata filled with chunky salsa as the Postal Dude's shovel connected with his skull. Gray matter splattered across the sterile white walls of the Aperture Science facility like Jackson Pollock having a particularly bad day.
"WOOHOO! That's what I'm talkin' about!" Scout whooped, baseball bat dripping with alien brain juice. "Did you see that guy's head go SPLAT? That was fuckin' beautiful!"
Heavy grunted approvingly as he revved up Sasha, the minigun's barrels spinning with murderous glee. "Is good day to make little baby men into little baby PASTE!" The weapon roared to life, turning three more Combine troops into what could generously be called "human confetti."
"Jesus Christ on a cracker," muttered the Postal Dude, wiping viscera off his sunglasses. "And I thought my Tuesday was fucked up."
Pyro made excited muffled sounds through their mask while gleefully setting everything within a ten-foot radius on fire, including what might have been a very important computer terminal. Or possibly a vending machine. It was hard to tell when everything was melting.
"Bloody hell, you maniacs are making this look easy!" Demoman cackled, lobbing grenades with the precision of a drunk Scottish mathematician. "Though I suppose when you're already clinically insane, fighting interdimensional fascists is just another Tuesday!"
Engineer, crouched behind his sentry gun, shook his head. "Y'all realize we're supposed to be rescuing people, not turnin' this place into a modern art exhibit titled 'Viscera and Regret,' right?"
"Pah!" Medic scoffed, his medical license having been revoked in seventeen dimensions by this point. "Zis is perfectly acceptable rescue protocol! Ve simply remove all obstacles between us und our objective. Very efficient!"
Soldier, covered head to toe in alien gore and loving every second of it, struck a heroic pose atop a pile of Combine corpses. "AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! These communist robot bastards picked the wrong planet to mess with! We're gonna liberate the shit out of this place!"
"Oi, you magnificent psychopaths!" Sniper called out from his perch, casually headshoting a Combine soldier who was trying to flee. "Hate to interrupt the murder party, but we've got more company!"
Indeed, more Combine forces were pouring through the facility's blast doors like ants from a kicked anthill. Except these ants had pulse rifles and a serious attitude problem.
"Gentlemen," Spy said calmly, somehow still clean despite the absolute carnage surrounding him, "perhaps we should—"
His sentence was cut short as a Combine Elite's head spontaneously exploded, courtesy of Sniper's rifle.
"Sorry mate, you were sayin'?"
"I vas saying," Spy continued without missing a beat, "that we should probably remember why we are here. Specifically, to prevent Half-Life 3 from becoming the gaming equivalent of Chinese democracy."
Six Hours Earlier...
The whole clusterfuck had started, as most clusterfucks do, with good intentions and spectacularly poor planning.
RED Team had been enjoying a perfectly normal day of shooting each other in the face over some gravel when the Administrator's voice crackled over the intercom with news that would make every gamer weep tears of pure anguish.
"Attention, gentlemen. I have received intelligence that BLU Team has allied themselves with one Wallace Breen and his Combine forces. Their objective: hold Valve Corporation hostage until they agree to cancel Half-Life 3 permanently."
The silence that followed was so profound it could have been bottled and sold as premium quiet.
"I'm sorry," Engineer said slowly, "did you just say they want to cancel Half-Life 3? The game that's been more mythical than Bigfoot's sex tape?"
"That is correct. They believe that by preventing its release, they can create a temporal paradox that will somehow make Team Fortress 2 the only multiplayer game that matters."
Scout's eye twitched. "Those BLU bastards have finally lost it completely. I mean, we're all crazy, but this is like... advanced crazy. This is crazy with a PhD in being fucked up!"
"Worse still," the Administrator continued, "they have recruited allies from across the multiverse. Gordon Freeman is being held in stasis. The entire Valve writing team is trapped in Aperture Science. And Gabe Newell himself is being held in City 17."
Heavy's face darkened. "This... this is unacceptable. Heavy may shoot tiny baby men for fun, but even Heavy has standards. You do not mess with the Half-Life."
"What do we do?" Pyro asked, their voice muffled but somehow conveying the gravity of the situation.
"We do what we do best," Soldier declared, striking his trademark pose. "We kill everything that stands between us and freedom! And in this case, freedom means the right to wait another decade for Half-Life 3 like God intended!"
That's when the Postal Dude had wandered in, apparently having taken a wrong turn somewhere between a convenience store robbery and a particularly violent therapy session.
"Uh, hey guys. Couldn't help but overhear something about shooting people and saving video games. Mind if I tag along? My Tuesday's been pretty boring so far."
And thus, the most unlikely rescue mission in the history of gaming had begun.
Little did they know, their actions would ripple across dimensions, affecting everything from cake recipes to the fundamental nature of crowbars.
But that's a story for the next chapter...
Chapter 2: Navigation for Dummies (and Psychopaths)
Chapter Text
"Alright, so let me get this straight," Scout said, scratching his head while standing in the middle of what used to be Teufort. Now it looked like someone had taken a blender to reality itself. "We gotta save Valve, but we don't know where they are, we don't know how to get there, and our only lead is 'somewhere in the multiverse.' Did I miss anything?"
"You missed the part where we're all probably gonna die horribly," the Postal Dude added helpfully, lighting up a cigarette. "But hey, at least it's something to do."
Engineer was examining some kind of interdimensional scanner he'd cobbled together from a toaster, three alarm clocks, and what appeared to be Scout's mom's vibrator. "Well, according to this doohickey, there's definitely some kind of quantum signature comin' from... uh..." He squinted at the readout. "Well, it's either northwest or the device is havin' a stroke."
"Zat is not very reassuring," Medic observed, somehow managing to look concerned while simultaneously harvesting organs from a nearby Combine corpse. "Perhaps ve should try a more... scientific approach?"
"Like what?" Demoman burped, taking another swig from his bottle. "Ask nicely? 'Excuse me, Mister Interdimensional Fascist, could you point us toward the nearest video game company hostage situation?'"
"Actually," Spy interjected, appearing from seemingly nowhere because of course he did, "I may have a solution. Before zis whole affair began, I intercepted several BLU communications. Zhey mentioned something about 'Combine staging areas' and 'portal coordination hubs.'"
Heavy looked up from where he was using a dead Combine soldier as a stress ball. "So we find little robot men base, yes? Then we take their teleporter things?"
"That's... actually not a terrible plan," Engineer admitted grudgingly. "Though finding a Combine outpost in this mess is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack made of other needles and disappointment."
"I've got an idea!" Soldier announced, which immediately made everyone nervous. "We split up and cover more ground! It's foolproof!"
"That's the dumbest—" Scout started.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro interrupted with muffled enthusiasm, gesturing wildly at the horizon, where several pillars of smoke were rising.
"The pyromaniac has a point," Sniper said, adjusting his scope. "Where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's fire, there's usually someone getting their arse kicked. And where someone's getting their arse kicked..."
"There's probably Combine!" Scout finished. "Holy shit, Pyro actually had a good idea! Mark your calendars, people!"
And so began the most chaotic navigation attempt in the history of interdimensional travel.
Two Hours of Spectacular Failure Later...
"I still say we should have taken the left at that pile of burning reality," Scout muttered, nursing what appeared to be a bite wound from something that used to be a cow but now looked like it had been designed by H.P. Lovecraft having a bad acid trip.
"Oh sure, blame the Australian," Sniper grumbled. "Not like anyone else here knows how to read a bloody map."
"Vhat map?" Medic asked innocently. "Ve don't HAVE a map!"
"That's... actually a good point," Engineer said. "How exactly have we been navigating for the past two hours?"
Everyone looked at each other.
"I've been following the smell of blood and cordite," the Postal Dude shrugged. "Usually leads somewhere interesting."
"I've been following him," Heavy pointed at Postal Dude.
"Same," said literally everyone else.
"Well, fuck," Scout summarized eloquently.
That's when they heard it: the distinctive thrum of Combine technology, followed by what sounded like someone being very loudly and creatively murdered.
"Gentlemen," Spy said with the closest thing to excitement his voice could manage, "I believe we have found our destination."
Over the next hill, like a metallic middle finger extended toward the sky, stood a Combine outpost. It was all angular geometry and oppressive architecture, the kind of place that screamed "abandon hope, all ye who enter here" in seventeen different languages, most of them involving screaming.
"Righto," Sniper said, cracking his knuckles. "Time for some good old-fashioned ultraviolence."
"Wait," Engineer said, trying to be the voice of reason. "Shouldn't we have some kind of plan? You know, strategy? Tactics?"
The team stared at him.
"Go in. Kill everything. Take their stuff," Soldier said slowly, as if explaining quantum physics to a particularly dim goldfish.
"...That's not really a plan, that's more like a grocery list for psychopaths."
"Your point?" the Postal Dude asked.
And with that, the most violent twenty minutes in the history of interdimensional warfare began.
The Massacre (A Play in One Act of Extreme Violence)
Scene: Combine Outpost. Several Combine soldiers are minding their own business, probably thinking about their families or what they're going to have for lunch.
Enter: Nine heavily armed psychopaths and one Australian.
COMBINE SOLDIER #1: "Hey, do you hear that music? Sounds like... screaming mixed with accordions?"
COMBINE SOLDIER #2: "That's weird, I hear banjo music and the sound of someone reloading a—"
BOOM
COMBINE SOLDIER #2 no longer has a head.
SCOUT: "BONK! Home run, motherfuckers!"
What followed can only be described as the most enthusiastic episode of 'How It's Made: Corpses Edition' ever filmed.
Heavy turned the main entrance into what could charitably be called "abstract art" with Sasha, while Demoman's grenades turned the guard towers into the world's most explosive fireworks display. Pyro set everything flammable on fire, which in this case was apparently everything including the things that shouldn't have been flammable.
The Postal Dude, meanwhile, was having what he would later describe as "a pretty good Tuesday," systematically working his way through the facility with a shovel and a level of creative violence that would have made Gordon Freeman proud.
"This is like Sunday morning!" he called out cheerfully while using said shovel to introduce a Combine Elite to the concept of having his spine relocated to the outside of his body.
Medic was having the time of his life, simultaneously healing his teammates and conducting what he called "field research" on Combine anatomy. "Fascinating! Zheir internal organs are arranged completely differently! Also, zhey scream in a higher pitch!"
Sniper, perched on a nearby roof, was picking off fleeing Combine soldiers with the casual precision of someone playing the world's most violent game of whack-a-mole. "This is better than Christmas," he muttered happily.
Engineer, despite his earlier protests about planning, had somehow managed to build three sentry guns in the middle of combat. They were currently engaged in what could only be described as "competitive murder" with Heavy's minigun.
Spy, naturally, was invisible and stabbing people in the back with the kind of efficiency that would have made an assembly line worker weep with envy.
And Soldier... well, Soldier was being Soldier, which is to say he was rocket-jumping around the facility while screaming about America and freedom, occasionally pausing to beat Combine soldiers to death with his bare hands while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The entire battle lasted exactly eighteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. When the smoke cleared, the Combine outpost looked like it had been hit by a tornado made of explosives and poor life choices.
"Well," the Postal Dude said, surveying the carnage while casually lighting another cigarette, "that was therapeutic."
"Aye," Demoman agreed, somehow still drunk despite the adrenaline. "Nothing like a good massacre to get the blood pumping."
"Speaking of blood," Engineer said, stepping over what used to be a Combine Captain, "we should probably find those portal devices before more of these metal bastards show up."
They found the portal control room in the basement, which had somehow survived the apocalypse happening above it. The room was filled with sleek, alien technology that hummed with interdimensional energy.
"Jackpot," Scout grinned, examining a device that looked like a cross between a smartphone and a particularly aggressive calculator. "These babies should get us where we need to go."
"Assuming we can figure out how to use them," Engineer muttered, poking at what appeared to be a control panel. "This stuff's more advanced than anything I've ever seen."
"How hard can it be?" Soldier asked, and immediately began pressing random buttons.
The portal device flickered to life, showing swirling images of different dimensions: a world where everything was made of cake, another where gravity worked sideways, and one that appeared to be entirely populated by angry geese.
"Okay," the Postal Dude said slowly, "maybe we should think about this for a second..."
But it was too late. Scout had already grabbed one of the portable portal devices and was examining it like a kid with a new toy.
"Alright, you beautiful bastards," he grinned, "let's go save some video games."
Chapter 3: Welcome to Hell (Population: Way too many Zombies)
Chapter Text
"Well," the Postal Dude said, casually flicking his cigarette at a zombie that was attempting to gnaw through his leg, "this is new."
The portal had worked, technically speaking. It had transported them to another dimension. Unfortunately, that dimension appeared to be experiencing what could generously be called "a bit of a zombie problem."
"I HATE ZOMBIES!" Scout screamed, baseball bat connecting with a zombie's skull in a satisfying crack. "I hate them more than I hate BLU team! I hate them more than I hate running out of energy drinks! I hate them more than—"
"We get it, mate," Sniper interrupted, casually headshoting three zombies with one bullet. "You're not a fan of the undead. Message received."
"This is like Tuesday all over again," the Postal Dude mused, using his shovel to separate a zombie's head from its shoulders. "Except usually the zombies are more metaphorical."
Heavy was in his element, Sasha roaring as she turned waves of zombies into chunky salsa. "ZOMBIES ARE LIKE LITTLE BABY MEN, BUT STUPIDER!" he bellowed happily.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro exclaimed, setting everything in a fifty-foot radius on fire. This was particularly effective, as burning zombies were marginally more entertaining than regular zombies.
"Zis is actually quite fascinating," Medic observed while simultaneously healing Soldier and examining a zombie's brain. "Ze undead seem to have retained some motor functions but lost all higher cognitive abilities. Much like our usual enemies, actually."
"At least our usual enemies don't smell like a fish market having a nervous breakdown," Engineer muttered, his sentry gun methodically mowing down the shambling hordes.
That's when they heard it: gunfire. Lots of gunfire. Professional gunfire. The kind of gunfire that suggested people who actually knew what they were doing with firearms, as opposed to the "point and click until everything stops moving" approach the team usually employed.
"Well I'll be damned," came a gruff voice from behind a nearby barricade. "More survivors. And they're... colorful."
Three figures emerged from cover: an older man in a military vest, a biker in a leather jacket, and a young guy in a mechanics uniform who looked like he'd been having way too much fun in the apocalypse.
"Name's Bill," the older man said, reloading his rifle with practiced efficiency. "This here's Francis, and that's Ellis. We've been hole up in this godforsaken city for weeks now."
"I hate zombies," Francis announced, which seemed to be his default conversational opener.
"Hey there, guys!" Ellis grinned, apparently immune to the horror surrounding them. "Y'all look like you could use some help! This one time, me and my buddy Keith were in a situation just like this, except instead of zombies it was angry chickens, and instead of guns we had pool noodles, and—"
"Ellis," Bill interrupted, "maybe save the stories for when we're not surrounded by the undead?"
"Oh, right. Sorry."
Scout looked around at the zombie-infested wasteland. "So, uh, you guys wouldn't happen to know how to get out of here, would you? We're kind of on a mission to save video games."
"Save video games?" Francis raised an eyebrow. "That's... actually not the weirdest thing I've heard today."
"What's the weirdest thing you've heard today?" Engineer asked, genuinely curious.
"A zombie tried to explain cryptocurrency to me while I was shooting it in the face."
"Fair enough."
"Listen," Bill said, gunning down another zombie, "we know this city like the back of our hands. Been fighting through it for weeks. But if you boys are planning on getting out of here, you're gonna need more than just firepower. These things are everywhere, and they're getting smarter."
"Smarter how?" Spy asked, somehow still managing to look immaculate despite being covered in zombie gore.
"They're starting to use tactics. Setting traps. Working together. It's like they're learning."
"That's... deeply disturbing," Medic observed. "And also scientifically fascinating! Do you think they would consent to being research subjects?"
Everyone stared at him.
"Right, probably not."
"Well," Soldier declared, striking a heroic pose atop a pile of zombie corpses, "whatever these communist undead bastards are planning, they haven't faced the full might of American military superiority! We'll show them what freedom tastes like!"
"Actually," Ellis interjected excitedly, "this one time, me and Keith tried to make freedom taste like something. We used hot sauce and—"
"ELLIS," Bill, Francis, and seemingly every other living person in a five-mile radius shouted in unison.
"Sorry, sorry. Got excited."
"Look," Bill continued, "we've been trying to get to the evacuation point for weeks. It's on the other side of the city, past the hospital, through the industrial district, and beyond what used to be the mall. But the path is crawling with zombies, and we've got some... special infected to worry about."
"Special infected?" Heavy asked, looking intrigued.
"Think regular zombies, but worse. Much worse. There's ones that can grab you from fifty feet away, ones that explode, ones that can see you through walls..."
"And ones that throw rocks," Francis added. "I hate the ones that throw rocks."
"You hate everything," Ellis pointed out.
"Not everything. I don't hate... uh..." Francis thought for a moment. "Okay, I hate everything."
"Gentlemen," Spy said, lighting a cigarette with practiced elegance, "it seems we have found ourselves some local guides. Perhaps we can work together?"
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro agreed enthusiastically, which somehow everyone understood meant "Yes, let's team up and burn everything."
"Alright then," Bill nodded. "But we do this smart. These zombies aren't like the ones in the movies. They're fast, they're angry, and they really, really want to eat your face."
"Sounds like a typical Tuesday," the Postal Dude shrugged. "Lead the way, old man."
And so, the group of nine psychopaths became a group of twelve psychopaths, plus one old soldier who was trying very hard to be the voice of reason in a world that had clearly given up on reason entirely.
"This is gonna be fun," Ellis grinned, chambering a round in his rifle. "This one time, me and Keith—"
"ELLIS!"
"Right, right. Later. Got it."
Chapter 4: Scenic route through Purgatory
Chapter Text
"So let me get this straight," Scout panted, reloading his scattergun while a zombie's head exploded behind him courtesy of Sniper's rifle. "We're fighting through a zombie apocalypse to get to another Combine outpost so we can steal more portal technology to save video games from being canceled by our evil twins and a guy in a suit?"
"That's... actually a pretty accurate summary," Engineer admitted, his sentry gun chewing through a pack of zombies that had been trying to flank them.
"This is the best Tuesday ever," the Postal Dude grinned, using his crowbar to introduce a zombie to the concept of having its ribcage become external decoration.
"I HATE AIRPORTS!" Francis shouted, pumping his shotgun. "Wait, no, that's not right. I HATE ZOMBIES!"
"You said that already," Ellis pointed out, casually headshotting a zombie that was trying to climb over a car. "Hey, this reminds me of the time me and Keith went to this haunted house, except instead of fake zombies there were real possums, and instead of candy we got rabies shots—"
"Ellis, focus!" Bill barked, his assault rifle chattering as he mowed down another wave of undead. "Save the stories for when we're not knee-deep in corpses!"
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro exclaimed joyfully, setting an entire city block on fire. The burning zombies stumbled around like the world's most macabre dance troupe.
"Zis is fascinating!" Medic called out while healing Heavy and simultaneously taking notes on zombie anatomy. "Ze way zhey continue to function despite massive trauma is remarkable! Also, zhat one over zhere is missing most of its torso but still trying to bite people!"
Heavy laughed with pure joy as Sasha turned a dozen zombies into what could charitably be called "hamburger helper." "LITTLE DEAD BABY MEN ARE EVEN EASIER TO KILL THAN REGULAR LITTLE BABY MEN!"
"Bloody hell," Sniper muttered, picking off zombies with mechanical precision. "At this rate we'll run out of ammunition before we run out of zombies."
"Not if we're smart about it," Spy said, appearing from nowhere to backstab a zombie that had been sneaking up on Demoman. "Though admittedly, 'smart' is not exactly our strong suit."
"Speak for yourself, fancy pants!" Soldier roared, rocket-jumping over a horde of zombies and landing with an explosion that turned the street into a crater. "I've got enough rockets to democratize this entire city!"
The group had been fighting their way through the zombie-infested streets for three hours now, leaving a trail of destruction that would have made Sherman's March to the Sea look like a casual stroll through the park. Behind them, the city burned. Ahead of them, more zombies shambled forward with the kind of determination usually reserved for people trying to get the last parking spot at Walmart on Black Friday.
"There!" Bill pointed to a structure rising above the urban decay. "That's our destination. Though I gotta say, that doesn't look like any building I've seen before."
The structure in question was definitely not local architecture. It was all angular geometry and oppressive metal, jutting out of the city like a metallic middle finger extended toward the sky. In other words, it was obviously Combine.
"Well, shit," Francis observed. "That looks like the kind of place where bad things happen to good people."
"Good thing we're not good people," the Postal Dude replied cheerfully.
"Wait," Engineer said, squinting at the structure through his goggles. "Y'all see those energy signatures? That's definitely portal technology. And if the Combine are here in zombie land, that means..."
"That means they're probably doing something fucked up," Scout finished. "More fucked up than usual, I mean."
"The question is," Spy mused, "what would ze Combine want with a zombie apocalypse?"
"Maybe they're recruiting?" Ellis suggested. "I mean, zombies are already pretty mindless. Seems like they'd fit right in."
"That's... actually not a terrible theory," Bill admitted grudgingly.
"This one time, me and Keith tried to figure out what zombies would want to recruit for, and we decided it was probably—"
"ELLIS!"
"Right, sorry. Focus. Got it."
The final push to the Combine outpost was like something out of a fever dream scripted by someone who had never heard of subtlety. Zombies poured out of every building, every alley, every storm drain. The air was thick with smoke, blood, and the kind of creative profanity that would have made a sailor blush.
Pyro was having the time of their life, turning entire city blocks into impromptu bonfires. Heavy and his minigun had achieved a kind of zen-like state of constant zombie murder. Demoman's grenades were turning abandoned cars into impromptu fireworks displays.
"This is like that video game!" Ellis shouted over the chaos. "You know, the one where you shoot stuff!"
"That describes literally every video game!" Scout yelled back, batting a zombie's head clean off its shoulders.
"Exactly!"
The Combine Outpost (Round Two: Zombie Apocalypse Edition)
If the first Combine outpost had been a massacre, this one was a masterpiece of ultraviolence. The structure was crawling with both Combine soldiers and zombies, creating a three-way conflict that was as chaotic as it was entertaining.
"Well," Sniper observed, taking aim at a Combine soldier who was being eaten by a zombie, "this is conveniently confusing."
"I say we let them fight it out and clean up the survivors," Spy suggested.
"Where's the fun in that?" Soldier asked, then immediately rocket-jumped into the middle of the conflict while screaming about freedom and democracy.
What followed was the most chaotic twenty-three minutes in the history of interdimensional warfare. The team carved through Combine soldiers and zombies with equal enthusiasm, while the L4D survivors provided covering fire and tactical support that mostly consisted of Bill shouting "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" at regular intervals.
The Postal Dude had found a Combine pulse rifle and was using it to conduct what he called "scientific experiments" on the local zombie population. "Hypothesis: zombies explode when shot with alien technology. Conclusion: yes, yes they do."
"Zis is ze most educational day I have had in years!" Medic exclaimed, somehow managing to heal his teammates while simultaneously taking detailed notes on the effects of alien weaponry on undead tissue.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro agreed, setting a Combine dropship on fire just because they could.
When the smoke cleared, the outpost was theirs. More importantly, they'd found the portal control room, which was significantly more advanced than the previous one.
"Jackpot," Engineer grinned, examining the technology. "This baby could get us anywhere in the multiverse."
"Anywhere?" Ellis asked excitedly. "Like, could it get us to that place where they make those little cocktail umbrellas? Because this one time, me and Keith—"
"ELLIS!"
That's when they heard the voices coming from the detention level.
"Hello? Is someone there? Please tell me you're not more of those Combine bastards!"
The voice had a distinct Western drawl to it, and was followed by several others expressing similar sentiments in colorful language.
"Sounds like we've got company," Bill said, shouldering his rifle. "Could be survivors."
"Or it could be a trap," Francis added pessimistically. "I hate traps."
"Only one way to find out," the Postal Dude shrugged, heading toward the detention level.
What they found in the holding cells were six soldiers in desert combat gear, looking like they'd seen better days but were still ready for a fight.
"NCR, 1st Recon," the lead soldier identified himself. "Sergeant Hayes. We were on patrol when these metal bastards jumped us. Been stuck here for three days listening to them argue about 'temporal displacement' and 'multiverse coordination.'"
"NCR?" Scout asked. "What's that stand for?"
"New California Republic," Hayes replied. "We're from the Mojave Wasteland. Different kind of apocalypse than this zombie shit, but apparently the Combine are recruiting from all over the multiverse."
"Well, you're rescued now," Bill said, unlocking the cells. "Though I should warn you, we're not exactly your standard rescue team."
"No kidding," one of the NCR troopers muttered, staring at Heavy, who was still covered in zombie gore and grinning like a maniac.
"So what's the plan?" Hayes asked, checking his rifle.
"We're gonna save video games," Scout explained helpfully.
"...What?"
"It's complicated," Engineer sighed. "Long story short, we're fighting our way through the multiverse to rescue a video game company from our evil twins and a guy in a suit."
"You know what?" Hayes said after a moment. "I've heard weirder things. We're in."
"Excellent!" Soldier declared. "More patriots for the cause of freedom and digital entertainment!"
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro agreed enthusiastically.
"This is gonna be fun," Ellis grinned. "This one time, me and Keith teamed up with some soldiers, and—"
"ELLIS!"
"Right, right. Later."
Chapter 5: When Worlds Collide (And Interrupt Very Important Moments)
Chapter Text
The moonlight filtered through the ornate windows of the Grand Narukami Shrine, casting ethereal shadows across the tatami mats. Yae Miko's violet eyes sparkled with mischief as she slowly approached the trembling figure before her.
"My, my," she purred, her voice like silk against bare skin. "You seem rather... tense tonight, Traveler. Perhaps I could help you... relax?"
The Traveler's breath caught as delicate fingers traced along their jawline, the kitsune's touch sending electric shivers down their spine. "Yae, I—"
"Shh," she whispered, leaning closer until her breath was warm against their ear. "No words. Tonight, let me show you the true mysteries of Inazuma..."
Her kimono began to slip from her shoulders, revealing—
CRASH
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" Scout's voice shattered the romantic atmosphere like a brick through a stained glass window as eighteen heavily armed lunatics came tumbling through a portal that had materialized directly above the shrine's sacred hot spring.
Yae Miko and the Traveler froze, the shrine maiden's kimono halfway off her shoulders, both staring in absolute horror at the collection of maniacs who had just crashed their very private moment.
"Oh," the Postal Dude said, casually lighting a cigarette while dangling upside down from a tree branch, "sorry about that. Didn't mean to interrupt your... uh... religious ceremony."
"RELIGIOUS CEREMONY?!" Yae Miko shrieked, frantically trying to cover herself. "This is a PRIVATE MOMENT, you absolute—"
"Ma'am," Bill interrupted, trying to be polite while also trying to untangle himself from what appeared to be a very expensive silk curtain, "we're real sorry about the intrusion. We didn't mean to—"
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro exclaimed, apparently fascinated by the traditional Japanese architecture.
"Zis is most embarrassing," Medic observed, somehow managing to look clinical even while covered in portal residue. "Ve seem to have interrupted a mating ritual."
"IT'S NOT A MATING RITUAL!" both Yae Miko and the Traveler shouted in unison.
"Could've fooled me," Francis muttered, then immediately added, "I hate awkward situations."
Heavy, who had landed in the hot spring with a tremendous splash, looked around in confusion. "Where are little baby men to shoot? This place is too pretty. Makes Heavy suspicious."
"Wel-come to Teyvat!" Ellis said cheerfully, apparently completely oblivious to what they'd just interrupted. "This place looks amazing! All these floating islands and magical whatnot! Reminds me of this dream I had once about flying pancakes!"
"That's... not how you pronounce Teyvat," the Traveler said weakly, still trying to process the fact that their romantic evening had been invaded by what appeared to be a small army of interdimensional psychopaths.
"I don't care how you pronounce it," Sniper said, wringing water out of his hat. "I just want to know where the hell we are and why everything looks like it was designed by someone who really, really likes pretty colors."
"You're in the nation of Inazuma," Yae Miko said icily, having managed to restore some dignity to her appearance. "And you've just violated about seventeen different sacred customs by barging in here."
"Only seventeen?" Soldier asked, striking a heroic pose despite being tangled in prayer flags. "We usually violate at least thirty customs by this point! We're slipping!"
"Look, lady," Scout said, trying to climb out of what appeared to be a very ornate fish pond, "we're real sorry about interrupting your... whatever that was. But we're on a mission to save video games, and we need to find another portal to get out of here."
"Save video games?" the Traveler asked, momentarily forgetting their embarrassment. "What do you mean?"
"It's complicated," Engineer sighed, examining the portal device that had somehow gotten tangled in his hard hat. "Our evil twins teamed up with some interdimensional fascists to hold a video game company hostage."
"That's... actually pretty terrible," the Traveler admitted.
"I know, right?" Ellis agreed enthusiastically. "Evil twins are the worst! Well, except for evil triplets. Those are worse. Oh, and evil quadruplets, but I think those might just be a myth."
"Focus, Ellis," Bill said wearily, his patience wearing thinner by the minute.
"Right, sorry. It's just, this place is so cool! Look at all the floating stuff! And the pretty lights! And that fox lady's ears are so—"
"FINISH THAT SENTENCE AND DIE," Yae Miko warned, her eyes glowing with what appeared to be actual lightning.
"Noted," Ellis said quickly.
"So," Spy said, somehow managing to look dignified despite being covered in portal residue and traditional Japanese garden decorations, "what exactly is zis place?"
"This is Teyvat," the Traveler explained, still looking slightly shell-shocked. "It's a world where people can wield elemental powers through these things called Visions. I'm the Traveler, and I'm searching for my lost sibling."
"Elemental powers?" Demoman perked up with interest. "Like, explosive elemental powers?"
"Some of them, yes—"
"I LOVE THIS PLACE ALREADY!"
"Please don't blow anything up," Yae Miko said desperately. "This shrine is over a thousand years old."
"Can't promise anything," Demoman grinned, already eyeing some of the more explosive-looking decorations.
"Anyway," the Traveler continued, trying to regain some control of the situation, "this is Yae Miko, the head shrine maiden of the Grand Narukami Shrine. And you've just... interrupted something very important."
"How important?" the Postal Dude asked with obvious amusement.
"VERY IMPORTANT," both Yae Miko and the Traveler said in unison, their faces turning red.
"Zis world seems pleasant," Medic observed, apparently taking notes on the local architecture. "Very clean, very organized. Much better than ze zombie apocalypse."
"Don't jinx it," Hayes muttered. The NCR sergeant was examining his rifle with the kind of professional paranoia that comes from spending too much time in hostile territory. "In my experience, the prettier a place looks, the more likely it is that something's gonna try to kill you."
"That's... surprisingly accurate," the Traveler admitted.
"I hate accuracy," Francis said automatically.
"Look," Yae Miko said, trying to restore some dignity to the situation, "I don't know who you people are or why you've decided to crash through my shrine like a pack of rabid boars, but—"
"We're very sorry about the interruption," Bill interrupted diplomatically. "But we really do need to find a way out of here. We're kind of on a time-sensitive mission."
"What kind of mission involves eighteen heavily armed maniacs traveling through dimensions?" Yae Miko asked suspiciously.
"The kind where we save the world," Soldier declared. "Or at least the part of the world that makes video games!"
"That's... oddly noble," the Traveler said slowly.
"We have our moments," the Postal Dude replied, flicking his cigarette into the hot spring, which immediately caused Yae Miko to make a sound like an angry cat.
"THAT'S SACRED WATER!"
"Sorry."
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro added, apparently trying to be apologetic.
"What did... what did they say?" Yae Miko asked, looking confused.
"Nobody knows," Scout replied. "We just assume they're agreeing with whatever's happening."
"That's... concerning."
"You get used to it," Hayes said wearily. "Trust me, after three days with these lunatics, nothing surprises you anymore."
"So," Engineer said, finally managing to untangle his portal device, "y'all wouldn't happen to know if there are any Combine installations around here, would you? Big metal buildings, lots of oppressive architecture, interdimensional fascists?"
"No," the Traveler said slowly, "but there are some strange ruins that appeared recently. They don't match any of the local architecture, and they're giving off some kind of weird energy."
"That sounds promising," Spy said, adjusting his tie. "Where might zese ruins be located?"
"About a day's travel from here, near the border with Liyue. But I should warn you, the area is crawling with monsters."
"Monsters?" Heavy asked, perking up with interest. "What kind of monsters?"
"All kinds. Hilichurls, Ruin Guards, Abyss Mages—"
"Sounds like fun!" Ellis grinned. "I bet they're not as tough as zombies!"
"Don't tempt fate," Bill muttered.
"Well," the Traveler said after a moment, "I suppose if you're really trying to save video games, I could help you get to those ruins. I know the way, and I can handle myself in a fight."
"What about your... other business?" the Postal Dude asked with a smirk, glancing between the Traveler and Yae Miko.
Both of them turned bright red again.
"That can wait," Yae Miko said quickly. "Clearly, the universe has other plans for tonight."
"The universe has terrible timing," the Traveler muttered.
"Tell me about it," Scout agreed. "Story of my life."
Chapter 6: The Scenic Route (Or: How to Get Lost in Paradise)
Chapter Text
"Soldier," Bill said with the kind of patience usually reserved for explaining quantum physics to a particularly slow goldfish, "when the nice fox lady said 'head southeast toward the border,' what exactly did you think that meant?"
Soldier, who was currently standing proudly atop what appeared to be a very fancy fountain in the middle of what was very clearly not where they were supposed to be, struck his trademark heroic pose. "I followed my tactical instincts! Southeast is a communist direction anyway! Real Americans go... uh..." He looked around at the elegant architecture surrounding them. "Where are we again?"
"Fontaine," the Traveler said wearily, sitting down on the edge of the fountain. "We're in Fontaine. Which is approximately... oh, about three hundred miles in the completely wrong direction."
"How the hell did we end up three hundred miles off course?" Scout asked, though he didn't sound particularly upset about it. The scenery was pretty nice, all things considered.
"Well," Ellis said thoughtfully, examining the intricate clockwork mechanisms visible throughout the city, "when Soldier said he knew a shortcut through that cave system, and then we took that left turn at the underground river, and then we followed that weird glowing path..."
"Ah," Engineer nodded. "Yeah, that'll do it."
The group was currently scattered around what appeared to be the central plaza of Fontaine's Court of Justice district. It was, everyone had to admit, probably the most civilized place they'd been since this whole adventure started. No zombies, no Combine soldiers, no interdimensional warfare. Just elegant French-inspired architecture, the gentle sound of fountains, and the kind of peaceful atmosphere that made you want to sit down and have a nice cup of tea.
"You know what?" the Postal Dude said, actually sounding relaxed for once. "This isn't terrible. When's the last time we were somewhere that wasn't actively trying to kill us?"
"Before Tuesday," Heavy replied, though he seemed oddly at peace. Even Sasha was resting quietly across his lap instead of being brandished threateningly.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph," Pyro agreed, and for once it sounded almost... content. They were sitting by a small decorative pond, apparently fascinated by the mechanical fish swimming in it.
"This place has a very sophisticated justice system," Hayes observed, reading one of the many informational plaques scattered around the plaza. "Trial by combat, but with style points. I can respect that."
"Ze architecture is quite impressive," Spy admitted, actually lowering his guard enough to examine some of the ornate stonework. "Very... civilized."
Yae Miko, who had reluctantly agreed to help guide them (mostly to make sure they didn't accidentally destroy any more sacred sites), was looking around with professional interest. "Fontaine has always been known for its emphasis on law and order. And their technology is quite advanced."
"It's peaceful," Sniper said, and there was something almost wistful in his voice. "Been a while since we've been anywhere peaceful."
The Traveler was consulting what appeared to be a map. "Well, the good news is we're not in immediate danger. The bad news is we're now even further from those ruins. It'll take at least two days to get back on track."
"Two days?" Demoman asked, though he didn't sound particularly distressed. "Well, could be worse. At least there's no immediate threat of explosion or dismemberment."
Francis, who had been unusually quiet, was sitting on a bench feeding what appeared to be some kind of mechanical bird. "You know what? This place is... actually kind of nice. Quiet. Clean. Nobody's trying to eat my face or shoot me in the head."
"Are you feeling alright?" Ellis asked with genuine concern. "You haven't complained about anything in like, ten whole minutes."
"I'm fine," Francis replied. "Just... tired, I guess. Been a long few days."
"We could rest here for a bit," Bill suggested, and for the first time since they'd met him, he actually sounded like he was considering relaxation. "Lord knows we could all use a break."
"A break sounds good," Scout agreed, sprawling out on the grass. "My feet are killing me, and I'm pretty sure I've got zombie guts in places zombie guts should never be."
"Zat is anatomically fascinating," Medic said, but even he sounded less manic than usual. "Perhaps ve could take some time to properly clean and maintain our equipment?"
Engineer was already tinkering with something, but it was clearly more out of habit than necessity. "This portal device could use some fine-tuning. And it's been a while since we've had somewhere safe to work."
"Safe," Soldier repeated the word like he was testing how it tasted. "Yeah, okay. I can work with safe. For a little while."
The group gradually spread out across the plaza, each finding their own way to decompress. Heavy had found a cafe and was engaged in what appeared to be a surprisingly civilized conversation with the proprietor about the quality of local sandwiches. Pyro was still fascinated by the mechanical wildlife. Sniper had found a good vantage point and was people-watching with the kind of professional interest that didn't involve actually shooting anyone.
"This is weird," the Postal Dude observed, lying on his back and watching the clouds. "I keep waiting for something terrible to happen."
"Maybe something terrible won't happen," the Traveler suggested hopefully. "Maybe we can just... have a normal afternoon for once."
"Normal," several members of the group repeated in unison, like they were trying to remember what the word meant.
Ellis had found a group of local children who were fascinated by his stories, though thankfully these were about the mechanical wonders of Fontaine rather than whatever he and Keith used to get up to.
"The craftsmanship on these automatons is incredible," he was saying, examining a small clockwork toy. "Back home, we'd consider this kind of precision engineering to be cutting-edge technology."
"You're from somewhere with less advanced technology?" one of the children asked.
"Well, we've got cars and guns and stuff, but nothing like this. This is like... art and engineering had a baby, and that baby grew up to be really, really good at making cool stuff."
Even the NCR troopers were starting to relax, their usual military alertness softening as they realized that, for the first time in days, they weren't in immediate mortal peril.
"You know," Hayes said, watching a group of locals going about their daily business, "this is what we're fighting for, isn't it? Places like this. People just... living their lives, not having to worry about zombies or aliens or interdimensional fascists."
"That's surprisingly philosophical," Bill observed.
"Combat does that to you sometimes. Makes you think about what really matters."
Yae Miko had found a quiet spot to meditate, though she kept one eye open to make sure none of her new companions were accidentally destroying anything culturally significant.
"So," the Traveler said, settling down next to the fountain where most of the group had gradually congregated, "what's the actual plan here? I mean, beyond 'find the bad guys and shoot them until they stop being bad guys.'"
"That's... actually most of the plan," Scout admitted. "We're not really the 'detailed strategy' type."
"We're more the 'tactical improvisation' type," Engineer added. "Which is a fancy way of saying we make it up as we go along."
"It's worked so far," the Postal Dude pointed out. "Sort of."
"Define 'worked,'" Francis said dryly.
"We're still alive, and we haven't accidentally destroyed any universes yet," Soldier replied.
"Yet being the operative word there," Sniper muttered.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph," Pyro added, which everyone interpreted as agreement.
"Look," Bill said, "maybe we don't have a perfect plan. But we've got something those Combine bastards don't have."
"What's that?" the Traveler asked.
"We're too crazy to know when we're supposed to give up."
"That's... actually kind of inspiring," Yae Miko said, sounding surprised.
"Don't get too inspired," Francis warned. "Tomorrow we'll probably be back to shooting things and running for our lives."
"Probably," Bill agreed. "But that's tomorrow. Today, we're sitting in a beautiful city, nobody's shooting at us, and for once in this whole damn adventure, we can just... exist."
"To existing," the Postal Dude raised an imaginary glass.
"To existing," the rest of the group echoed.
Chapter 7: Unlikely Allies in Unlikely Places
Chapter Text
The peaceful afternoon in Fontaine's Court of Justice was interrupted not by explosions or screaming, but by the sound of someone trying to very quietly ask for directions while clearly not speaking the local language.
"Excusez-moi, monsieur, où est... uh... big metal building? With... robot men? Bad robot men?"
Scout's head snapped up from where he'd been enjoying what might have been the first relaxing moment of his adult life. "Did someone just ask about robot men?"
The voice belonged to a man in a blue security uniform, a helmet and ballistic vest stenciled with yellow “SECURITY" stenciled on the back, accompanied by two others in makeshift military gear, green beanies, and scavenged Combine gear. They were clearly trying to blend in with the local population, which was about as successful as a flamethrower trying to blend in at a ice cream social.
"Resistance," Hayes identified immediately, his NCR training kicking in. "Look at the gear, the way they move. Definitely Resistance."
The three newcomers froze as they realized they'd been spotted by what appeared to be a small army of heavily armed individuals spread out across the plaza.
"Shit," one of the Resistance soldiers muttered. "Combine?"
"Nah," the Black Mesa security guard said, squinting at the group. "Combine don't usually lounge around feeding mechanical birds. Though that one in the gas mask is kinda suspicious." He nodded toward Pyro, who waved cheerfully in response.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro called out in greeting.
"Okay, definitely not Combine," the second Resistance soldier decided. "Combine don't... whatever that was."
Bill, recognizing the universal language of "confused military personnel in hostile territory," stood up slowly with his hands visible. "Easy there, soldiers. We're not Combine. Name's Bill. These are... well, it's complicated."
"Complicated how?" the security guard asked, though he didn't seem to be reaching for his weapon.
"Well," Engineer said thoughtfully, "we've got mercenaries from a gravel-based corporate war, survivors from a zombie apocalypse, soldiers from a post-nuclear wasteland, locals from a magical fantasy realm, and one postal worker having a really bad week."
The three newcomers stared at him.
"That's... actually a pretty accurate summary," the Traveler admitted.
"I'm Mike," the security guard said after a long pause. "This is Rodriguez and Chen from the Resistance. We're looking for our buddy Barney - he went missing on a recon mission in this... whatever this place is."
"Barney Calhoun?" Heavy asked, perking up with interest. "Security guard man? Is good fighter?"
"You know Barney?" Rodriguez asked, surprised.
"Not personally," Scout said, "but we've heard of him. Guy's kind of a legend where we come from. In a 'theoretical video game character' sort of way."
"Video game character?" Chen looked confused.
"It's complicated," everyone said in unison.
"Look," Mike continued, "Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Vance sent us to find Barney and gather intel on Combine operations in this dimension. We managed to escape from one of their outposts about six hours ago, but we're basically flying blind here."
"Combine outpost?" Spy asked, suddenly interested. "Where?"
"About ten miles north of here, built into what used to be some kind of... opera house? The locals call it the 'Palais Mermonia' or something. Combine have been using it as a staging area."
"An opera house?" Yae Miko raised an eyebrow. "That's... oddly cultured for interdimensional fascists."
"They probably just liked the acoustics," Francis said. "Good for intimidating speeches and evil monologuing."
"Ze Combine have always had a flair for ze dramatic," Spy observed. "Though zis is more sophisticated than zeir usual approach."
"So," Demoman said, reluctantly setting down his bottle, "I suppose our peaceful afternoon is about to come to an end?"
"Probably," Bill sighed. "But that's what we're here for."
Mike looked around at the assembled group. "I don't suppose you folks would be interested in a little cooperative assault on an interdimensional fascist stronghold?"
"Does a bear shit in the woods?" Scout asked rhetorically.
"That's... yes, actually," Ellis said helpfully. "Bears do indeed defecate in wooded areas. It's a well-documented fact."
"It was a rhetorical question, Ellis."
"Oh. Right."
"Vait," Medic said, examining the three newcomers with professional interest. "You said you escaped from zis outpost. Are you injured? Do you need medical attention? I have many interesting medical procedures I could demonstrate!"
All three Resistance members took a step back.
"We're fine," Rodriguez said quickly. "Thanks anyway."
"Your loss," Medic shrugged. "Ze Combine interrogation techniques are quite primitive compared to my methods."
"That's... reassuring?" Chen said uncertainly.
"Don't worry about him," Engineer said. "He's mostly harmless. Emphasis on 'mostly.'"
"So what's the situation at this opera house?" Hayes asked, shifting into tactical mode. "Guard strength, defensive positions, entry points?"
"Professional," Mike said approvingly. "I like that. Okay, here's what we know..."
As the Resistance members began briefing the group on the Combine outpost, the peaceful atmosphere of the plaza gradually shifted back into pre-combat tension. Weapons were checked, gear was adjusted, and the brief respite from violence came to its inevitable end.
"You know," the Postal Dude said, lighting a cigarette, "I was actually starting to enjoy the whole 'not getting shot at' thing."
"It was nice while it lasted," Sniper agreed, checking his rifle's scope. "But this is what we do."
"What we do best, anyway," Soldier added, already looking eager for combat. "Democracy and freedom aren't going to spread themselves!"
"Technically, we're trying to rescue video game developers," Scout pointed out.
"Same thing!" Soldier declared with absolute conviction.
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro agreed enthusiastically, though they seemed almost sad to leave the mechanical fish behind.
"Right then," Bill said, shouldering his rifle. "Looks like we're going to war again."
"Again?" Mike asked.
"This is like the fourth interdimensional military operation this week," the Traveler explained. "You get used to it."
"That's... probably not healthy," Chen observed.
"Nothing about this situation is healthy," Francis replied. "But it beats being bored."
"Well," Rodriguez said, checking his ammunition, "at least we've got more firepower now. Kleiner's going to flip when he hears about this."
"In a good way or a bad way?" Ellis asked.
"With Dr. Kleiner, it's usually both."
Yae Miko stood up and dusted off her shrine maiden outfit. "Well, I suppose if we're assaulting an opera house, we should at least try to do it with some style."
"Style?" Heavy asked, looking puzzled. "Heavy does not understand. Heavy shoots things until they stop moving. Is very simple."
"Sometimes simple is best," Mike agreed. "Though I gotta say, this is the weirdest rescue mission I've ever been on."
"You haven't seen weird yet," the Postal Dude grinned. "Wait until you see what these maniacs consider 'tactical planning.'"
"What's wrong with our tactical planning?" Demoman asked, sounding offended.
"We don't have tactical planning," Engineer pointed out. "We have tactical improvisation."
"What's the difference?"
"Planning happens before the shooting starts. Improvisation happens during."
"Ah. That explains a lot."
As the group began to organize itself for another assault on another Combine outpost, the peaceful plaza of Fontaine slowly emptied of armed psychopaths and confused Resistance members.
"You know," the Traveler said to Yae Miko as they prepared to leave, "this is exactly the kind of thing that usually interrupts important personal moments."
"At least this time we have our clothes on," Yae Miko replied dryly.
"Silver linings, I suppose."
"So," Mike said, watching the group prepare for what was clearly going to be another spectacular display of organized chaos, "how exactly do you people usually handle these kinds of operations?"
"Very loudly," Scout replied.
"And with lots of explosions," Demoman added.
"Don't forget the fire," Ellis contributed. "There's always fire."
"Hmmmph hmmph hmmph!" Pyro agreed excitedly.
"God help us all," Mike muttered.
"God's got nothing to do with this," the Postal Dude said cheerfully. "We're flying solo on this one."
Chapter 8: An Opera of Violence (and Questionable Interior Decorating)
Chapter Text
"Alright, so let me get this straight," Scout said, peering from behind a ridiculously ornate fountain at the Combine-infested opera house. "The plan is we go in the front door and turn every single one of those armored dickheads into a fine red mist?"
"That's not the plan," Engineer sighed, polishing his wrench. "That's the outcome. The plan is the series of tactical decisions we make to achieve that outcome."
"My tactical decision is to put my foot so far up their asses they'll be tasting my shoelaces!" Soldier declared, slapping a rocket into his launcher with patriotic fervor.
"See? He gets it," Scout grinned.
The Postal Dude took a long drag from his cigarette, the smoke curling up into the pristine Fontaine air. "My plan involves introducing their kneecaps to the concept of reverse articulation. It's a real crowd-pleaser."
Bill, Hayes, and Mike exchanged a look that screamed, what in the ever-loving hell have we gotten ourselves into?
"Okay," Mike said, trying to inject some professionalism into the impending clusterfuck. "Resistance protocol suggests a stealth approach. We find a side entrance, neutralize the sentries, and—"
He was cut off by the sound of Heavy revving Sasha, the minigun's barrels spinning with a low growl that promised imminent, large-scale death. "ENOUGH TALK. IT IS TIME TO KILL TINY METAL MEN!"
With that, Heavy lumbered out from behind cover and opened fire. The elegant marble facade of the Palais Mermonia erupted in a hailstorm of bullets, turning several Combine guards into little more than twitching piles of gore and shredded metal.
"Welp, so much for stealth," the Postal Dude said cheerfully, pulling out his shovel. "Let's go redecorate."
What followed was not so much a tactical assault as it was a force of nature. Demoman's grenades blew the grand oak doors off their hinges, sending splinters the size of javelins careening through the opulent lobby. He followed his explosives in with a drunken war cry, his bottle held high. "FRESH MEAT FOR THE GRINDER!"
The inside of the opera house was a masterpiece of gilded architecture, with red velvet curtains, crystal chandeliers, and a sweeping grand staircase. Within thirty seconds, it looked like Jackson Pollock's abattoir.
"HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THIS PLACE!" Scout yelled, vaulting over a velvet rope and caving in a Combine soldier's helmet with his bat. Brain matter and skull fragments spattered across a priceless tapestry. "This is way nicer than any of the shitholes we usually fight in!"
Pyro, naturally, was already attempting to remedy that, their flamethrower painting the velvet curtains in brilliant strokes of orange and black. The alarm began to shriek, a pathetic counterpoint to the symphony of gunfire and screaming. "Hmmmph hmmph hudda hmph!" they cheered.
The battle flowed into the main auditorium. Sniper had found his way up to one of the VIP boxes and was clinically popping heads, each shot echoing through the cavernous space. "One's a goner. Two's a goner. Ooh, that one's gonna need a closed casket. Goner."
Meanwhile, on the main stage, Soldier was rocket-jumping off the orchestra pit, raining down explosive justice on a squad of Combine Elites. "HAVE A TASTE OF FREEDOM, YOU INTERDIMENSIONAL COMMIES!" he roared, landing in a three-point-pose amidst the carnage. "DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNISM!"
The zombie survivors and NCR troopers had formed a solid firing line near the entrance, laying down disciplined bursts of fire while the mercenaries created absolute pandemonium. "I... I've never seen anything like it," Chen muttered, reloading his SMG. "It's like they're not even human. They're just... weaponized chaos." "Keeps the bastards off us," Francis grunted, blasting a Combine that got too close. "Can't complain about that."
The Traveler and Yae Miko were a whirlwind of elemental energy near stage left. Anemo-infused slashes sent Combine soldiers flying into the air, where Miko’s lightning struck them down like divine judgment. "This is," the Traveler panted, dodging a pulse blast, "considerably more stressful than fighting Abyss Mages!"
Amidst the chaos, they heard a muffled voice from a backstage dressing room that had been barricaded shut. "Do not worry, citizens! I, Colonel Odessa Cubbage, have the situation well in hand! My brilliant tactical mind is already formulating a plan for our glorious victory!"
The Postal Dude kicked the door open. Inside, a pompous-looking man in a clean, but clearly outdated, uniform was standing on a vanity table, striking a pose for a small group of terrified-looking stagehands. "Ah, reinforcements!" Cubbage declared, not missing a beat. "Excellent! Your commanding officer has arrived! Report!"
The Postal Dude just stared at him, then at the terrified civilians. "Are you with him?" he asked a trembling woman. She shook her head frantically. "Good. You're rescued," he said, before turning back to Cubbage. "You, shut the fuck up before I use your face to tune that piano."
The last of the Combine soldiers fell to a final, deafening volley of fire from Heavy's minigun. The silence that followed was broken only by the crackle of flames and the groaning of stressed architecture. The opulent opera house was a ruin. Bodies and shell casings littered the floor, and a chandelier had crashed onto the first ten rows of seats.
"Well," Bill said, surveying the absolute devastation. "That was... thorough."
Mike and Hayes were already thinking strategically. "This place is a fortress," Hayes noted, kicking a Combine pulse rifle. "Thick walls, good sightlines, defensible entrances..."
"And now it's ours," Mike finished, a grin spreading across his face. "This is perfect. We can make this a temporary Resistance base. A foothold in this dimension."
"A brilliant strategic assessment!" Colonel Cubbage announced, striding out from the dressing room as if he'd led the charge himself. "Just as I planned! From this day forward, the Palais Mermonia shall be known as... The Cubbage Forward Operating Base! I will, of course, be taking command."
Heavy stopped polishing Sasha and turned his head slowly, a single eyebrow raised. The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees.
"You," Heavy rumbled, his voice dangerously low, "are annoying little man. Heavy will feed you to Sasha if you do not stop talking."
Cubbage paled but puffed out his chest. "I am a Colonel in the glorious Resistance! I will not be threatened by a brute!"
"Wanna bet?" the Postal Dude asked, idly swinging his shovel.
The moment was broken by Engineer, who had set up a dispenser and a sentry gun on the stage. "Alright, y'all," he called out, "outpost is secure. Got a nice defensible position here, and I'm already patching into their communications array. Let's see what these Combine fellas were up to..."
Chapter 9: Of Burnt Bridges and Hidden Doors
Chapter Text
The grand auditorium of the Palais Mermonia was a smoldering wreck, smelling of ozone, cordite, and cooked meat. The crystal chandelier lay in a million shattered pieces across the velvet seats. The battle was over, but the air was thick with tension.
"A masterful victory!" Colonel Cubbage declared, striking a heroic pose on the stage, somehow managing to ignore the gore splattered on his boots. "Executed according to my precise tactical specifications! This position is secured!"
"Tell him to shut his goddamn mouth before I do it for him," Francis muttered to Bill, cleaning his shotgun.
On stage, Engineer was frantically working at the captured Combine console, the alien machine humming in protest as he rerouted its systems. "I can't find 'em," he grunted in frustration. "Not Gaben, not Freeman. I can see mentions of high-security locations like 'Citadel Primus,' but there are no direct manifests, no prisoner locations. It's like they scrubbed the data from any low-level network."
Spy, who had been observing from the shadows, glided over to the console. "You are looking for a payslip in a king's vault, Engineer. They would not keep such valuable information on a provincial server." He tapped a long finger on the screen. "Look for ze roads, not ze destinations. Search for network architecture, infrastructure... a map of their system."
Engineer paused, then nodded slowly. "Yeah... yeah, that makes sense." He turned to Yae Miko, who was standing at a distance with the Traveler, both looking upon the scene of carnage with unconcealed disgust. "Ma'am? I need your... uh... magic touch again. On the infrastructure files this time. They're locked up tight."
Yae Miko let out a long, weary sigh. "Very well," she said, her voice cold. "Let us finish this farce." She approached the console, placing a hand on its surface. The violet energy that flowed from her fingers was less gentle this time, more forceful, cracking through the Combine encryption like a bolt of lightning.
The screen flickered, and a new map appeared. It wasn't a prisoner list. It was a topographical map of Teyvat, focused on the towering, misty mountains of Liyue. And hidden deep within a remote mountain range was a massive, pulsing energy signature disguised to look like ancient ruins.
"There it is," Engineer breathed. "A Nexus Relay. It's their primary portal hub for this entire dimension. All their traffic, all their supplies, all their data... it's all being routed through that single point."
"So if we take that place," Mike said, his eyes gleaming with tactical understanding, "we don't just get a ride, we cut the head off the snake for this whole world."
"And gain access to their entire, unencrypted network," Spy finished, a rare, thin smile gracing his lips. "Every secret, every location... would be ours for the taking."
The path forward was clear. But as the group began to buzz with renewed purpose, the Traveler stepped forward, their expression hard.
"This is where our paths diverge," he stated, his voice ringing with finality.
Yae Miko stepped back from the console, her face a mask of contempt. "We agreed to help you fight an invading force," she said, her tone cutting. "We did not agree to partake in this... this orgy of mindless brutality. You do not fight with strategy or honor. You are a force of nature, a plague of violence that leaves nothing but ruin in its wake. We will not be a party to it any longer."
"What? You're ditchin' us?!" Scout shouted, looking genuinely offended. "After we did all the work?"
"We are preserving what little of our homeland you have not yet desecrated," the Traveler countered sharply. They then took a deep breath, calming themselves. "However, your “Combine Relay” is a cancer in our world. It cannot be allowed to remain. A promise is a promise, and we will see it through to its end."
They looked at the assembled group, their gaze lingering on the mercenaries. "We will guide you to Liyue. We will show you the location of this hidden base. But once you arrive... our part in this affair is over. We will leave you to your butchery."
"Fine! We don't need a babysitter!" Soldier declared. "The might of American firepower is all the tour guide we need!"
A tense silence fell over the group. An alliance of convenience was now just that, its end clearly in sight.
"Alright then," Bill said, breaking the quiet. "Looks like we're taking a road trip."
Chapter 10: Scenic Route to Sanity’s end
Chapter Text
The journey from Fontaine to Liyue, according to the Traveler, should have been a relatively straightforward, if lengthy, trek eastward. It was a journey of majestic plains, winding rivers, and eventually, the breathtaking stone forests that marked the border. It was a path of beauty and tranquility.
Naturally, Soldier decided he knew better.
“East is for European socialists and communists who can’t make up their minds!” he declared on the second morning of their trip, planting a shovel into the ground like he was claiming the land for America. “A real patriot knows that the fastest way between two points is a straight line of pure, unadulterated freedom! I have consulted my internal American-made GPS, and it has informed me of a tactical shortcut!”
The Traveler, who was pointing at a very clear road sign that said ‘LIYUE, THIS WAY,’ buried their face in their hands. “There is a road. A literal, paved road. We just have to follow it.”
“Roads are tools of the oppressors!” Soldier roared, puffing out his chest. “They tell you where to go! They limit your liberty! We will blaze our own trail, a trail of glory and honor, through that spooky-looking cave over there!” He pointed a thumb towards a gaping cavern that was not on any map and seemed to be whispering threats in a language that sounded vaguely like angry static.
Yae Miko looked from the sunny, pleasant road to the ominous, doom-filled cave. “You cannot be serious,” she said, her voice flat. “That cave looks like the kind of place where happiness goes to die.”
“Nonsense, foxy lady!” Soldier boomed. “That is the sweet cave of liberty! And it smells like… victory. And bats.”
“I’m with helmet man,” the Postal Dude chimed in, lighting a cigarette. “Roads are boring. Caves have mystery. And usually, things to kill.”
Against every sane person’s better judgment, and primarily because the rest of the mercenaries thought it sounded more fun, the group abandoned the perfectly good road and plunged into the darkness of Soldier’s “shortcut.”
The cave did not, in fact, lead to Liyue. For the first hour, it was a normal, albeit damp, cave system. Then things started to get weird. The stone walls began to ripple as if they were breathing. The path twisted back on itself at impossible angles. At one point, they found themselves walking on the ceiling, a fact only discovered when Demoman drunkenly dropped his bottle and watched it fall up.
“This is some high-grade, top-shelf bullshit right here,” Scout muttered, trying to keep his balance as gravity seemed to flicker on and off like a faulty lightbulb.
“Fascinating!” Medic exclaimed, licking a wall that was glowing with shifting, iridescent colors. “Ze geological composition of zis dimension is a scientific miracle! It tastes like… regret and blueberries!”
They emerged from the cave not into the mountains of Liyue, but onto a vast, checkerboard plain where the sky was a swirling vortex of green and purple. The ground was dotted with trees that grew in perfect spirals and wept a sap that smelled suspiciously like gasoline.
“See?” Soldier announced proudly. “Scenery! Much more patriotic than some boring old rocks!”
“Where in the goddamn hell are we?” Hayes asked, his NCR training providing absolutely no frame of reference for a landscape designed by a mathematician on acid.
“I… I don’t know,” the Traveler admitted, looking at their map, which had spontaneously caught fire in their hands. “This place… shouldn’t exist. It’s not on any chart. It’s like we’ve walked off the edge of reality itself.”
“I hate reality,” Francis grunted from his corner. “So this is an improvement.”
Their journey across the impossible plains lasted for what felt like three days. They navigated a forest of giant, sentient mushrooms that communicated only in riddles about tax law. They forded a river of what appeared to be lukewarm, non-branded cola. They were chased for six miles by a flock of birds with the heads of angry, middle-aged men who yelled at them about property values.
Pyro was having the time of their life, joyfully setting fire to a field of flowers that screamed in perfect harmony when burned. Heavy, meanwhile, had gotten into a fistfight with a boulder that he claimed was “looking at him funny.” He won.
The Postal Dude found a payphone in the middle of the geometric wasteland, picked it up, and had a full ten-minute conversation with someone he would only identify as “The Voices.” He hung up looking satisfied. “They say we’re going the right way,” he announced.
Finally, after following a path made of discarded VCRs, they came upon a gargantuan, hollowed-out tree stump, at least a mile in diameter. Inside, a spiraling staircase descended into the earth.
“My American instincts tell me our destiny lies down these stairs of freedom!” Soldier declared.
“At this point, I don’t even care anymore,” Bill sighed, the exhaustion of constant absurdity having worn him down to a nub. “Lead the way.”
They descended for what felt like an eternity, the air growing warm and humid. The staircase ended abruptly, spitting them out through a shimmering, waterfall-like curtain of energy. They stumbled out, blinking, into a dense, humid jungle teeming with life. Towering trees formed a canopy high above, and the air was filled with the chirping of insects and the calls of exotic birds.
The Traveler stared, their jaw agape. Yae Miko’s eyes were wide with disbelief.
“It cannot be,” she whispered.
“Sumeru,” the Traveler breathed, a wave of profound relief washing over them. “Somehow, through all that madness… we’ve ended up in Sumeru. We’re… we’re actually back on the map.”
It was, by any measure, a miracle of navigation so profound it bordered on divine intervention. Soldier had, through sheer, dumb luck and a complete disregard for the laws of physics and geography, managed to cut across a non-existent spatial anomaly and land them almost exactly where they would have been if they had just followed the road.
As the group tried to get their bearings amidst the giant ferns and luminous fungi, they heard a voice cut through the jungle air. It was a voice dripping with the kind of weary frustration that only a lifetime of dealing with bureaucratic nonsense and catastrophic failures could produce.
“No, no, no, you see this keycard? It’s a level three security pass! That means I should have access to the damn supply closet! I don’t care if it’s a thousand-year-old ruin, protocol is protocol!”
The group pushed through a thicket of glowing flora and found the source of the voice. A man in a slightly-too-small Black Mesa security vest was standing in front of a large, sealed stone door, waving a keycard at it uselessly. He had a crowbar tucked into his belt and the exasperated expression of a man who had been sent to fix a paper jam and ended up in another dimension.
“Oh, for the love of— the damn thing doesn't even have a card reader,” the man muttered to himself. “Eli owes me so much hazard pay for this. He said, ‘Barney, go check on Cubbage.’ He said, ‘It’ll be an easy in-and-out recon mission.’” He kicked the stone door. “Dammit!”
Mike, Rodriguez, and Chen from the Resistance froze. “Barney?” Mike called out, his voice filled with disbelief.
The security guard spun around, his hand immediately going for his pistol before he registered the familiar faces. “Mike? Chen? What the hell are you guys doing here? And who are all the… uh…” His eyes scanned the motley crew of mercs, survivors, and Postal Dude. “...circus performers?”
“Circus performers?!” Scout yelled, indignant. “Buddy, I’ll have you know we’re a highly-trained team of elite mercenaries!”
“You’re wearing a baseball cap and your pants are covered in what I sincerely hope is alien blood,” Barney retorted without missing a beat.
“Barney Calhoun,” Colonel Cubbage announced, striding forward importantly. “It is I, Colonel Odessa Cubbage! I was wondering when my backup would arrive! Your tardiness is noted, but your presence is welcome! Report!”
Barney stared at him. A long, painful silence stretched out. “You,” Barney said, his voice dangerously calm. “You’re Cubbage. Eli sent me halfway across the multiverse because your reports sounded like they were written by a child on a sugar high who had just learned what a thesaurus was. He was right.” He turned back to Mike. “I take it you guys got suckered into this mess, too?”
“It’s a long story,” Mike sighed.
“It seems we are all victims of poor choices,” Barney replied, rubbing his temples. “My mission was to find this clown, verify his claims—which are clearly horseshit—and investigate a possible Combine nexus point he mentioned in his ‘highly-detailed’ report. The directions he gave me led me to a swamp that tried to eat my boots.”
“My directions were tactically brilliant!” Cubbage sputtered.
“They were a crayon drawing of a sad face next to a big rock,” Barney shot back. “I’ve been lost in this jungle for three days living off weird-tasting fruit and arguing with the local wildlife.”
Heavy stepped forward, a look of respect on his face. He pointed a meaty finger at the crowbar on Barney’s belt. “You,” he rumbled. “You fight robots with metal stick?”
Barney blinked. “Uh, yeah. Sometimes. When I’m out of ammo.”
Heavy’s face split into a wide grin. “Hah! Heavy likes you! You are good man. Strong! Like Russian bear! We will call you… Crowbar-Man!”
“Please don’t,” Barney begged.
The Postal Dude sauntered up, holding his own shovel. He gave Barney’s crowbar an appreciative look. “A man of culture, I see,” he said. “Simple, reliable, multipurpose. Good for opening doors, good for opening heads. We should compare notes.”
Barney looked from the eight-foot-tall Russian giant to the trench-coated psychopath and then back to the rest of the gun-toting maniacs. “So, let me get this straight,” he said slowly, pointing at each member in turn. “We have… a pyromaniac in a rubber suit, a screaming child with a baseball bat, a one-eyed Scottish demolitionist who is dangerously drunk, a homicidal doctor, a patriotic idiot with a rocket launcher, a giant Russian man who wants to be my friend, a professional killer from Australia, a sneaky French bastard, a Texas mechanic who seems suspiciously normal, a hobo who is definitely a serial killer, a biker, a folksy storyteller, a grumpy old soldier, some actual soldiers from the post-apocalypse, and a couple of local guides from an anime game who look like they want to cry.” He took a deep breath. “And you’re all working together to find a Combine base?”
“That’s the gist of it,” Engineer nodded.
Barney was silent for a long moment. He looked at the sealed door. He looked at the jungle. He looked at the absolute menagerie of madness standing before him. He sighed the sigh of a man who had accepted that his life was no longer his own.
“You know what?” he said, pulling the crowbar from his belt. “Fine. Whatever. It’s still better than filling out incident reports back at Black Mesa East.” He turned to the group. “Alright, you freaks. My mission is your mission. Where’s this nexus point? And please, for the love of God, tell me someone else has the map this time.”
The Traveler, who had just managed to extinguish their flaming map, looked up wearily. “We do. And our journey, it seems, is far from over.” They looked at Yae Miko, who simply closed her eyes, praying to gods that had clearly abandoned her. Their quick, clean break from the mercenary lunatics had just been delayed indefinitely.
Chapter 11: Reasonable loredump in an unreasonable mayhem
Summary:
Piss take on gacha game exposition
Chapter Text
The jungle of Sumeru, Barney Calhoun quickly learned, was not like the swamps of Earth. The swamps of Earth did not have flowers that sang insulting limericks when you walked past, nor did they have trees whose bark would attempt to sell you highly suspect timeshare opportunities. He had just spent ten minutes being harangued by a particularly aggressive ficus about the benefits of owning a two-bedroom condo in a dimension made entirely of pudding.
His reunion with his Resistance comrades had been less of a relief and more of a confirmation that he was now neck-deep in the single most dysfunctional military operation in the history of the multiverse. The current source of chaos was a creature that looked like a pineapple had mated with a woodchipper and then been given a very bad attitude. It was large, leafy, and trying to eat Demoman.
“Get it off me, ya leafy bastard!” the Scot roared, attempting to hit the creature with his empty bottle while it gnawed happily on his peg leg. “This is high-quality oak! Have some respect!”
“I recommend a strategic advance to the rear!” Colonel Cubbage announced from a safe position up a tree. “It is a brilliant tactic I have just invented!”
Soldier’s solution was, as always, direct. “THAT PLANT IS AN UNREGISTERED FOREIGN AGGRESSOR! TASTE DEMOCRACY!” He fired a rocket, which missed the plant-monster by a good twenty feet and instead slammed into a grove of enormous, pulsating mushrooms. The mushrooms exploded in a chain reaction, releasing clouds of iridescent spores that caused everyone to hallucinate for the next five minutes.
Barney found himself having a heated debate with his own crowbar about union regulations, while Scout was trying to teach a six-legged tiger how to do the Charleston. It was, Barney thought, a pretty standard Monday for this outfit.
When the spores finally wore off, the pineapple-monster had been scared away and Demoman was retrieving his slightly chewed leg. It was during the ensuing lull that Barney, along with Mike, Bill, and Hayes, managed to corner the Traveler and Yae Miko near a babbling brook that seemed to be complaining about the quality of the local fish.
“Okay,” Barney began, keeping his voice low as he watched Pyro attempt to communicate with a group of monkeys using only a flare gun. “You two. The magic fox lady and the anime protagonist. We need to talk.”
The Traveler and Yae Miko tensed, looking like cornered animals. “If this is about the destruction of that… mushroom ecosystem,” Yae Miko said stiffly, “I can assure you we had nothing to do with it.”
“This isn’t about that,” Rodriguez grunted, leaning against a tree. “This is about the fact that you two look like you’re about five minutes away from having a complete nervous breakdown. And frankly, we don’t blame you.”
The Traveler’s guarded expression softened into one of pure, undiluted exhaustion. “We are guides,” they said, their voice weary. “We are used to dealing with treasure hoarders, ancient curses, and the occasional grumpy deity. We are not equipped to handle… whatever this is. Their solution to every problem is unrestrained violence. Their idea of a shortcut was to walk through a tear in reality. The one in the helmet tried to declare war on a waterfall because he said it was ‘staring at him aggressively.’”
“He called it a ‘cascading tyrant,’” Yae Miko added, massaging her temples. “He claimed it was a threat to liberty.”
Barney nodded sympathetically. “Look, we get it. Mike, Hayes, Bill, me… we’re soldiers. We’re used to chaos. But this,” he gestured to where Heavy was attempting to arm-wrestle a giant tortoise, “is a different flavor of insanity. We just wanted you to know that we’re on your side. We’re just as stuck in this clown car as you are.”
A wave of relief washed over the Traveler’s face. “You mean… you don’t approve of their methods either?”
“Approve?” Hayes scoffed. “I’m a professional soldier from a military that values discipline and chain of command. These guys operate on cartoon physics and pure, weaponized idiocy. They’re a tactical nightmare. But,” he admitted, “they get results. Ugly, messy, property-damage-intensive results.”
This newfound camaraderie seemed to open a door. Yae Miko, seeing a chance to speak with the saner elements of the group, finally asked the question that had been plaguing her. “I must confess, I still do not understand the core of this conflict. You speak of this ‘Combine’ as a universe-spanning empire. Why would such a power go to such absurd lengths—kidnapping artisans from a specific company, seeking to halt the creation of a single piece of entertainment? It seems so… trivial. So beneath them.”
Barney and Mike exchanged a look. It was the look of men who possessed a truth so strange it was hard to believe themselves.
“Because they’re desperate,” Mike said quietly. “All the stories, all the legends you hear about the Combine, they’re about an unstoppable force, an overwhelming power. That was true, for a while. But it’s not anymore. We’re pushing them back.”
Barney took over, his voice low and serious. “People are fighting them, on a dozen worlds. Pockets of resistance, full-blown rebellions… The empire is spread too thin, fighting too many fires. My boss, Eli Vance, he thinks they’re on the verge of collapsing under their own weight. This whole thing… it’s not a power play. It’s a Hail Mary.”
The Traveler looked confused. “A ‘Hail Mary’?”
“A last-ditch, desperation move,” Bill clarified. “When you’re about to lose, you throw everything you have at one insane, long-shot plan and pray to God it works.”
“But how does stopping a… a ‘video game’ help them win a war?” Yae Miko pressed.
“Their top thinkers, the Advisors… they don’t think like we do,” Barney explained, leaning in. “They see reality itself as a story. A narrative. They believe that certain individuals, certain events, are ‘anchors’ that hold a particular timeline together. Gordon Freeman… he’s one of those anchors. A constant. And they believe his story, his narrative, originates from one place: Valve Corporation.”
Mike picked up the thread. “Their logic is that if you seize the storytellers and prevent the story from continuing—if you stop Half-Life 3 from ever being made—you create a paradox. The narrative anchor, Freeman, becomes unstable. His story unravels. Maybe his past victories get undone. Maybe his crowbar turns into a pool noodle. They don’t know for sure. They’re trying to weaponize writer’s block on a cosmic scale, hoping it will erase their biggest problem.”
A profound silence fell over the small group. The sheer, galaxy-brained insanity of the plan was staggering.
“That,” the Traveler said, their voice barely a whisper, “is the most ludicrous, convoluted, and terrifying piece of military strategy I have ever heard in all my travels.”
“And the blue-colored versions of these men went along with it?” Yae Miko asked.
“The BLU team?” Barney shrugged. “Their goal is just to make their weird gravel-war game the most popular thing in the universe. A reality-breaking paradox that might erase their main competition sounded like a great idea to them.”
From across the clearing, the Postal Dude, who had been listening in while drawing a smiley face on a large, carnivorous-looking plant, called out, “Sounds like my kind of plan! Complicated, stupid, and causes maximum chaos. I respect it.”
Just as this revelation was sinking in, the group finally broke through the jungle, stumbling into the outskirts of Sumeru City. It was a magnificent sight, a city built into and around a colossal, divine tree, with bridges and walkways connecting districts filled with scholars and merchants.
“We will pass through the city,” the Traveler announced, their composure somewhat restored. “It is the quickest way to the road to Liyue. We must be discreet. This is a city of learning and order. Please, I beg all of you, try not to… break anything.”
The plea was, of course, a complete waste of breath.
Their attempt to quietly traverse Sumeru City lasted approximately twelve minutes. It started when Demoman, spotting a tavern, declared it to be a BLU team intelligence outpost and tried to “interrogate” the bartender by challenging him to a drinking contest he could not possibly win. It escalated when Scout attempted to sell BONK! Atomic Punch to a group of Akademiya students, claiming it was a “smart drink” that would help them ace their exams. One student took a sip, vibrated for thirty seconds, and then ran headfirst through a wall, screaming about the secrets of the universe.
The situation reached its apex when Heavy got into a dispute with an Eremite mercenary over who was next in line at a food stall. The dispute was settled via an arm-wrestling match that shattered three tables, a nearby retaining wall, and the Eremite’s entire sense of self-worth. The city’s guards, the Corps of Thirty, were called, but upon seeing the heavily armed, gibberish-screaming mob, they wisely decided it was a problem for a higher authority and began roping off the entire city district.
Finally, the Traveler and a mortified Yae Miko managed to shepherd the chaotic herd out of the city through a little-used trade route, leaving a trail of destruction, confusion, and several newly-enlightened academics in their wake. They now stood on a high plateau, looking east. The lush green of Sumeru gave way to the towering, golden-hued stone spires of Liyue.
“There,” the Traveler said, pointing a trembling finger towards a distant mountain range perpetually shrouded in a thunderstorm. “Your “Combine Nexus Relay” is there. That is your destination.” They looked at Yae Miko, a shared, unspoken understanding passing between them. Their duty as guides was almost over. They just had to survive one last leg of the journey with some of the most destructive force their world had ever known.
Chapter 12: Liyue, Liberty and Liberal Violence
Chapter Text
The final leg of the journey from Sumeru to Liyue was, by a staggering contrast to everything that had come before it, peaceful. This was achieved through a single, brilliant tactical maneuver agreed upon by every semi-rational member of the group: Soldier was not allowed to speak, point, or consult his ‘internal patriotism-fueled compass.’ He was, for the duration of the trek, seated firmly on Heavy’s left shoulder, a gag made from one of his own spare American flags tied securely over his mouth. His muffled complaints about this egregious act of tyranny were mostly ignored, though Pyro would occasionally pat his helmet in what might have been a comforting gesture.
With Barney, Bill, and the Traveler navigating via an actual, physical map, their progress was shockingly efficient. They skirted the edge of the Chasm, marched through the stunning beauty of the Guili Plains, and were only sidetracked twice: once when Scout attempted to race a Geovishap Hatchling down a hill (he lost), and once when the Postal Dude spent a solid hour trying to convince a group of terrified Millelith guards to sign his petition to “make whining a capital offense.”
Finally, they arrived. Before them, the Tianqiu Valley stretched out, a landscape of majestic, karst-like mountains that pierced the sky. But one particular mountain range stood apart, perpetually shrouded in a roiling, unnatural thunderstorm that crackled with malevolent energy. Even from miles away, they could feel a low, oppressive hum vibrating through the soles of their boots. The Combine Nexus Relay.
The Traveler stopped, lowering their map. They turned to the assembled horde of psychopaths, soldiers, and survivors, their expression a mixture of profound relief and deep-seated trauma. Yae Miko stood beside them, fanning herself languidly, though her eyes betrayed the same sense of a great burden finally being lifted.
“This,” the Traveler announced, their voice echoing slightly in the vast open space, “is as far as we go.”
“Our agreement was to guide you to the location of this… anomaly,” Yae Miko added, her voice crisp and final. She snapped her fan shut. “Our obligation is fulfilled. We have led the rabid wolves to the den of the vipers. What happens next is, thankfully, no longer our concern.”
Barney Calhoun stepped forward, extending a hand to the Traveler. “Hey. Thanks. For everything. I know this wasn’t… easy.”
The Traveler looked at his hand, then at the chaos unfolding behind him—where Demoman was trying to teach Francis how to do a trick shot by bouncing a grenade off a rock—and actually shook it. “Surviving this was, in its own way, an education. I wish you luck, Barney Calhoun. You will need it more than anyone I have ever met.”
“Tell me about it,” Barney sighed.
“Farewell, gentlemen,” Yae Miko said, giving a curt nod to Bill and Hayes. “May you find whatever it is you are looking for. And may you find it far, far away from us.” With that, she and the Traveler turned, and without a backwards glance, began walking towards the distant silhouette of Liyue Harbor. There were old friends to see, copious amounts of tea to be drunk, and decades of therapy to be scheduled.
A moment of almost-respectful silence hung in the air as they departed.
It was immediately shattered by Soldier, who had finally chewed through his gag. “THOSE COWARDLY, ANIME-FACED TRAITORS ARE DESERTING THEIR POST! THAT IS A VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 37 OF THE PATRIOT ACT!”
“That’s not a real thing,” Hayes muttered.
“It is now! I just wrote it!”
With their guides gone, the full, undivided attention of the group fell upon the ominous, storm-wracked mountain. Mike and Barney immediately went into tactical mode, unrolling a crude map onto a flat rock.
“Okay, so, best guess, the main entrance will be heavily fortified,” Mike began. “I’m thinking a three-pronged approach. Team Alpha creates a diversion at the south entrance, while Bravo and Charlie…”
“NO NEEDED!” Heavy bellowed, cutting him off. He revved Sasha, the barrels spinning to life with a sound like a nest of very angry, very large hornets. “THE PLAN IS SASHA! WE GO NOW!”
“I like his plan!” Scout cheered, pulling his scattergun. “Less thinking, more skull-cracking!”
The Postal Dude cracked his neck. “My trigger finger’s getting itchy. All this fresh air and lack of screaming is starting to chap my ass.”
The sane members of the party watched in horror as any semblance of strategy evaporated in an instant. The plan, as it were, was decided non-verbally. The plan was a stampede.
They charged.
The disguised temple entrance was obliterated in the first volley. Heavy’s bullets didn’t just kill the guards, they turned them into a fine red slurry that sprayed across the ancient stone. One Combine soldier was caught mid-stride and simply ceased to exist from the chest up, his legs continuing to run for three paces before collapsing in a heap.
Demoman’s first grenade landed in the middle of a responding squad, the resulting explosion a wet, chunky detonation that sent a shower of intestines, spinal columns, and miscellaneous giblets raining down on the battlefield. “Hah! It’s rainin’ men!” he cackled, “What’s left of ‘em, anyway!”
They stormed into the facility, and the pristine white corridors became a canvas for their unique brand of artistry. Scout swung his bat into a Combine Elite’s face with a sickening CRUNCH, caving in the soldier’s helmet and skull, the resulting cavity a gruesome bowl filled with brain matter and shattered bone. “Fore!” he yelled, as the headless corpse slumped to the ground.
The Postal Dude, whistling a jaunty tune, cornered a skittering Stalker in a maintenance bay. He jammed his shovel under its metallic leg, and with a grunt of effort, pried the limb clean off. As the machine flailed and sparked, he began methodically removing its other appendages, humming to himself. “And the leg bone’s connected to the… oh wait, it’s not anymore,” he chirped, as the limbless, sparking torso twitched pathetically on the floor.
Deeper they pushed, the facility’s defenders discovering a new dimension of terror. Pyro had found that the Combine armor, when superheated, would fuse to the flesh beneath. They danced through the hallways, leaving a trail of screaming, melting soldiers whose last moments were spent sealed inside their own boiling armor. The smell was indescribable, a thick, greasy stench of cooked plastic, burning hair, and flash-fried organs.
They breached the massive, circular chamber that housed the primary energy core. The room was packed with the Combine’s best. Ordinals, Elites, and dozens upon dozens of soldiers.
“LOOK AT ALL OF THEM!” Soldier screamed with pure, unadulterated joy. He rocket-jumped into the middle of the room, landing directly on top of a Combine barricade. The impact turned the metal fortification and its three occupants into a single, compressed, bloody pancake of scrap and meat. “YOUR FACES HAVE BEEN REDISTRICTED BY THE FORCES OF DEMOCRACY!”
The chamber became a glorious, churning abattoir. Heavy stood like a vengeful god, his laughter booming as Sasha transformed entire squads into nothing more than a fine crimson mist, the sheer volume of fire literally eroding them from existence. Barney and the Resistance fighters laid down methodical covering fire, their professional training a small island of sanity in an ocean of pandemonium. They were taking down Ordinals with focused shots to their power cores while the mercs were… taking down everything, and in some cases, the walls behind everything.
As the last of the Combine defenders in the core chamber was messily bisected by a stray grenade, a triumphant roar went up from the attackers. The room was a smoldering ruin, the energy core pulsing erratically.
“Jackpot!” Engineer yelled, running towards a master control console. “We’ve done it! We can shut this whole network down and…”
His voice was drowned out by a loud, obnoxious, and off-key rendition of “Waltzing Matilda” being screeched from a high platform overlooking the core.
The group looked up. Standing there were two figures in BLU uniforms. One was a Sniper, who was drunkenly swinging from a dangling power conduit by his knees, a bottle of moonshine in one hand. The other was a Pyro, who was attempting to build a small, unstable-looking fort out of severed Combine limbs and helmets.
“Oi! Look what the dog spewed up!” the BLU Sniper yelled, nearly losing his grip. “It’s the RED team! And here I was thinking the smell was just the toilets backing up!” He took a long swig from his bottle. “We let you lot handle the rubbish! Professional courtesy, see? Can’t be bothered with the rank-and-file!”
The BLU Pyro, hearing its teammate’s voice, stopped its construction project, turned, and gave the group a cheerful thumbs-up. It then tripped over a severed leg and tumbled off the platform, landing headfirst in a pile of corpses below with a muffled oomph. It immediately sprang back up, seemingly unharmed, and began enthusiastically setting the corpse pile on fire.
“You!” Scout snarled. “I shoulda known you blue-suited freaks would show up!”
“Freaks?” the BLU Sniper scoffed, finally dropping down to the platform. He staggered for a moment, then steadied himself. “Listen here, you scrawny little git! We’re the A-team! The varsity squad! You lot are the junior league, the bloody benchwarmers!” He kicked a nearby Combine helmet, sending it skittering across the platform. “Look at this mess! Call that a slaughter? It’s amateur hour! Half these bodies are barely even dismembered! My mum could do better, and she’s been dead for twenty years!”
The BLU Pyro waddled over, its flamethrower making happy hissing sounds. It pointed at the RED team, then made a gesture that looked vaguely like it was challenging them all to a fistfight at once.
“He’s right!” the BLU Sniper bellowed, gesturing at his teammate. “You’ve got no passion! No spark! Now, Dr Breen and Mr Blutarch Mann want us to stop you from mucking about with their big glowy ball, so we’re gonna have to kill ya. But at least we’ll do it properly! Like professionals!” He raised his rifle, which hummed with a sickly blue energy. “Now hold still, you bloody drongos! I’m gonna turn your heads into chunky red soup cans!”
Chapter 13: The Unstoppable Force vs. The Unbelievably Stupid
Chapter Text
“Kill ‘em? Properly?” Scout screeched from the floor of the ruined core chamber, his voice cracking with indignant fury. “You couldn’t kill a sandwich, ya kangaroo-humpin’ weirdo!”
The BLU Sniper just chuckled, a low, rumbling sound. “Sticks and stones, ya little rat-faced git. Now, hold still while I turn your spine into a bloody wind chime!” He raised his rifle, the barrel glowing with a sickly blue light, and fired. The shot wasn't a bullet; it was a screaming beam of pure, concentrated malice that tore through the air.
Scout yelped and dove behind a pile of smoldering Combine corpses. The beam hit the wall behind him, not exploding, but simply erasing a perfect five-foot circle of reinforced metal from existence.
“Holy Mary, mother of Joseph!” Scout shrieked, peering over his carrion cover. “What the hell kinda gun is that?!”
“A bloody good one!” the BLU Sniper cackled.
The rest of the sane members of the party had the same thought. “Everyone, open fire! Take them down!” Barney yelled, laying down a burst of pulse rifle fire at the platform. The shots sizzled and dissipated against an invisible energy shield that flickered around the BLU duo.
“Aww, that’s adorable,” the BLU Sniper mocked. “You’re tickling us!”
The BLU Pyro, who had finished its fiery artwork on the corpse pile, waddled forward and unleashed a torrent of blue flame. But it wasn’t normal fire. The flames moved like a liquid, flowing across the floor and climbing up walls, actively avoiding the RED team and instead targeting their cover. The metal barricades they hid behind didn't melt; they dissolved, turning into puddles of shimmering, inert gray goo.
“My sentry!” Engineer screamed in horror as one of the blue fire-tendrils wrapped around his gun, which promptly drooped like a wilted flower and collapsed into a pile of slag. “You monster! That was my favorite gun!”
“Mmph hmph hudda mph!” the BLU Pyro chirped happily.
The RED team was completely pinned down. The BLU Sniper’s rifle erased anything it touched, and the BLU Pyro’s reality-warping flames destroyed any hope of cover. They were being toyed with, dismantled piece by agonizing piece.
“This is bad!” Ellis yelled, frantically reloading. “This is worse than the time Keith tried to deep-fry a hornet’s nest! And that was pretty bad!”
It was then that something shifted. It wasn’t a loud noise or a sudden movement. It was a change in the atmosphere. Amidst the chaos, the gunfire, and the insane cackling from the BLU team, two figures had become unnaturally still.
Heavy stood in the center of the room, Sasha silent at his side. His eyes, usually filled with boisterous rage or simple joy, were narrowed to tiny, analytical points. He was observing the blue flames, the eradicating sniper shots, the taunts. He was not angry. He was calculating. He was… disappointed.
“This…” Heavy rumbled, his voice a low, guttural vibration that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Relay. “…is not how you fight.”
A few feet away, Soldier was on one knee, his rocket launcher held loosely in his hand. He wasn’t looking at the BLU team. He was looking at his hands, at the American flag patch on his shoulder, at the carnage around him. He was not screaming about communism or liberty. He was silent. And in the context of the American flag-wearing, rocket-jumping maniac, that silence was the most terrifying sound in the universe.
“They… they are doing this wrong,” Soldier whispered, his voice raspy with a sudden, terrifying clarity. “They are fighting on land they did not claim… for a cause they do not believe in. They are… un-American.”
The BLU Sniper, sensing a lull, decided to pour salt in the wound. “What’s the matter, you fat oaf? Run out of ammo? Or did your tiny brain finally melt?” he jeered at Heavy. “And you! Look at old bucket-head, having a bloody existential crisis!”
That was the mistake.
Heavy slowly, deliberately, set Sasha down on the floor. He straightened to his full height, which somehow seemed to be about three feet taller than it was a moment before. A faint, crimson aura, like heat haze off asphalt, began to shimmer around his massive frame. “Gun is for babies,” he stated, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Heavy is the only weapon Heavy needs.”
Soldier stood up. His movements were fluid, precise, economical. He let his rocket launcher clatter to the floor. “A patriot does not need a weapon,” he said, his voice now a calm, resonant baritone that commanded attention. “He is the weapon.” An incandescent aura of pure red, white, and blue light erupted around him, twisting and coalescing like a living flag. The air crackled with the smell of gunpowder, apple pie, and freshly signed constitutional amendments.
“What in the goddamn hell…?” Bill muttered from behind a pillar that was slowly turning into soup.
“I don’t know,” Barney replied, his jaw slack. “But I think they’re getting ready to violate several laws of physics.”
Up on the platform, the BLU Sniper’s smug grin faltered. “Uh… what’s this, then? Some sort of light show?”
The BLU Pyro tilted its head, its kazoo falling silent. It could feel it too. The fundamental rules of their stupid, violent universe were being rewritten.
Soldier was the first to move. He did not run. He did not rocket jump. He simply wasn't where he had been, and then he was on the platform, standing directly in front of the BLU Sniper. He moved with a speed that didn’t register to the naked eye, leaving a streaking trail of red, white, and blue in his wake.
“Article 42, Section 3,” Soldier stated calmly. “Freedom of ass-kicking.” He then delivered a single, straight right hand to the BLU Sniper’s jaw. The sound was not a punch. It was a sonic boom. The BLU Sniper’s head snapped back with a crack that echoed through the chamber, and he flew backwards, smashing through the metal wall of the platform and disappearing from sight.
Heavy, in the same instant, moved on the BLU Pyro. He didn’t charge. He took one, single, earth-shattering step that cracked the reinforced floor beneath his boot. He raised his fist, the crimson aura around him intensifying. “You fight like tiny, sad man,” he said, his voice resonating with the weight of a dying star. He punched the BLU Pyro. He didn’t punch at it. He punched the space in front of it, and the sheer percussive force of the blow, the displaced air itself, hit the BLU Pyro like a meteor.
The BLU Pyro was launched into the air, spinning like a top, and slammed into the giant, pulsating energy core of the Relay.
For a moment, all was silent.
Then, from the hole in the wall, the BLU Sniper emerged, his jaw hanging at an unnatural angle which he snapped back into place with a sickening pop. A shimmering blue aura, smelling faintly of stale beer and desperation, now surrounded him. “Right, then!” he snarled, his chipper demeanor gone, replaced by feral rage. “You wanna dance, you bloody monster? LET’S DANCE!”
From the core, the BLU Pyro rose, its rubber suit now glowing with an internal, cold blue fire. The flames that leaked from its flamethrower were no longer goopy, but sharp, crystalline, and cold, freezing the air around them. A low, menacing hum replaced its cheerful toots. It had accepted the challenge.
What followed was not a fight. It was an event. A cataclysm. A force of pure, idiotic patriotism colliding with an object of immovable, drunken spite. A manifestation of joyful, warm chaos versus a being of cold, focused entropy.
Soldier and the BLU Sniper moved in a blur of red-white-and-blue and cheap-booze-blue, their fists creating shockwaves that buckled the metal plates on the walls. The Sniper fired his rifle, not at Soldier, but at the walls and ceiling, the eradication beams ricocheting at impossible, physics-defying angles to try and hit Soldier from behind. Soldier, in turn, was grabbing chunks of the floor, infusing them with pure, concentrated ‘liberty,’ and throwing them like grenades that exploded into showers of miniature, spectral bald eagles.
Meanwhile, Heavy and the BLU Pyro were engaged in a brawl that defied reason. Heavy would punch, and the Pyro would meet his fist with a blast of its cold-fire, the two forces annihilating each other in a flash of steam and shattered light. The BLU Pyro created razor-sharp shards of solid ice out of thin air and hurled them at Heavy, who simply shattered them with blows from his bare hands. He grabbed a ten-ton piece of fallen machinery and threw it at the Pyro, who melted it into a puddle of goo in mid-air with a focused beam of its unnatural flames.
The rest of the party could only watch in stunned, horrified awe. “So… this is what they’re like when they get serious,” the Postal Dude commented, taking a drag from his cigarette. “I may need to rethink my life choices.”
The duel escalated. Soldier drop-kicked the BLU Sniper so hard that the impact sent them both crashing through the ceiling of the core chamber and up, through solid rock and Combine architecture, bursting out onto the stormy mountaintop.
Heavy, not to be outdone, grabbed the BLU Pyro by the ankle, spun it around like a hammer throw, and launched it skyward after them, a streak of blue fire soaring into the clouds. He then bent his knees and leaped, the ground cracking under the force of his departure, and followed them into the sky.
The four demigods of destruction met in the apex of the unnatural thunderstorm, their clashing auras turning the sky into a strobe light of red, white, and blue.
Then, with a final, cataclysmic punch that connected simultaneously between all four of them, there was a flash of light so bright it turned the world white, and a sound that was not a boom, but the sound of reality itself being torn like wet paper.
The light faded. The sound echoed away. There was a moment of perfect, serene silence.
A fishmonger in Liyue Harbor was carefully arranging his wares, humming a sea shanty to himself. The sun was warm, the tourists were plentiful, and business was good. His peaceful morning was interrupted when four humanoid meteors—one red, white, and blue, one crimson, one booze-blue, and one icy-blue—slammed into the wharf directly in front of his stall. They didn’t leave a crater. They landed with the gentle thump of a dropped sack of rice, sending up a small cloud of perfectly undisturbed dust.
Soldier and the BLU Sniper were instantly back on their feet, locked in a furious thumb-wrestling match. “MY THUMB OF FREEDOM WILL CRUSH YOUR THUMB OF TYRANNY AND TEA-DRINKING!” Soldier screamed.
“MY THUMB GREW STRONG FROM OPENING THOUSANDS OF BEER BOTTLES, YOU YANKEE BASTARD!” the BLU Sniper roared back.
Heavy and the BLU Pyro were locked in an equally bizarre struggle. They were playing patty-cake, but with such speed and force that their clapping hands were creating miniature sonic booms that were gently ruffling the banners on the nearby buildings, but leaving the buildings themselves untouched.
The citizens of Liyue Harbor stopped and stared. The Millelith guards drew their spears, looked at the scene, looked at each other, and collectively decided they were not paid enough to understand, let alone intervene. In the Jade Chamber, high above, Ningguang and Keqing watched through a telescope.
“...What are we looking at, exactly?” Keqing asked, utterly baffled.
Ningguang took a slow sip of her tea. “I have absolutely no idea,” she replied. “But I feel we should increase the city’s property insurance.”
The fight was a whirlwind of localized, non-destructive chaos. A punch from Heavy that could have leveled the mountain they just left instead just caused a nearby stack of crates to perfectly re-stack themselves in alphabetical order by shipping manifest. A ricocheting sniper shot from the BLU Sniper flew through the open window of a restaurant, neatly sliced a piece of fish for a customer, and flew out the back door without chipping the paint. Soldier threw a punch that missed, the force of which traveled across the square and gently closed the open door of a shop that had been banging in the breeze. The BLU Pyro unleashed a wave of its cold-fire, which, instead of dissolving the wharf, flash-froze a puddle of water on the ground, creating a perfect, beautiful ice sculpture of a Qilin.
It was the most polite, considerate, and utterly terrifying display of power the world of Teyvat had ever seen since the Archon War.
Finally, the BLU Sniper, realizing the absurdity of the situation and the sheer number of witnesses, decided to call it. “Right! This is stupid!” he yelled, breaking the thumb-lock. “We’re not getting paid enough for this pantomime!” He pulled a small, beeping device from his pocket—a Combine emergency transponder. “We’ll be back, you RED freaks! And next time, I’m bringing bigger bullets!”
He slapped the device on the BLU Pyro’s back. “Let’s bugger off before they try to make us pay for all the… uh… minor inconveniences!”
With a final, rude gesture and a parting toot from the Pyro’s kazoo, the two BLU mercs dissolved in a shower of blue pixels and vanished.
Soldier and Heavy stood alone on the wharf, their auras slowly fading. The rage was gone, the focus was gone, replaced by their usual brand of belligerent idiocy.
“WE HAVE DRIVEN THE ENEMY FROM OUR SHORES!” Soldier bellowed triumphantly to the confused onlookers. “YOU ARE ALL WELCOME! TAXES ARE NOW ILLEGAL!”
Heavy looked down at his fists, then at the perfectly preserved ice sculpture. “Huh,” he grunted. “Heavy is artist.”
Chapter 14: Base of Operations, Barbecues, and Buggering Off
Chapter Text
The return journey from Liyue Harbor to the captured Combine Relay was significantly less eventful than the fight that had taken them there. It mostly consisted of the rest of the group staring in bewildered silence at Soldier and Heavy, who seemed to have no memory of their brief apotheosis and were back to their usual selves. Soldier was trying to teach a bewildered group of Millelith guards the American national anthem, while Heavy was happily eating a bag of dumplings he’d procured from a street vendor.
When they finally arrived back at the smoldering, corpse-strewn core chamber, they were greeted by the sight of Engineer, Mike, and Barney arguing over a sputtering Combine console.
“I’m tellin’ ya, the damn thing needs a percussive maintenance protocol!” Engineer insisted, brandishing his wrench.
“We are not hitting the multiversal portal nexus with a wrench, Dell,” Barney said through gritted teeth, his face a mask of pure exasperation.
“It’s a valid engineering technique!”
“Gentlemen, please,” Mike interjected, pointing at a flickering schematic. “The primary power conduits have been destabilized by… whatever the hell just happened. We need to reroute the auxiliary power through the secondary emitters without causing the entire mountain to fold in on itself.”
The next few hours were a masterclass in organized chaos. While the three sane engineers worked tirelessly, the rest of the group attempted to “help.” Scout’s idea of helping was to bring them lukewarm cans of BONK!, which Barney politely declined after seeing what it did to the floor panels when a can was spilled. Demoman tried to “clean” a clogged power coupling with a controlled detonation, which, to everyone’s surprise, actually worked, though it also blew a hole in a non-essential wall. Pyro, meanwhile, discovered the Relay’s cafeteria and, with the assistance of the Postal Dude, began hosting an impromptu and deeply unsettling barbecue using their flamethrower and whatever questionable meat products they found in the Combine freezers.
Eventually, against all odds and with only three minor explosions, a triumphant hum filled the chamber. The colossal energy core stabilized, its erratic pulsing smoothing into a steady, powerful thrum. On the master console, a map of the multiverse lit up, countless glowing nodes representing different dimensions, all connected through this one, vital junction.
“Yeehaw!” Engineer cheered, wiping grease from his goggles. “She’s purrin’ like a kitten! We have full control of the Combine’s primary dimensional gateway!”
This declaration led to a more formal gathering. The survivors, soldiers, and mercenaries assembled in the ruined core chamber, the glow of the Nexus casting long shadows across their faces.
“Alright,” Bill said, taking charge. “We have a decision to make. We have a fortress, and we have a map to every Combine shithole in this corner of reality. We’ve done good. But the mission ain’t over.”
“This place…” Mike said, looking around with a strategic gleam in his eye. “This is more than a base. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. A permanent, secure Resistance outpost with access to the enemy’s entire transport network.”
Sergeant Hayes nodded in agreement, his NCR troopers standing at attention behind him. “My men and I will stay. This is a defensible position, a real foothold. We can do more good here, coordinating strikes and gathering intel, than we can running around like maniacs.” His gaze flickered towards the RED team. “No offense.”
“None taken, son!” Soldier boomed. “Holding the fort is a vital and patriotic duty! Like guarding the Alamo! But with fewer Mexicans and more scary portal thingies!”
Mike’s Resistance fighters, Chen and Rodriguez, nodded as well. “We’ll stay, too,” Chen confirmed. “This is what we signed up for. We’ll make this place a beacon of hope.”
“A brilliant decision!” Colonel Cubbage announced, appearing from behind a console he had been hiding behind. “I shall, of course, remain here to oversee the command structure of this vital installation! My tactical genius will be indispensable!”
Everyone pointedly ignored him.
And so the lines were drawn. The professional soldiers, the ones who fought for a cause and understood strategy, would stay and build a new front in the war. The rest of them… they were the wrecking crew. The ones you sent in when you wanted a problem to stop existing in the most violent way possible.
“So that’s it, then,” Ellis said, looking a little sad. “The gang’s splitting up.”
“Don’t get all weepy, kid,” Francis grunted, clapping him on the shoulder. “This ain’t goodbye forever. It’s just… you guys go that way to cause trouble, we’ll stay here and cause trouble. It’s a win-win.”
The farewells were as absurd as the journey had been. Demoman tried to give everyone a parting gift of his “special reserve” scrumpy, which Hayes politely declined after seeing it dissolve a teaspoon. Sniper gave Bill a signed jar of what he claimed was his own urine, calling it a “professional courtesy.” Scout tried to get Barney’s autograph on his baseball bat, insisting he was “a video game legend.”
The Postal Dude walked up to Mike and Hayes. “Listen,” he said, his voice unusually serious. “If things go south, and you need a problem solved with extreme prejudice and zero paperwork… I’m your guy. Just… you know… scrawl ‘I regret nothing’ in blood on a wall somewhere. I’ll get the message.” He then handed Colonel Cubbage a live grenade with the pin pulled, patted him on the head, and walked away whistling. Barney managed to grab it and throw it into an empty conduit just before it detonated.
Finally, it was time. Engineer stood at the console, the multiversal map glowing before him. “Alright, fellas. I’ve got the two main coordinates we pulled from their files. One is a high-security stasis facility, Outpost X-7, where they’re holding Gordon Freeman. The other is Citadel Primus, the heart of their command, where they’ve got Gabe Newell and the writers.”
“So, who we savin’ first?” Scout asked. “The guy with the crowbar or the guy who signs the paychecks?”
“The mission was to save Half-Life 3!” Soldier declared. “We must rescue the storytellers! To the Citadel!”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Barney interjected. “My top priority is finding Gordon. He’s the key to all this.”
An argument immediately broke out. The mercs, loyal to their corporate benefactors (and the abstract concept of video games), wanted to go for Gaben. Barney and the L4D crew, being more practical, argued for rescuing the legendary physicist.
The argument was abruptly ended when Heavy, who had grown bored, lumbered over to the console. “Too much talk,” he grunted. He looked at the two glowing destination markers on the screen. He closed his eyes. “Eeny… meeny… miny… MOE.”
His giant sausage-like finger slammed down on one of the coordinates. A massive portal ripped open in the center of the room, swirling with chaotic energy and showing glimpses of a world of black steel and jagged, sky-piercing towers.
Citadel Primus.
“Decision made!” Heavy announced happily.
Barney groaned. “Of course. A frontal assault on the most heavily-defended fortress in the multiverse. Why did I expect anything else?”
“That’s the spirit!” Soldier cheered, slapping him on the back so hard he stumbled. “TO GLORY! AND TO VIDEO GAMES!”
One by one, the remaining members of the suicide squad turned towards the shimmering gateway. Bill gave a final, weary salute to Hayes. Ellis gave a thumbs-up to Mike. Francis just grunted. The Postal Dude tipped his sunglasses.
And then, led by a screaming Soldier and a laughing Heavy, they charged into the portal, leaving behind a fledgling Resistance base, a handful of sane soldiers, and one very confused, very lucky Colonel Cubbage. The next chapter of their insane quest had begun.
Chapter 15: An Unlikely Detour
Chapter Text
The portal to Citadel Primus was not so much a doorway as it was a violent, screaming vortex into a world of pure architectural oppression. Led by a bellowing Soldier and a laughing Heavy, the newly-dubbed “Suicide Squad” charged headlong into the shimmering chaos, fully prepared to punch the teeth out of the Combine’s central command.
However, multiversal travel, especially when initiated by a giant Russian man playing a children’s guessing game with a highly advanced piece of alien technology, is not an exact science. The portal wavered. The glimpses of black steel towers flickered, replaced for a split second by a world made entirely of screaming mouths, then a brief flash of a tranquil pet store, and then, finally, it settled. The team tumbled out of the other side, not onto the cold metal of a Combine fortress, but onto dusty, sun-baked cobblestones, landing in a heap in a narrow, sand-colored alleyway.
“Ugh, my head,” Scout groaned, untangling himself from Demoman’s legs. “Where the hell are we? This doesn’t look like a citadel. It smells like dust and… unresolved matchmaking issues.”
They had arrived in what looked like a small, sun-drenched Middle Eastern town. Barrels and crates were stacked neatly in corners, graffiti adorned some of the walls, and from somewhere nearby, they could hear the distant, rhythmic pop-pop-pop of gunfire.
“AMBUSH!” Soldier shrieked, immediately snapping into a combat stance. “THE ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE! FIND COVER AND PREPARE TO DISTRIBUTE HOT, LEAD-BASED FREEDOM!”
“Wait a minute,” Barney said, peering down a long, open corridor that led to a pair of large double doors. “I know this place. This is… this looks exactly like Dust II.”
“Dust II?” Bill asked, reloading his rifle out of habit. “What’s that?”
“It’s a… simulation,” Barney struggled to explain. “A training exercise. A video game map. We’re in a video game map.”
His words were punctuated by a figure in full counter-terrorist gear sprinting past the end of the alley, who yelled, “Bravo, chaps! Smashing shot, Jeremy! Absolutely sublime placement!” before disappearing around a corner.
A moment later, a different voice, clipped and British, drifted back. “Oh, awfully sorry about that, old bean! I didn’t mean to take your head off quite so spectacularly! Are you alright?”
A third, slightly ghostly voice replied, “Perfectly fine, Simon! A truly commendable piece of marksmanship! I shall endeavor to provide a more challenging target next time! Tally-ho!”
The RED team stared in slack-jawed silence.
“What… what was that?” Scout asked, his brain struggling to process what he’d just heard. “Did that guy just apologize for getting shot in the face?”
“This is wrong,” the Postal Dude muttered, his eyes wide. “This is deeply, fundamentally wrong on a spiritual level. Where’s the rage? The screaming? The slurs about my mother?”
They had, through a cosmic accident of unparalleled improbability, stumbled into the one, mythical corner of the multiverse that was never meant to be found: the Polite CS:GO Server.
Cautiously, the group crept out of the alley and into a large, open plaza. It was a warzone, but the most well-mannered warzone imaginable. A player in a balaclava neatly dispatched another with a burst from his rifle, then immediately sprinted over to the body. “Terribly sorry!” he called out. “Hope I didn’t ruin your new vest! Let me know if you’d like me to help you with your respawn paperwork!”
Soldier, unable to comprehend a battlefield without furious, patriotic screaming, took matters into his own hands. He leaped onto a large crate in the center of the plaza. “LISTEN UP, YOU HONORABLY-DISCHARGED MAGGOTS!” he bellowed. “I AM CLAIMING THIS BOMB SITE FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND HER ALLIES! ALL OTHER NATIONS ARE NOW OFFICIALLY RENTING! YOUR FIRST PAYMENT OF ‘NOT-BEING-DEAD’ IS DUE IMMEDIATELY!”
A nearby counter-terrorist player, who had been complimenting a terrorist on his excellent grenade trajectory, paused and looked up. “Oh, hello there!” he said cheerfully. “Are you new to the server? That’s a lovely voice you have! Such projection! My name is Jeremy. Welcome!”
Soldier was so taken aback by the sheer, weaponized pleasantness that he was momentarily speechless.
The polite battle continued around them. The gang, utterly baffled, tried to integrate. Scout saw a player get killed and, reverting to instinct, yelled, “SIT DOWN, GRASS GROWS, BIRDS FLY, SUN SHINES, AND BROTHER, I HURT PEOPLE!” The player he was yelling at simply respawned nearby and jogged over. “My word, what a creative taunt!” he exclaimed. “Very evocative! I must jot that one down. Well played, sir, well played!” Scout just stood there, his bat hanging limply in his hand, his entire worldview shattered.
It was during this period of intense cultural confusion that Engineer, with Barney’s help, found what passed for the server’s control nexus—a small, humming box in an abandoned radio room that looked suspiciously like a 2004-era desktop PC.
“Well, there’s your problem,” Engineer sighed, wiping dust off the casing. “Our portal got rerouted through this server’s IP address. We’re not in a real place, we’re trapped in a game lobby. I can get us out, but I need to jump-start our portal device. The power core is drained. I need a massive, concentrated burst of energy.”
As he said this, a player named Simon, wearing full terrorist gear, politely entered the room. “Pardon me for interrupting,” he said, “but I noticed you chaps looked a bit lost. Is there anything I can do to assist you?” He noticed the portal device. “Oh, my, what a fascinating bit of kit! Is that for a custom map?”
“We need a power source,” Barney explained wearily. “A big one.”
Simon’s face lit up. “A power source? Well, why didn’t you say so! We’ve got just the thing!” He reached behind his back and proudly presented a block of C4, the red digital timer on it blinking cheerfully. “We use this for the objective! I’m sure it has plenty of juice. The round’s about to end, so if you plant this, it should go off in about forty-five seconds. Will that be enough time?”
Barney and Engineer exchanged a look of horrified understanding. In this polite, bloodless world, the bomb was just a game mechanic, a prop. But to their reality-hopping portal device, that "game mechanic" might as well be a nuclear reactor.
“It’ll have to be,” Engineer said grimly, grabbing the C4. “Everybody get ready! This is gonna be a bumpy ride!”
As Engineer frantically wired the bomb into his device, Simon and Jeremy, their new, absurdly-recruited friends, watched with cheerful curiosity. “Oh, this is exciting!” Jeremy said. “I do love a good custom event! Do you think there will be hats?”
“ planting the bomb,” a calm, synthesized voice announced server-wide.
“Thirty seconds to detonation,” Engineer yelled, sweat beading on his forehead. “The portal’s getting unstable! It’s not locking onto the Citadel!”
The countdown timer on the bomb hit zero. There was no massive explosion. Instead, all the energy that should have leveled the map was channeled directly into the portal device. The device shrieked like a dying animal, and a new portal ripped open in the middle of the room. It wasn't the stable gateway to the Combine fortress. It was a jagged, violent tear in space, flickering with images of gray, concrete bunkers and blood-red flags. A powerful vacuum force erupted from the portal, pulling in everything not bolted down.
“WHOOPSIE-DAISY!” yelled Simon, as he, Jeremy, and their impeccable manners were sucked into the vortex.
“SON OF AAAAAAA—” Scout’s scream was cut off as he, too, was dragged in.
One by one, the entire crew was pulled from the world of polite headshots and into the screaming maw of the unknown. The last one through was the Postal Dude, who managed to take one last, long drag of his cigarette before being vacuumed in. “Well,” he thought to himself as he tumbled through dimensions, “at least there’ll be less paperwork.”
They were spat out the other side, landing in a brutalist, concrete corridor under the harsh glare of bare, caged lightbulbs. The air was cold and smelled of damp stone, industrial cleaner, and fascism. Loud, guttural German shouting echoed from down the hall.
“Well,” Barney groaned, picking himself up off the floor. “This definitely isn’t the Citadel.”
Jeremy and Simon, their new recruits, dusted themselves off. “Goodness me,” Jeremy said, looking around. “This custom map is awfully grim, isn’t it? The attention to detail is remarkable, though. Very oppressive.”
Before anyone could reply, a door at the end of the hall burst open, and two hulking figures stomped through. They were encased in heavy plate armor, their faces hidden behind gas masks, and on their arms were bright red armbands bearing a stark, black swastika. They raised their rifles, the shouted German words becoming terrifyingly clear.
“ Halt! Wer ist da?! ”
Simon, ever the polite gamer, took a step forward and gave a friendly wave. “Hello there, chaps! We seem to be a bit lost! Jolly good costumes, by the way! Very convincing!”
The response was a hail of bullets.
Chapter 16: The Unforgivable Sin
Chapter Text
The hallway was a symphony of ricochets. The two hulking Nazi supersoldiers, clad in thick plate armor, unleashed a torrent of lead that pinged and sparked harmlessly off the concrete walls, their aim thrown off by sheer disbelief at the bizarre scene before them.
“Goodness me, that’s rather loud!” Jeremy chirped from behind Simon, not flinching as bullets whizzed past his head. “And your recoil control is a tad unruly, chaps! Might I suggest firing in shorter, more controlled bursts?”
The rest of the gang had already found cover, weapons at the ready. Tucked behind them was another figure who had been pulled through the portal—a man in a simple gray jumpsuit, his hands tied behind his back. He was trembling, his eyes wide with terror.
“Who the hell is that guy?” Bill grunted, nodding towards the captive.
“Oh, that’s our hostage!” Simon explained cheerfully, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “We were practicing our escort mission skills back on the server when you chaps popped in. Thought we’d bring him along for the ride! He’s awfully good at cowering, you know.” The hostage whimpered in agreement.
“NAZIS?!” Soldier’s voice bellowed from behind a large metal crate. “THE ORIGINAL BAD GUYS! THE ONES WE HAVE DECADES OF EXPERIENCE KILLING! IT’S LIKE CHRISTMAS MORNING!”
The two supersoldiers, ignoring the American screaming from behind a box, focused on the immediate, baffling threat: the two men in tactical gear who were not shooting back, and the gibbering captive they seemed to be protecting. One of the Nazis, a hulking brute with a large “Hanz” stitched onto his armor, lowered his machine gun and stomped forward.
“Was ist das? Sprechen Sie!” Hanz barked, his voice a distorted growl through his gas mask.
“Oh, terribly sorry, I don’t speak a word of German,” Simon said apologetically. “We seem to have taken a wrong turn. Could you possibly point us to the nearest bomb site? We seem to have misplaced it.”
Hanz stared for a moment, his patience clearly wearing thin. He looked at the polite men, then at the terrified hostage cowering behind them. With a guttural roar of frustration, Hanz decided to make an example of the weakest link. He lunged forward, his massive, steel-gauntleted hands grabbing the hostage by the neck.
“Oh, dear,” Jeremy commented with mild concern. “He seems to be having a spot of bother.”
Before anyone could react, Hanz lifted the hostage into the air and, with a single, brutal twist, snapped his neck. The sound was like a thick branch breaking. The hostage’s body went limp, and Hanz tossed it aside like a bag of garbage. It hit the floor with a wet, final thud.
A shocked silence fell over the hallway. The gunfire stopped. Soldier’s patriotic tirade trailed off. Heavy, who had been about to charge, froze mid-stride.
Simon stared at the lifeless body of the hostage. He sighed, a sound of mild disappointment. “Well, that’s the bonus objective failed,” he said, shaking his head. “A pity. We were on for a record time, too.”
“Dashedly poor form on his part, though,” Jeremy added, tutting. “Killing an unarmed non-combatant. A bit unsporting, if you ask me.”
The rest of the Suicide Squad stared, their minds unable to compute what they were witnessing. They had just seen a man brutally murdered, and these two were treating it like a minor inconvenience, a lost round in a game.
The second Nazi, an officer with an ornate helmet, stomped over to investigate. He nudged the hostage’s body with his boot, then looked at the two absurdly calm players. He noticed something on Jeremy’s vest, tucked into the webbing. It was a beautifully crafted Karambit knife, its blade a swirling galaxy of iridescent blues and purples, a true work of digital art made real. A Doppler Sapphire, Factory New. A thing of immense value and pride.
“Was ist dieser Unsinn?” the officer grunted, snatching the knife from Jeremy’s vest.
“I say, old chap, do be careful with that!” Jeremy cautioned. “That’s a mint condition piece with an exceptionally low float value!”
The officer examined the exquisite blade, its perfect finish, its flawless edge. He looked at the two gamers, his lip curling into a sneer beneath his mask. This weapon, this beautiful, frivolous toy, was a symbol of the decadent, soft world these intruders came from. With a grunt of contempt, he placed the knife on his armored knee and, with a sharp, brutal crack, snapped the blade in half. The two shimmering pieces clattered uselessly to the concrete floor.
The sound was not loud. But in the cold, silent hallway, it was the sound of a god dying.
Simon stopped breathing. Jeremy’s pleasant smile froze, then slowly dissolved.
Their heads, which had been regarding the situation with mild annoyance, slowly turned to face each other. No words were spoken. An entire universe of shared pain, of collective trauma, passed between them in that silent glance. The death of their NPC was a setback. The destruction of a god-tier skin was a crime against nature.
The air around them grew heavy. The pleasant British accents began to curdle and warp.
“...Did you…” Simon whispered, his voice a low, guttural growl that was utterly alien. “...did you just break his fucking Karambit?”
The Nazi officer scoffed and kicked one of the broken pieces.
That was the last thing he ever did.
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
An inhuman shriek of pure, distilled salt erupted from both Simon and Jeremy’s throats in perfect, terrifying harmony. It was a sound born of a thousand lost ranked games, a million toxic teammates, and a billion missed headshots. They moved, not with the grace of soldiers, but with the glitchy, instantaneous twitch of players spamming their movement keys.
Simon unslung his AWP, no-scoped, and fired. The bullet blew Hanz’s head clean off his shoulders in a geyser of gore.
“YOU FUCKING HACKER CUNT!” Simon screamed, his voice now a raw, high-pitched screech of fury. “I’M GOING TO GET YOU VAC-BANNED FROM LIFE, YOU FUCKING NAZI NOOB!”
Jeremy, meanwhile, had drawn his dual Berettas, a weapon no serious player ever used. He bunny-hopped sideways at an impossible speed, firing both pistols wildly. “SPRAY AND PRAY, BITCHES!” he howled, his polite demeanor replaced by the shrieking rage of a gremlin. “HOW’D YOU LIKE MY SHITTY FUCKING SPRAY PATTERN NOW?!”
The Nazi officer, stunned, raised his weapon, but it was too late. Simon slid across the floor, quick-switched to his Desert Eagle, and fired a single shot that blew off the officer’s kneecap. As the Nazi fell, screaming, Jeremy landed beside him, emptying both his clips into the man’s torso at point-blank range.
“EAT SHIT AND DIE, FUCKING SCRUB!” they shrieked in unison.
The rest of the group could only watch in stunned paralysis as their polite, mild-mannered companions transformed into shrieking, blood-crazed demons of competitive gaming.
“He… he just one-tapped him,” Scout stammered, his face pale.
“That movement… the weapon switch speed…” Sniper whispered with a reverence usually reserved for a deity. “It’s… it’s perfect.”
With their work finished, Simon and Jeremy stood up, drenched in blood, their chests heaving. They were no longer Simon and Jeremy, polite gamers. They were SiMoN_2005 and xX_Jezza_Xx, the smurfing, toxic gods of the server.
Simon looked at the rest of the group, his eyes burning with a furious, competitive fire. “WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING CAMPERS DOING?!” he screeched. “RUSH B, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS! DON’T BE SHIT! GO! GO! GO!”
And with that, the two of them sprinted down the hallway at full speed, leaving a stunned Suicide Squad in their wake.
“...I like them,” the Postal Dude said, a slow, appreciative grin spreading across his face.
“Da,” Heavy agreed, a look of profound respect in his eyes. “They are good teammates.”
A fresh wave of Nazi soldiers appeared at the end of the hall, alerted by the commotion. Before anyone else could even raise their weapon, Simon slid around the corner, fired a single, impossible shot that killed three of them with a single bullet via a wall-bang, and disappeared again, his high-pitched insults echoing down the corridor.
“HOLY SHIT!” yelled Francis.
“Alright, you heard the men!” Barney yelled, snapping everyone out of their trance. “MOVE! LET’S GO!”
And so they charged, following the trail of carnage and high-pitched, profanity-laden insults left by their new, terrifyingly-motivated point men, the polite gamers who had finally, truly, been triggered.
Chapter 17: The Symphony of Salt and Slaughter
Chapter Text
The charge down the brutalist Nazi corridor was not a military advance; it was a force of nature tailgating a hurricane of pure, competitive rage. At the head of the formation was Simon, who was no longer Simon. He was SiMoN_2005, a vengeful god in tactical gear, and the Wolfenstein reality was his new server.
He didn't run. He bunny-hopped, his movements a jerky, impossibly fast, and physics-defying strafe that no human body should have been able to perform. The Nazis, trained to fight soldiers who took cover and advanced methodically, had no answer for a man who fought like a player exploiting a source engine glitch.
"GET FUCKED, YOU KRAUT-SPAWNED CAMPING BASTARDS!" Simon shrieked, sliding around a corner on his knees. He pre-fired before he even saw his target, his AWP barking once. A Nazi Hauptsturmführer at the far end of the hall, who had been shouting orders, felt a .338 Lapua Magnum round enter his left eyeball and exit through the back of his helmet in a crimson spray of vaporized brain and shattered skull. He was dead before the sound of Simon’s insult reached him.
"NICE WALLS, HACKER!" Simon screamed at the wall he had just shot through.
The rest of the Suicide Squad followed in his wake, a cleanup crew for the apocalypse. They were no longer the primary agents of chaos; they were backup singers for the lead screamer.
"By my sticky bombs," Demoman muttered with awe, watching Simon bounce off a wall, switch to his knife for a speed boost, then switch back to his Deagle to one-tap another soldier. "The lad's got moves."
"He's not fighting," Sniper corrected, his voice filled with the reverence of a religious zealot witnessing a miracle. "He's strafing. It's beautiful."
The Nazi response was loud, German, and utterly ineffective. They threw everything they had at the invaders—Sturmgewehrs, experimental laser rifles, even a few hulking supersoldiers with chainguns. It didn't matter. The corridors were too tight, the enemy too unpredictable. Heavy would round a corner and simply dissolve a machine gun nest with a two-second burst from Sasha, the sheer volume of lead turning three men and their weapon into a single, homogenous paste of metal and meat. Soldier, inspired by Simon's rampage, had decided that rockets were "too slow" and was now just beating Nazis to death with his shovel, screaming the preamble to the Constitution with every sickening crunch of bone.
It was during a brief lull, in a captured control room littered with the twitching, dismembered bodies of its former occupants, that the saner members of the group tried to formulate a plan beyond "follow the screaming man." Barney and Engineer immediately gravitated towards the humming consoles, their clunky, overbuilt designs a stark contrast to the sleek Combine tech they were used to.
"No Combine signatures anywhere," Barney reported, wiping blood off a keyboard. "Not a single ping. We're completely off their network. This was a bad jump."
"Worse than that," Engineer added, pointing at a flickering power schematic on a monitor.
"This whole place is a parasite. The primary energy readings... they ain't Nazi tech. Too clean, too powerful. It's like they found a nuclear reactor and built their shitty little clubhouse on top of it." He tinkered with a dial, and a holographic wireframe appeared above the console. It was a complex, geometric lattice, pulsing with a gentle, white light. "The hell is that?"
"Da'at Yichud," Barney breathed, his eyes wide. "Holy shit. I've only read about this stuff in OSS files from the '40s. An ancient Jewish society of scientists and engineers… inventors of technologies so advanced they make our own look like stone tools. They went into hiding when the Nazis rose to power. If this base is built on one of their caches..."
"Then they might have a way out of here," Engineer finished, a spark of hope in his eyes. "A portal. Something that can get us back on track."
Their objective was now clear. Find the heart of the Da'at Yichud technology. Find their exit.
Meanwhile, Simon was having a different kind of revelation. Standing over the corpse of a Nazi Kommandant he had just bludgeoned to death with his AWP, a strange icon had appeared in his vision, a shimmering, ethereal notification that only he could see.
[SERVER ALERT]
ITEM: Karambit | Doppler Sapphire (Factory New)
OWNER: xX_Jezza_Xx
STATUS: DESTROYED BY FACTION: Das Reich
REASON: Malicious Griefing.
INITIATING GRIEFING REPORT... REPORT SENT TO: Friends List (Multiversal)
MESSAGE: "My bestie's god-tier knife got rekt by some fascist dickbags. You guys seeing this shit?"
A cascade of notifications followed, visible only to Simon.
[Player: 'NoobMaster69'] is now online.
[Player: 'xXx_Pu55y_Sl4y3r_xXx'] is now online.
[Player: 'DefinitelyNotASmurf'] has joined your party.
[Player: 'YourMomsFavoriteMistake'] has joined your party.
"THEY'RE COMING," Simon whispered, a single, perfect tear of salty rage rolling down his cheek. "THEY'RE ALL COMING."
And then, it began.
In a storage bay two levels down, a Nazi squad was patrolling when a jagged, unstable rift tore open in the middle of the room. It smelled faintly of stale pizza and Mountain Dew. Out of it stumbled a player in full tactical gear, but with a bright pink unicorn mask on his head.
"I HEARD A SKIN DIED!" he screeched, his voice distorted by a cheap microphone. He unslung his P90. "THIS IS A CRIME AGAINST GAMANITY!"
In the main barracks, another portal, this one shaped like a glitching YouTube ad for a VPN, flickered into existence above the bunks. A player wearing a chicken mask and carrying a Negev machine gun fell out of it. "FOR THE FALLEN KARAMBIT!" he roared. "DEPLOY THE SALT! MAXIMUM OVER-TOXICITY!"
All over the base, it was happening. Dozens of rifts were opening at random. Out of them poured an army. Not an army of soldiers, but an army of gamers. They wore tactical gear but accessorized it with ludicrous cosmetic items—googly eyes on their helmets, bright neon weapon skins, rubber chicken knives. They weren't soldiers fighting for a cause; they were players who had answered a call to arms for the most sacred cause of all: righteous indignation over a destroyed cosmetic item.
The Nazi command center descended into absolute pandemonium. Alarms blared as a grizzled, scarred General watched the main security map. Dozens, then hundreds of red dots representing hostile intruders were appearing simultaneously, all over the most secure fortress in the Reich. They weren't coming from the entrances. They were just… appearing. In locked rooms, in ventilation shafts, in the officers' latrine.
"Mein Gott," the General whispered, his monocle falling from his eye. "It's a coordinated, multi-pronged invasion! They're teleporting their forces directly into our facility! How is this possible?!" He slammed his fist on the table. "Sound the general alarm! Alert the Führer! The rebellion has begun!"
Back in the control room, the Suicide Squad watched on a security monitor as a player in a horse mask beat a Nazi to death with a frying pan while screaming about "stream snipers."
The Postal Dude took a slow, deliberate drag from his cigarette, a genuine, impressed smile gracing his lips.
"Well," he said, exhaling a perfect smoke ring. "That escalated."
Chapter 18: The Griefing of Castle Wolfenstein
Chapter Text
The Wolfenstein fortress was no longer a military installation. It was a LAN party held in the middle of a war crime, and the home team was losing spectacularly.
From the relative safety of the captured Nazi control room, the Suicide Squad watched the chaos unfold on a bank of flickering security monitors. The footage was a fever dream of tactical absurdity. On Monitor 3, a player wearing a full Gimp suit and calling himself "xXx_Pu55y_Sl4y3r_xXx" was single-handedly holding a chokepoint by throwing an endless stream of decoy grenades that made confusing footstep sounds, causing the disciplined Nazi soldiers to spin in circles looking for an enemy that wasn't there before he gunned them down with a hot-pink P90.
On Monitor 7, "NoobMaster69," clad in a chicken mask, was attempting to surf on the explosion of a rocket fired by a Panzerhund, yelling "PARKOUR!" as he flew across a hangar bay before splattering messily against a wall. He respawned seconds later from a shimmering, unstable rift in a broom closet, undeterred.
“It’s beautiful,” Soldier whispered, a single tear tracing a path through the grime on his face. “It’s the purest form of warfare I have ever witnessed. No strategy. No objectives. Just pure, chaotic, rage-fueled murder. It’s… it’s American.”
“They are not soldiers,” Heavy observed, his brow furrowed in deep thought. “They are like… very angry, very loud bees. With guns.”
The Postal Dude was practically vibrating with joy. “This isn’t war,” he said, his voice filled with a reverence usually reserved for a fresh pack of cigarettes. “This is griefing. It’s performance art. These are my people.”
Their admiration was cut short by a frantic shout from Engineer, who was frantically twisting dials on the Da’at Yichud console.
“Fellas, we got a problem! A big one!” he yelled, pointing a greasy glove at the holographic wireframe of the fortress. Red alert icons were flashing all over the lower levels. “They’re not just clearing the base, they’re leveling it! They’re using explosives on load-bearing walls because they think it’s ‘good for the environmentals’! The Da’at Yichud chamber is three levels down, right in the middle of their rampage!”
“What’re you sayin’, Engie?” Scout asked, nervously tapping his bat.
Barney’s face was grim. “He’s saying our only way out of this dimension is directly in the path of a hundred screaming man-children who think collateral damage is a gameplay feature. If they blow up that vault before we get to it, we’re stuck here forever.”
The thought of being permanently trapped in a dimension with this much concentrated salt and rage was enough to motivate even the most chaotic members of the group. Their objective was no longer to escape the Nazis; it was to escape their saviors.
Their journey downwards was like trying to run through a blender that was on fire. They burst into a corridor just in time to see a player in a horse mask try to 360-no-scope a Nazi supersoldier. He missed spectacularly, the bullet ricocheting off the ceiling and nearly taking Demoman’s remaining eye out. The supersoldier then pulverized the player with its chaingun.
“HAX!” the player shrieked as he dissolved into pixels. “FUCKING AIMBOT!” He immediately respawned from a fissure in the floor behind the supersoldier and beat it to death with a frying pan.
The Suicide Squad had to fight on three fronts. Nazis, still trying to defend their doomed fortress, would open fire on them.
The player horde, seeing new targets that weren’t wearing swastikas, would open fire on them. And the crumbling architecture, weakened by the constant, indiscriminate explosions, would try to collapse on top of them.
“MOVE!” Bill yelled, shoving Francis through a doorway as the ceiling caved in behind them. “THIS IS WORSE THAN THE WHISPERING OAKS EVACUATION!”
“AT LEAST THE ZOMBIES DIDN’T CALL ME A CHEATING SCRIPT-KIDDIE!” Francis roared back, firing his shotgun at a player who was trying to build a staircase out of corpses to get to a higher vantage point.
They fought their way into a massive, multi-leveled chamber that looked like a U-boat pen. The battle here was reaching its crescendo. Nazi soldiers were pinned down behind fortified positions, while the players, screaming a cacophony of insults and memes, were employing tactics that defied all military doctrine. One group was "crab-walking" in a tight formation, their guns pointed at the ceiling. Another was engaged in a knife-only duel on a narrow catwalk, ignoring the raging firefight around them.
Suddenly, a section of the wall exploded inwards. A grizzled woman with a prominent scar across her face and a laser rifle in her hands stormed in, followed by a squad of haggard-looking fighters in mismatched gear. They were the local Anti-Nazi resistance. They stopped dead, taking in the scene of absolute pandemonium.
“Mein Gott…” the woman whispered, her eyes wide. She saw Barney and his crew, recognizable as fellow soldiers. She saw the Nazis, their hated enemy. And she saw the horde of screaming, bunny-hopping lunatics in unicorn masks systematically dismantling the Reich’s forces with nonsensical, suicidal glee. She came to the only logical conclusion.
“The Liberation has begun!” she roared, a wild, hopeful light in her eyes. “The All-Father has sent us an army of divine madmen!” She turned to Barney’s group. “Brothers! Sisters! You are with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, yes? We saw your glorious, chaotic arrival on the security systems! We are the Kreisau Circle! We are yours to command!”
Barney tried to explain. “Look, ma’am, it’s not what you think. They’re not an army, they’re just…”
“Silence, brave soldier!” the woman interrupted, mistaking his hesitation for humility. “There is no need for words! Your actions speak for you! The main enemy force is attempting to hold the lower-level power core!” She pointed towards a massive blast door at the far end of the chamber. “That is the heart of this fortress! We will help you, the glorious Vanguard of the Liberation, break through their final defense and strike at the heart of their operation!”
“The power core…” Engineer muttered. “The Da’at Yichud vault!”
“Ma’am, you don’t understand!” Barney pleaded. “Your divine madmen are about to blow up our only ride home!”
But it was too late. The resistance leader, filled with righteous fervor, blew a whistle. Her fighters let out a cheer and charged, adding a fourth faction to the already incomprehensible clusterfuck raging in the U-boat pen.
“Well,” the Postal Dude said, lighting a cigarette amidst the crossfire. “This is turning into a party.”
“FORGET THE LOCALS!” Soldier bellowed, seeing his chance. “CHARGE! WE MUST SECURE THE BIG GLOWY THING BEFORE THESE KEYBOARD-HUMPING COMMUNISTS ACCIDENTALLY SCRATCH THE PAINT!”
The final push was a race against their own unwitting allies. They ran a gauntlet of Nazi laser fire, player-thrown smoke grenades that inexplicably played Russian hardbass music, and now, the supporting fire of a Resistance cell that thought they were all on the same team. Scout had to dodge a friendly rocket from a Resistance fighter, which then hit a player who respawned and accused the Resistance fighter of “spawn-camping.”
They finally reached the massive, circular blast door of the Da’at Yichud vault. It was ancient, covered in glowing, geometric patterns, and sealed tighter than a drum.
And sitting right in the middle of it was a cheerfully blinking block of C4.
Standing next to it was a player in a bright orange jumpsuit, repeatedly pressing the crouch button over the bomb in the universal gesture of victory and disrespect.
“GG EZ,” the player said, his voice a synthesized monotone. “NO RE.”
The digital timer on the bomb read: 0:10.
eloas on Chapter 1 Tue 17 Jun 2025 02:28AM UTC
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PunishedP on Chapter 3 Tue 17 Jun 2025 10:03PM UTC
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