Team Fortress: Soaked Through

Chapter Sixteen: No Pain, No Problem!

   "You had better start bloody talking, Tractus."

   Sniper took off his glasses and slipped them between the buttons of his shirt, rubbing his eyes. They all had been looking for hours, but with no luck. What was worse, Tractus had been completely silent, giving them nothing but an enraging smirk.

   "Oh, he must be close," the tour guide said, yawning. "Otherwise I wouldn't have brought you here."

   "A fat lot of good that's doin' us," Demoman mumbled. He looked in alleyway after alleyway, shoving trash to the sides with his foot. B.L.U Medic was checking under every piece of debris that littered the road: wooden boards, pieces of brick, piles upon piles of signage - it all yielded nothing.

   "Tractus," he said slowly, "I don't know vhat you vant from us. Perhaps you are naturally malevolent, or perhaps you have been sent by someone. Eizer vay, you understand zhat ve are helpless."

   B.L.U Medic sat down on a small hill of yellow bricks, wincing.

   "But ve don't have time. I vish ve could humor you.  However, our bodies may be close to shutting down, and it vill take our collective consciousness vis it. So, if zhere is a vay you vant to kill us, or anyvun you have to take us to, I suggest..."

   "Oh, how wordy you are! Are you really saying anything, though?"

   Tractus's face darkened, and he stood up to face his reluctant tour group.

   "If your brain was one sixteenth the size of your mouth, you would have figured it out by now. You think I want to be here? Do you think I want to chauffeur you like you're some sort of bratty child?"

   B.L.U Medic shrank back into the bricks.

"I...I'm not..."

   "Oh, please! Urgh...I can't...I don't think even you could help me now..."

   What followed was the most disgusting thing that any of them had ever seen. Tractus began to gag and cough, his body contorting to the sky. His jaw suddenly unhinged, and something began poking out of his throat. Sniper could have sworn it was moving, but everything kept going smoothly. The object became longer and longer and longer, causing Tractus to double over in pain. Finally, with a final hock, the object landed on the floor, covered in saliva and not a small amount of blood.

Tractus started to gag again, but Sniper had bigger fish to fry. Shoes, legs...was that a...a person?

"You know, we must find a better means of travel."

The body got up, brushing itself off to no avail. It was a small boy, just like Tractus.

"Is he almost done, Murus?"

As if on cue, another body thudded next to him, who also promptly rose. Tractus, or Murus, rubbed his throat and coughed.

"Well, that wasn't exactly hunky-dory."

All of the boys, except for the red stains on two of them, looked exactly the same.

'Are they brothers?' Sniper thought, trying to distract himself enough to keep from throwing up. He looked back at the two other men, who shared his sentiment. Demo had his forearm over his mouth, and Medic had covered his face with his hands.

"You wanted a few answers," the first boy said, "and now you may have a lot more questions. Quite odd, isn't it?"

The second one shrugged. "Eh, you get used to it. 'S not going in that's the problem, just getting out."