A/N: Holy macaroni, so many reviews. fapfapfapfap -
I've never been happier in all of my life. Thanks, people.
But it's sorta hard to type now with all of these happenises blocking my keyboard.

"Woah-ho dere, Snipes!" Scout remarked as he shook a box that was filled to the brim with tasteless Wheat-O's cereal into his eleventh bowl of milk that morning. This ginormous amount of unhealthy breakfast would have probably angered his Ma, but he was clearly too rebellious of a teenager to make a sensible judgment. "Dude, you are lookin' wayyy pissier than evah before, and I ain't even talkin' 'bout all dose Jarate cans or whatever ya call 'em." Scout rolled his eyes at Sniper. "Jeez, man, sorry we sorta yelled at ya yesterday, but ya look like ya just up an' shat a dog."

Due to a angered tacit rumbling from deep in the Australian man's throat, the apology did not seem to be accepted. Scout blinked for a moment and then went back to making his breakfast.

Engineer looked up from his eggs and toast to take a fretful glance at Sniper, who, in fact, didn't look too good at all as he sulked over his cup of coffee and refused to look at the other two REDs in the kitchen that morning. Engineer coughed and uneasily began trying to cheer him up; "Listen, buddy, y'okay? Got a bellyache? Y'all look like y' git a real bad bellyache brewin' down there in yer gut this morn'! Wanna call Medic? Hell, I'll even call him for ya...I mean, if ya'd like. That is, he ain't necessarily up yet, so that wouldn't be so nice...but I reckon if ya really – "

"Showers don't work," Sniper muttered, making each slow word calm and veiled in his utter hatred. He raised the mug to his lips and took a drawn-out sip that overstated his nefarious stillness. The now-empty cup hit the table with a slam.

"Big whoop!" Scout scoffed, digging a spoon into his cereal. "So? Showahs broke, real scary! What do ya care so much, huh? Dude, if dis thing's only about showahs, then I seriously – "

"Oi said...the showers are broken." Sniper's hat rode lower on his frowning face to completely engulf both his eyebrows and his receding hairline. He paused solemnly, sending shivers down Engineer's spine as he turned toward him. "Fix. It." The last word transformed into a currish growl; "Now."

"A-alrighty then!" squeaked the obsequious fidget of an Engineer, rising up hurriedly and jitters causing him to tug recklessly at his collar. "I'm-ah, I'm going to, uh, er, fix th' showers then! Heh! Ah-hyup! Gonna go fix 'em now! Yep, off to fix th' showers! Heh!"

"Hm." Sniper nodded slowly, sunglasses reflecting the anxiousness in the room and thus adding to the calm but enigmatic sentences. "No worries."

As Engineer rushed out of the room, shoulders hunched up to his ears in fear, Scout sprang up abruptly as well. "'Ey, uh, no offense, I'm gonna dip too!"

"Fine by me," Sniper agreed with an emotionless sniff, watching them scurry out the doorway like terrified awkward shoe salemans. Scout's cereal and Engineer's small and tidy breakfast assortment were forgotten and thus left to cool behind Sniper's yellow sunnies.

They almost fell down as they hurried out of the kitchen due to a clear display of their Australian-o-phobia. "Oh, so yer jus' running from me, thinkin' ya can just run yer ass off like dat, ya pussy turd?" Scout whispered frantically as he shuffled along behind the frightened stiff-legged Texan. "Aw, hell no, you ain't leavin' me alone wit' dis douche!"

Even in times of great fear like this one, Engineer remembered the values of friendship and shook his head. "Now, now, ya don't go 'round usin' names, kid," he muttered under his breath, fatherly instinct rising up just as he used to correct his little Sarah whenever she added a naughty word to her immature vocabulary.

"What? No. Way. Yer kiddin' me, right?" Scout froze in his tracks to gape, unblinking eyes spreading over his forehead. His voice rasped into a loud whisper. "His REAL name is Douche? As in, like, Mr. Douche? Dude! Dude, TALK about fitting names – "

"No, it ain – ah, forgit it, never mind. But yer right about one thing; somethin' must be botherin' him loads," Engineer added quietly as he looked far behind him to see a Sniper rubbing his palms together in obvious stress. "We'd better fix those showers."

Scout hesitated before raising one side of his smirk in disapproval. "Uh...we?"

"Hand me that tiny wrench, will ya, please?" Engineer asked, groping for the toolbox but finding it just outside his reach. Plumbing wasn't his specialty at all, but Sniper was quite serious and there wasn't anyone as logical or as patient as the man that had spent four years trapped in the engineering college that offered truckloads of daily work. He figured the tiny wrench he used to tighten sentry tripods would at least help him a bit with opening up and examining the first shower head that was only accessible to him via the stepladder he'd found in the janitor's closet.

"Naw," Scout replied nonchalantly, swinging his legs on the chair set next to the toolbox. "Get it yerself, fatass. I ain't yer servant."

Engineer sighed, holding the shower head's base in place. It was just outside the reach of his stubby arms that flailed about as an attempt to retrieve the tool from its place so far below. "Please?" He extended a hand as far as it would go, and it covered only half the distance. "I can't reach, boy."

"Naw," he answered again without showing any signs of proper recalcitrant feelings. "Oh, yeah, by the way, da hell you doin' to dat thing anyway? What are ya, tryin' to turn it into a sentry?" Scout frowned. "Dude, what da fuck? I don't wan' a sentry in my showah! What if it accidentally sees the BLU water because it's a shower thing and den it gonna be all, 'POW, POW, POW!' and I'm-a be all, 'DUDE, WHAT?' and then it's gonna fire da stupid bullets at me and I'm-a have to be dodgin' 'em like a pussy ass and den the wattah will get all bloody in da shower jus' like in Phsyco? Remember dat part? Dat was some creepy ass shit, man."

Engineer turned around to face the Scout, whose widened gray eyes seemed to state that he actually expected a response. "Uh, sure thing, son." Engineer blinked. "Well, listen, I promise I ain't buildin' it no sentry." The Texan chuckled with a warm smile and patted the metal that stemmed outward to form the iron cylinders. "Heck, all I'm doing is checkin' the actual pipes 'round this room just in case it's mighta been blocked somehow by poor maintenance. And then I should check the boiler. That could be a problem too." He removed his hand and held it outstretched as he gestured towards the toolbox with his chin. "Now, would ya kindly hand me that tiny wrench?"

He raised up the wrench that rested atop the toolbox in a clumsy fist. "Dis one?"

"Yes-sir-ee, that one." Engineer reached down for the wrench and nabbed the delicate tool from Scout's hand. He began unscrewing the top of the head from the non-paragon bent iron that surrounded it with a grunt of effort. The cylinder half popped off as the miniscule rusted nail lost its hold. "Much obliged, lil' fella."

"Yeah, yeah, whatevs. So, what'cha doin' wit it if y'ain't buildin' a sentry?" Scout prompted. "You tryin' ta lookit the pipes like a borin' bitch-ass? Or are you just, like, lookin' at da shower thingy dat sprays the wattah? I hate dat dumb old cheap scuzz-bucket piece a' shit. It don't even move, just like at my dumb old house. I like da one in my new house, it's real chill. It gives me swag, and also, I can sing in da showah...if I want to. I kinda pretend it's like a mic, sorta, and I sorta pull it near. Don't everyone do dat? Well, I know Stevie do dat, he's my biggest brudda an' he sings dis stupid song goin'" – his high pitch provided for an imitation that was an equivalent to a shriek that probably broke all of Spy's formal-event wine glasses in the kitchen and Engineer's eardrums, judging by his cringe – "'ain't no mountains high enough, ain't no valley low enough,' or somethin' like dat – I can sing dat shit too, but Ma says he sings da goodest out of all our bruddas...but honestly? Dat ain't gonna get him NOWHERE, buddy – "

"Uh-oh," said Engineer quietly, not even bothering to listen to Scout's garrulous vents anymore.

"What happened?" Scout screeched, running to the shower head and shoving Engineer aside to make him topple over the ladder and clunk onto the floor. "Can I see? Lemme see. What happened? Is it gonna blow? WHY DIDN'T YA TELL ME, FAGGOT?" He pulled his hands down his cheeks to reveal the obscured lower part of his eye socket and a very disturbing scowl. "Oh, oh man, we're all gonna die, we're all gonna DIE! Better safe than sorry, BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY – "

Engineer grunted from the floor. "Calm it," he snapped, Scout's infamy getting on his nerves. Although Scout had to loom over him as he laid on the floor, Engineer put on a solemn face and explained logically. "Lemme explain to ya. So it seems th' actual shower's fine. It's either somethin' in them pipes or somethin' in the boiler, just as I thought." Goggles made the large conduit cylinders that roped around the walls and up to the ceiling look like dark iron snakes, and that induced a dejected sigh from Engineer at all the work that had to be done. "It will take quite a while, I'll give ya that. Week or so."

"A week? That's bullcrap," Scout huffed. He lifted his shoulders up in a shrug that showed his defying disposition. "C'mon, biiig deeeaal, a week of no showahs! I never smell; I ain't a big fat flyin' sweat-ball like fatso is, 'kay? It don't matter 'bout me!"

"Oh, maybe not 'bout you, son," Engineer warned with cogent worry, tapping the head of the wrench against the palm of his yellow glove as he shook his head. "But believe me, it's gonna matter 'bout them, all right."

Scout tossed the baseball a few feet into the damp midsummer air and then caught it, only to bring it back up again. "Batter up, fag! Let's go, let's go!"

"Mmh mm nuh mm muh!" Pyro yelled from the other side of the control point bridge swinging Scout's bat teasingly. "Mmhr-mmr! Mmn mmrh MMH mhr!"

"Back at ya, doitsbag!" Scout scoffed as he rolled his eyes at his only baseball buddy on the whole dumb team, although Pyro probably wouldn't see his defensive gesture from that far anyway. With a smiling flash of his buck teeth and a steady toss, he grunted as he sent the ball zipping through the air. "Yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Pyro's boxy body shuffled a bit as the ball neared. Suddenly, silver struck cotton with a hearty whack that sent the tiny white streak soaring. The two eyes of the mask lifted upwards to the vast blue and a cheer immersed from the inside of the mask.

"Not bad!" shouted Scout as he lifted a hand to his forehead and squinted at the sky to make out a ball flying. "Noice!" He smiled and put his arm back to his side. "Well, for a dumbass like you anyway."

"MMRH!" Pyro placed one rubbery gloves near the uniform's hips and raised the baseball bat high into the air whilst stomping towards Scout. "Mmur mmh mm nh mm rgh mrr!" Pyro stuck a hand out expectantly.

"Jeez, chillax!" Scout routed in non-laudatory anger for his favorite teammate. "I'll get da ball! Calm yer fire-y damn tits foist!"

"Mmr mhn mm mmmuh!" Pyro yelled, tapping one black boot persistently in an anticipation that was filled with attitude. "Mm, nmr mmh!"

"Arright, time me, then," he said, eyes fixed on the ball that rested in the grass on the outskirts of the bridge. Scout bent his knees and raised his hands behind him. "Three, two, one...GO!" He dashed off towards the ball in a red-and-grey blur and skidded back next to Pyro in a matter of seconds, huffing as his face grew flushed. He tossed the baseball into Pyro's glove and, in return, took his bat in his hands. "So? How fast?"

"Mhn, mmr mr, nnm mmnr, mmn mmh mnn, mmhm mrr!" Pyro said, then muffled a giggle behind the mask.

"Lying basta'd!" Scout yelped accusingly, slugging Pyro in the arm. "Count next time, will ya?"

Suddenly ignoring his friend's quirky comeback, Pyro froze and pointed behind Scout. "Mm! Mnh mrr?"

"Huh?" Scout whirled his head around to see the manifold remnants of his team streaming out of the back doorway, led by a scowling Soldier that marched at great speed. "'Ey, wha' da hell you think ya doin' here? Yo, back off! Uh, if ya hadn't noticed, me an' Pyro 're trying to play BASEBALL ovah here?"

"Negatory!" Soldier hollered as he neared Scout. "You are practicing with the rest of our men, whether you LIKE it or NOT!"

Pyro leaped up in anger, partisan to Scout and agreeing with the fellow Bostonian's angered shock. "MMH MRH!"

"'Whethah you like it or not', 'whethah you like it or not'," Scout mocked to Pyro, inducing another masked giggle as he swayed his head and imitated Soldier's low voice. He turned back to the burly American with an extreme eye-roll. "Say what? Dude, who are YOU ta tell ME what ta do?"

"War is not aDEM-OCRACY, son!" Soldier berated at the top of his lungs. He snatched the steel baseball bat from Scout's hands and tossed it into the air. "My every word is LAW!"

The bat clunked on a nearby helmet.

"Ow!" screamed Engineer.

"Wo'd is law? No democracy? Democracy-law-wo'ds my ASS!" Scout frowned and locked his arms over his chest in an attempt to get his way. "Yo, gimme my bat back, asswipe!"

Soldier grabbed Scout's elbow, ignoring Scout's whines of acrimony when he realized someone that stood about 2 feet shorter was actually abrogating him. "Now, now, son, YOU have gotta RUN to WIN! And JUST be-cause it is the last day of cease-fire does NOT mean you can SLACK OFF!" Soldier yanked him along as he ran, logic clearly intransigent about the fact that Scout was already the fastest runner on RED. The team pointlessly started off on another lap around the gorge. "One, two, three, four, HUP!"

Pyro dejectedly sank to the slower back of the clump, where a maudlin Sniper tramped slowly and aimed his sorrowful eyes on his . Pyro, sanguine as usual, poked the saddened pariah and Sniper looked up.

"Mmhr shmnn mr mmnh?" Pyro asked with ostensible concern.

"No worries, Oi'm foine." His brown boots kicked at the floor, and he hacked and spit to the side. "I just don't know whoi in th' hell we're doin' this," he muttered, the only one on his malleable team to take onto the manifest. "Oi don't run in th' bloody game anyway. Oi just stand over theh' loike a good ol'...well, Snoipah, y'know? Bloody bogan, don't need any stinkin' RUNNIN' loike Soldier says."

"Mmhr," Pyro agreed. "Mrh, mruh!"

"Nah, Pyros've gotta run to set people on fire," Sniper replied as he forgot his previous malevolence. He chuckled.

"Mmr hmmr?" Pyro repeated, head cocked in confusion.

Meanwhile, Scout was jogging along beside Soldier due to a crushing grip on his elbow when he picked up an unfamiliar scent lingering in the air.

"Ew!" Scout whined with a grimace of disgust. "Who smells?"

"May well be you, lad," Demoman chortled, adding unnecessary calumny to the conversation. "Ye' like a little wee stink bomb, per'aps! Stinkin' up da place wit' yer adorable little sweaties!"

"Shut da hell up! I hate you! Faggot! Go die!" advocated the ambiguous Scout, lifting up his armpit to take inhale his wonderful aroma of a slight arboreal smell of his natural prepubescent deodorant. "And it's not me, ya dickhead cuntbasket shits! I smell like a freakin' SOAP bar! Yeah, top that!"

"Leetle man," huffed Heavy, taking huge steps to catch up with them and paused every few words to take a deep breath, "...is probably...smell like nos'hing...because he have nos'hing...in tiny baby pants...HA HA!"

"EXCUSE ME?" screamed Scout. "Hey, an' it – " As Heavy finally managed to catch up to them, Scout cringed in agony and tried to escape Soldier's grip as he writhed like a dog in pain. "..aaaAAAUUUGGHH! SOMEONE GET ME AWAY! DA HEAVY SMELLS LIKE A ROTTIN' DUMPSTAH FULL A' CHEESE VAGINAS – "

Medic laughed from the near back. He paused for a moment, seeing the Russian sigh dejectedly. "Don't insult za Heavy, it's not your fault rotten dumpsters of cheese vaginas ah za only smell your mozher has provided to you! Ooh hoo hoo hoo, ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA!"

"Please calm it!" pleaded the arbiter of a languid Engineer who wheezed along behind them, still rubbing his sore head that suffered the collision of itself and a steel-plated baseball bat. "I dunno, I mean, we're all runnin'. Someone's bound ta not smell like a darn daisy or somethin' of th' sort."

"Yeah, I know we're all runnin', genius," scorned an obstreperous Scout that began to take logic with a grain of sarcastic salt. "But now my nose hoits. It's like sum'un's sticking a goddamned piece a shit straight in my nostr'ls and it smells like a dick and it's grosser than a whole pile a' barf, and did I evah tell you guys when my brudda Car'hl barfed ALL over the floor, LEGIT – "

"Shut it," Spy spat with a sneer of irreverence, running stealthily to catch up with the top of the pack. "No one cares about your stupid stories."

A wonderful fresh aroma of citrus and vanilla floated through the air as pinstripes neared, making the summer air less sticky and instead making it a refreshing cloud of serenity.

Scout took a small sniff of the air and screamed.

"AAAAAAAUGH! OH, OH GAWD, SOMEONE 'ROUND HERE SMELLS LIKE A FUCKING CITRUS SHOVED UP A WHOLE DICKWAD OF GAY STUFF AND IT IS SO GODDAMNED STRONG DAT IT'S DAMAGIN' MY FRICKIN' NOSE FROM THE INNER PARTS IN IT! AND PLUS, ALSO, IT'S NOT VERY PLEASANT! AND NOW IF I BREATHE ALL THIS STINK AIR, MY INSIDES WILL SMELL LIKE STINK AIR, TOO!"

Soldier scowled, taking a suspicious sniff and then using the hand that wasn't holding Scout's elbow in place to fan the air before him. "Holy shit, that smells terrible. Go bon voyage yerself back to Paris, would ya?"

Spy planted his feet into the soil. He raised up a hand in frustration and brought it to his forehead. "You imbeciles. Is zhere at least SOMEONE is 'ere with proper class?" Sniper looked up from the back, wondering if he should say anything. "Not zhat any of you would recognize it, but Citrus Bigarrade is a VERY prized cologne by Creed zhat – "

"Screw everythin'!" Scout announced, tearing from Soldier's grip. "Foist da drunk dude, den da fat guy, and now even the French one who completely swam in some snails or somethin'. None offense intended, but you ALL smell like SHIT. I don' even WANNA know how da fuck Snipes's gonna smell; pro'lly like a piss sweat ass lake or somethin'! I feel like me n' Pyro are da only ones wit any NON-OVERREACTIN' smell things from ourself."

He trudged to the back, ignoring the ranting Soldier that froze to yell at his behind. Yanking his one-and-only-friend's hand and continuing to make his way over to the battlements, he muttered, "Pyro, c'mon." They walked off into the hallway leading to the television room, Scout ranting so hard his face slowly reddened. Pyro chose to listen to his ramblings solely for the purpose of calming him down. "Let's go watch some baseball or Green Acres or Huckleberry Finn or somethin' chill like dat if it's on, pally. Hope it's baseball, but dat shit depends on what time is it. I dunno what time is it, though. Whatevah, any ol' dumb show is bettah than dese dumbasses that I hate and wanna shove 'em into a dumb hole. Even really bad shows about some dumb chick flick no one wanna see.

"Like remember that one time we was wantin' ta watch some World Series and then Medic was cryin' over some shit on da telly about some skag who was dyin' like a faggot. Oh god dammit, I hate Medic when he sayed before that my Ma smells like rotten cheese vaginas. My Ma smells like COOKIES, what's it to him, huh? Doc's a dumbass 'cause he don't know nothin'." Pyro jumped as a black soccer cleat slammed onto the floor in a brute Boston sign of doctoral hatred. "FUCK HIM! My Ma is da SHIT!"

Scout brought a finger to his chin, discerning Pyro's cocked-head of confusion as he continued to shuffled towards the ragged brown sofa that rested before the television. "...Well, ya nevah met my Ma, but fo' yo' info'mation she is real neat! I think I told ya that, like, a gazillion times, but I don't really care. But Medic's such a dick dat he gonna insult a good guy, and 'e's all stupid an' dumb because we hate 'im. Ain't dat right, Pyro?"

"Mmhm!" His best friend nodded in excited agreement. Pyro skipped over to the small television to press the power button with zest that did not balance with Scout's, considering the Bostonian sank with a dejected sigh into the squeaky mattress of the sofa. Pyro eagerly flopped down beside him as they both set their eyes on some old black-and-white show about genies that Scout hated. "Mmrm shrmm mm," Pyro assured, throwing a hand around Scout's shoulders. "Mmhsh's mm mhnm mm mmnrm!"

Scout nodded, hat sinking to his frown. He kicked at the linoleum. "Got dat right. Can't deal wit 'em. I freakin' tell ya, dose stinkheads're drivin' me INSANE, no lie."