Payback influence ahead.
Heavy, Engineer, and Scout were all onstage and giving loud cheers after they had finished their random performance. Engineer was once again wearing his orange construction helmet.
Suddenly, Sniper called from stage right, "Bugger me! The bully delinquent's coming!" The "delinquent" he referred to was a female cyberbully leader he personally had Heavy and Scout disarm just over five months ago.
"Freaking unbelievable," said Scout.
"Not good!" shouted Heavy.
"Dagit nagit nabit dagit!" yelled Engineer. He planned the bugle-accordion-and-keytar-music session as an act of deliberate poorness. But it seemed that a cyberbully would outright refuse to stand seeing a performance of an old Serbian music piece, often referred to as "Remove Pootis" by Heavy, done badly.
Sniper then gave his order. "One of you rough-types oughta stop that piker, now!" Suddenly, the four of them heard rapid musical beeps from the top of the hill where the main street was.
BEEP-Beep-Beep Beep Beep beep-beep-Beep Beep beep
BEEP-Beep-Beep Beep Beep beep-beep-Beep Beep beep
A girl had a white cell phone out and thumbed the keypad rapidly. She quickly put the phone away, and grabbed a shotgun with one hand and aimed it at the group. The shotgun was gray and had a sight attached at the top and a futuristic-modern look.
"Do you pricks know how f***ed that was?!" she angrily asked in a synthetic voice, with her curse noticeably bleeped.
"Dammit!" yelled Engineer.
Engineer, Heavy, and Scout were on the move and headed in different directions, while Sniper remained at stage right. Engineer tried to run to stage left.
KBLAM! splat!
"Guh!"
Despite being fired from a far distance, the girl's shotgun's spread fire had precisely hit Engineer, causing some blood to spurt out behind him. Engineer turned and fired three of his own spread shots from his Frontier Justice shotgun. It had an ornate design and a cylindrical capacitor with an antenna, but the Frontier Justice's sentry-and-revenge-critical-based tradeoff, which was not used in the investigative missions, limited the shot capacity.
"All units," GLaDOS ordered in her computerized voice, "mandate removal of active signature imprint!" She pointed forward, as if she told the team to "go".
"Yeah!" Scout agreed.
Engineer was at a disadvantage with his reduced shot capacity, but none of his shots seemed to cause a strong impact on this girl.
KBLAM!
"Aggh..." Engineer was knocked over backwards by the girl's precise shotgun fire and found himself unable to get up.
Sniper looked at Engineer and was shocked. "Agh! Bloody bogan!" he yelled. He looked back, placed his rifle's scope to his eye, and fired at the girl's head.
BANG! Ping!
A metallic impact was heard. Due to the girl's reflexes, Sniper's shot didn't hit where it was supposed to.
"Ah, p-ss!" Sniper groaned. He pulled a lever on the rifle. Then, in one swift motion, he quickly put the rifle down and took out a jar of yellow liquid. "Bombs away!" he yelled as he threw the jar high into the air, right at the girl's position.
The girl quickly aimed her shotgun at the ground. She fired and used the gun's recoil to bounce herself backward.
Kblam! Splash!
The jar shattered, but its spilled crude contents did not touch the girl at all.
"Seriously, you f*** this up and do two things wrong," the girl sneered in her synthetic voice, still censored by a bleep.
A whooshing hiss was heard at the left entrance ramp to the stage. Spy had uncloaked and materialized.
"You are an amateur and a fool!" declared Spy. He took out his large-barreled Ambassador revolver in a quick-draw and fired at the girl's head.
The girl was quicker.
BANG! Ping! She oriented her shotgun in front of her head to deflect the Spy's shot, just as she did with Sniper's shot a moment before.
"Preposterous!" shouted a disappointed Spy.
Soldier stood with his rocket launcher aimed from behind a field entrance in the far corner. "Are you trying for a Section Eight?" he called.
KBLAM! splat!
"Agh!" Soldier gasped as the precise shotgun fire hit him and caused some blood to spray out. "Ohh, what's the matter, hippie? Hair get in your eyes?" he taunted. He fired a rocket that, out of luck, was accompanied by an electrical crackle and light blue sparks along its exhaust trail.
The girl crouched quickly. The rocket sailed over her head and exploded in a building's alley.
"You're still on that stupid case against the green haired girl, aren't you?" she accused as she stood back up and aimed her shotgun outward once more.
"Wah-hah!" Scout had made his jumps and landed at the curved wall behind the concrete seating.
KBLAM! splat!
Scout coughed when the precise shotgun spread hit him, but he was ready. "What? You camped the whole time for this?" he called.
PLING! He sent his baseball flying again with his aluminum bat.
"That's f***ing cheating," the girl retorted.
"You said that last time!"
"We got something planned four months from now."
Heavy was standing further away from the stage's left entrance ramp. Remembering a witty remark he made just over five months ago, he called out, "Baby guns!" He threw a point toward the girl using his right hand, with both his middle and index fingers extended; he used a "finger gun", as it were.
"Pow! Ha ha!" called Heavy.
However, the girl had dodged Heavy's "fire" by shooting at the ground before he could make the gesture.
"That's not gonna work anymore, you f***!" the girl declared. That "finger gun" taunt was a factor in the girl's disarming over five months ago.
"Aagh!" Heavy cried in disappointment. He raised his fists in a fighting stance.
Kwhoosh! A green onion missile had blasted off along the main street from behind Heavy, but it seemed that nobody had noticed.
The girl continued her tirade. "I might as well send some of my f***s over to get it over with."
"Well, all right!" Demoman cheered the arrival of the incoming missile with a thick Scottish accent. He was standing away from the stage and at the main street beside Yuki Nagato, who could surely turn the tide.
Yuki was reading a hardcover novel. Its cover featured a closeup of a man holding two active blue lightsabers, but the details were unclear.
"Aye, move it, lassie!" yelled Demoman.
"Leave it to me," assured Yuki. "I'm adept at controlling data."
"Yeah!"
Yuki nodded.
Demoman then ran backwards to give this data-controller some space. In one smooth motion, Yuki then dropped the book onto the ground and put her arms to her sides. She then looked to her left and raised her left arm.
The incoming green onion missile propelled itself from the white end, indicating its inactive status. It then flew into Yuki's raised hand.
WHOOSH. Yuki closed her fingers around the missile and held a tight grip as it stopped its propulsion.
VzzzzzZZZ-beep. With an electrical fizz, the missile's target data was changed. Yuki shifted her stance and let go of the missile in a slow overhand throw.
Vrrak-BANG!
Now active and propelled from the twin green end, the missile then flew quickly and headed straight for the girl with the shotgun.
"What was that?" the girl asked as she aimed her gun at the incoming missile.
KBLAM! KBLAM! KBLAM!
Her shots weren't precise enough for a small target like a missile, especially one that rushed in at full speed.
CRASH!
The missile collided with the girl in the head. The resulting explosion sent her stunned body and her shotgun flying off in different directions.
Demoman began to laugh.
Sniper said, "Ahh, I'm sorry, mate."
Spy laughed mockingly and began to snort.
Medic, who watched the action on mental inhibitor #2's viewscreen, called out, "Can you feel the schadenfreude?". He raised his left fist into the air and turned to look at the Pyro at inhibitor #3.
Soldier also began to laugh, breathlessly.
Pyro laughed a never-before-heard laugh while pointing at his inhibitor's viewscreen. He continued his laugh while leaning forward with his hand above his head.
Scout chuckled and said another witty remark. "You look like you ran through traffic!"
After a pan down from the bright blue cloudy sky, the girl finally appeared on the inhibitors' viewscreens. She lay down on the ground, defeated, with her back to the sky and her head facing to her right.
Her name was Neru Akita, and she was the alleged leader of the theoretical 99.97% cyberbully faction. She was already defeated once, five months ago, when Scout "bonked" her across her own room with his aluminum bat.
Neru had long orange-yellow hair tied in a side ponytail, and eyes that matched her hair color. She wore a dark gray sleeveless shirt with an oval and a circle cut from the back, resembling an exclamation mark or boot-print-shaped cutout. She also wore a yellow necktie on her shirt and a yellow visor on her head. The rest of her clothes were black with a yellow-edge motif: a short pleated skirt, impossibly long thigh-high boots without laces or zippers, and detached sleeves.
She raised her head, showing the stunned expression on her face, and began shaking her head in shame as she used her right hand to push herself up to her knees.
"Ah! Scout!" Heavy called.
"Oh I know, it's not your secret--" Scout began.
"No! That is..."
Heavy then chuckled while Neru continued to shake her head.
Engineer spoke. "Lady, you were getting too big for your britches."
Neru slowly nodded in agreement. Engineer had not known she was wearing shorts underneath her skirt.
"You really are... generous," GLaDOS began.
A smile seemed to slip onto Neru's face for a second.
"Here: I'll put you on," GLaDOS continued. She mimed a phone with her left hand and mimicked Neru's fake voice perfectly, complete with the bleep. " 'Do you pricks know how f***ed that was?!' That's you! That's how dumb you sound! Oh no, wait...."
GLaDOS shook her head as she realized that the synthetic voice that Neru "spoke" in wasn't hers at all. No wonder Neru couldn't speak while she's on the inhibitor viewscreens.
Still shaken from that missile blow, Neru put her hand to her head as she began to walk away. She then crossed her arms and stared angrily to her left. It was anyone's guess as to why she chose to cross her arms and look angry. However, GLaDOS was confused by the idea.
"What are you doing?" GLaDOS asked.
"Aww, now you don't look like a happy camper," said Engineer.
Neru brushed her right hand down her hair as her expression softened. Suddenly, she looked back over to her right, and she began to smile and wave.
"Agh! You have got to be kidding!" said Scout.
A teenage boy with blonde spiky hair and blue eyes, wearing a headset on his head, stood near the point where Neru's shotgun clattered to a halt. He shrugged while looking to his right.
"How could this happen?" a confused Heavy asked. It didn't seem right that a boy like him would end up with a girl like Neru.
The boy looked at Neru and waved to her. He nodded and turned around as Neru stumbled forward and put her right hand onto his shoulder.
"Why don't you all get along before one of you gets hurt?" suggested Engineer.
Neru raised her left hand's index finger and gestured for the boy to wait a moment. The boy looked away in a silent sigh while Neru smiled cutely at Scout, who began to complain.
"You morons are about to catch a real--"
Neru winked.
"Oh man, that's beautiful." Scout chuckled as Neru and the boy walked away.
Kshzzzt.
Danny was not pleased with the situation at all. He shouted into the phone, "Oh, f*** me!"
Click here to read the next chapter: chapter 8, or:
Click here to read the Disappearance edition of this chapter
