4F

Aiden's screaming seemed endless, though the rest of the team had long since grown used to it. They were too polite to ask why he might have been screaming, but most everyone had a decent idea why. Ward shuffled quietly over to Cauthon and grumbled, "When do you think he'll quit screaming?" Unfortunately, even if it escaped Aiden's ears, it was still loud enough for Tankred to hear. "TANKRED NOT CARE HOW LONG HE SCREAMS LIKE A WHINY BABY, TANKRED ENDURES," he whispered. At that, Aiden did quit screaming long enough to glare, bite down hard on his lips, and wave his malfeasant arm at Tankred. Sinews of fibrous uniform and bone wrapped themselves through fragmented muscle in place of its skin, girthy and tightly wound bundles of nerves and blood vessels poking out through gaps like branches would sprout from a tree of flesh. The most unnerving part seemed to be the total lack of blood one might expect to coat the surface; this was no wound at all, but rather it appeared as if it was how Aiden's arm had always been, or was meant to be. It was easy enough to ignore it when a chair turned itself inside out, or a bench disappeared from existence (to be replaced with a much oversized squeaky duck, now claimed by Doomrider), but team /tg/ had to work to ignore what was happening to their teammate; in large part the difficulty was caused by his immediate, violent, response. Once his point was made, he promptly resumed screaming.
Tankred coughed politely and turned away to shuffle in a bit closer to the rest of his huddled-up teammates, at least as close as he could get without accidentally squishing them. "tankred seen worse," he said, this time managing a genuine whisper. The team was not unfamiliar with the forces of chaos, hell, they shared a team a few, so he may well have been telling the truth. That had nothing to do with why they were so unnerved, though. Chaos had purpose or at least an intent, no matter how alien the motivations behind it were. Team /test/ had not intended to do any of the odd things they did. Team /test/ was merely sitting in their assigned area, each seated in a random direction, utterly oblivious to their limbs phasing in and out of existence, and equally uncaring of the collateral damage their mere existence caused.
"I told you boys we should have just shot the fucking things," said Henderson, "I've dealt with these sorts before."
Hassan had been busy pasting a poster advertising his Emporium to the wall of the alcove, but when he heard Henderson speaking, he ran over and began patting him reassuringly on the shoulders. "No, no, friend," he said, "We must beat them fair! For the camels!"
Henderson grit his teeth in frustration, but after a moment, he allowed himself to relax. "Yes, the camels. You're lucky I don't have a gnome in this war, Hassan."
Hassan hugged him briefly and stepped a few quick paces back. "You best of friend, many free camels when they are saved."
Papa G'aap tittered merrily from his Designated Safety Corner from a Designated Safe Distance. "I do so love their style! It would be such a ~shame~ to off them all without trading pointers!"
"TANKRED NO LIKE SOUND OF THAT," he said, to which just about everyone agreed, "GIVE DOOMRIDER DOUBLE BAG OF COCAINE AS REWARD FOR KEEPING UNCLEAN ONE AWAY FROM THEM AFTER MATCH?"
Hassan rubbed his hands uncomfortably but nodded. Even with the sheer quantity of past sales he'd made, he only had so much money to go around. It turns out that fantastic deals and prices are not conducive to accumulating significant savings, and there were many things that needed funding to keep their ramshackle team together. Gambling money, lots and lots of collateral damage expenses, drug procurement, quote unquote "tight bitches"...
"WOOOAAH HELL YEAH MAN CONSIDER IT DONE!" Doomrider celebrated, to which Papa G'aap pouted, which was not a pleasant sight to behold.
"AAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA-oh cool my arm's fine," said Aiden, as his regular arm popped back into existence. "I never want to experience anything like that ever again."
Henderson laughed, "then you definitely don't want to join me on my next adventure."
"Gentlemen, now that has finally ended, we need to talk." Cauthon drew the team in, or at least the vaguely sane third of it. He tossed a deck of cards at Henderson and waited patiently, only beginning the quick conference once the scary old badger began his own with a quick match of Strip Poker versus both of the Giants and Doomrider. "This match is going to be serious. My sources tell me-"
"TANKRED SEEN NO SOURCES, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" said Tankred, and Cauthon gave him a sly grin. "Don't you worry about it. They tell me that, besides obvious reality-bending effects, team /test/ has at least as many goals as we do, and that they took out several crowd favorites."
"TANKRED SEEN NO CROWD YET EITHER. STADIUM EMPTY, ALWAYS EMPTY?" Tankred interrupted again, perplexed.
"Not important, please," said Cauthon. "The important take-away is that they won in a brutally competitive group, and we've got to beat them. We need a plan of some kind."
Ward smiled. "I'm good at those! Let me just,"
Hassan quickly covered Ward's mouth with a hand. "No, Matthew, you cannot change Hassan' team and uniform on spot. Spend enough money to get team together as is!" Ward pulled away, "I wasn't- but," he said, frustrated, before acquiescing. "alright fine, you're the boss."
"Anyone else have ideas they'd like to share going in?" Cauthan asked.
"TANKRED SHOULD BE FORWARD! FORWARDS GET ALL THE BITCHES!" Tankred said, but Cauthan shook his head. "Tankred what do you do best?" He asked, patiently.
"TANKRED ENDURES..." Tankred admitted, dejected.
The Servo Skull beeped a few times but since no one could speak machine everybody ignored it. That was unfortunate, too, because the Servo Skull had a great deal of valuable diagnostic information on the nature of the other team, its composition, and their success-rates with various strategies..
"Alright, then. I'm laying some ground rules, to be explained to our other teammates when the time comes." Cauthan said, sensible enough.
"Rule one: Avoid tackles at all costs."
Ward grimaced. "Doomrider's gonna hate that one."
Cauthan nodded. "Papa, too, but we've gotta minimize contact with those guys. Every time you touch them, you get a bit less stable."
"and less stable is not pleasant," affirmed Aiden. "You don't have to tell me twice."
"Rule two: Do not talk to them on or off the field at any cost."
Hassan nodded, then promptly shook his head. "Hassan make absolutely no promises whatsoever. How Hassan re-establish his market without new customers?"
"Well, I tried," said Cauthan, "it seems like they're being fed information from their own commentator. Growing, somehow. Just don't tell it too much valuable information."
"Finally, last but not least, win at all costs."
"THAT GOES WITHOUT SAYING," said Tankred. "OF COURSE WE'LL WIN!"
"No," said Cauthan, "you don't understand. Yes, Hassan's camels are a big deal. Yes, we're all driven lads who want to take home games. This is something bigger. Team /test/ scored no goals in its first game against a fairly mediocre team, then two against one that wasn't any better- but get this, in their final game of the set? It was a 4-3."
Ward took in a sharp breath. "What kind of team was that?"
Cauthan was deadly serious and his voice matched. "Heavy duty, long-standing team. They'd played pretty poorly the past few days, but this was slated to be a radical turn-around. They scored their three goals in under ten minutes, after half-time."
"Well, what happened?" asked Aiden, "you said /test/ won?"
Cauthan nodded. "They didn't just win- after team /woo/ began to break out those insane goals, team /test/ began to replicate them. Their game-winning goal was almost a carbon copy of one /woo/ had made only twenty minutes prior, and it was done at the very end of the match- such that /woo/ could not even hope to save themselves from the defeat."
Aiden understood the big picture first, other than the Servo Skull, who no one could understand. "They got their first match against a hard team and performance spiked radically. You're saying if they beat us, this shit is only going to get worse?"
"That's right," says Cauthan, "and you know first-hand why these guys winning would be a bad long-term turn-out for everybody, right?"
Henderson had been listening in, of course. His brand of crazy was a convenient facade to fool unruly Gods, even if there were grains of true insanity crawling beneath it. He knew exactly what Cauthan meant, but he was still confident in their team. /tg/ was a strange collection of folks, hardly fit to be corralled into one team even, but they all had something that made them tic. More importantly, they'd made it through several matches with him present and none had died yet. Even when he'd rigged explosives in their water keg to distract team /hisparefugio/ during half-time. When Hassan called in the Jungle Camel favor (see: page 97) he was wary of their chances, whether he could carry some ponce soccer team to victory. Instead he'd found a collection of people so radically different from him that they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. At this point he figured there was no campaign they couldn't complete, no crusade they couldn't end, so long as they turned their ramshackle unit into an oiled machine.
Yes, /test/ was a team of monsters and oddities, but who better to slay them than /tg/?