Chapter Text
The first of October came again, so two teams of six mercenaries prepared for Halloween. All twelve of them had spell book magazines, grappling hooks, and canteens to store power ups.
The first member of each team was a solider who wielded a rocket launcher, a pump action sawed off shotgun, a banner with a conch shell to use as a horn to blow into to activate beneficial effects, metal reinforced jungle boots, and a riding crop.
The second member of each team was a pyromaniac that wielded a homemade flamethrower, the same shotgun as the soldiers, a flare gun, a metal jetpack, a gasoline canister meant to be thrown, and a 1950s automobile jack held upside down with a car battery strapped to the front.
The third member of each team was a demolition expert who wielded two different kinds of grenade launchers (one of which fired sticky bombs), a pair of steel pointed boots curved up at their tips, a ship’s steering wheel used as a shield, and an ax with an evil looking grinning face similar to those carved into pumpkins for Halloween cut into the broad side of the ax.
The fourth member of each team, the heavy weapons experts, wielded a minigun, the same shotgun as the rocket wielding soldiers and pyromaniacs, a sandwich that healed damage when eaten and could regenerate it, and boxing gloves that sped them up but drained their maximum health when worn (though their health drain from the gloves regenerated on their own when they weren’t being worn).
The fifth member of each team were the healers, who wielded a crossbow that healed their allies and damaged their enemies, a syringe gun that fired used syringes from a needle disposal container, a modified fire hose connected to a backpack the healers wore that fired a healing beam of energy, and a cleaver and syringe attached to the grip of a bone saw. The healing beam of energy was a mixture of blood, piss, the same sandwiches the heavy weapons experts ate, and painkillers that were all charged with electricity.
The final member of each team was a sniper who wielded a sniper rifle, a compound bow, a sub machine gun, a jar of their own piss that they threw at enemies, a backpack that healed them over time, and a giant Bowie knife.
One of the teams was associated with the color blue while the other was associated with the color yellow. On the blue team, Sara Newman wielded the rocket launcher, Joe Scay wielded the sniper rifle, Seth Williams wielded the two grenade launchers, Reuben Rayne wielded the flamethrower, Aadam James was the healer, and Karenna Stone wielded the minigun.
On the yellow team, Fadeline Cooley wielded the rocket launcher, Steven, who no one knew the surname of, wielded the sniper rifle, Tiberius McBoss wielded the two grenade launchers, Marco Conrad wielded the flamethrowers, wielding the minigun was Eric Cole, and Bukaka Cooley, the wife of Fadeline, was the healer.
The announcer for both teams was Koglaxon, a fiend who had possessed a spell book and allowed it to move on its own, fly with flaps of its covers and pages, and even bite people despite the lack of teeth. Even if he wasn’t possessing it, the spell book was still bound in human skin, written in human blood, covered in tiny human hairs, was not edited by professionals, and its magic spells were between long stretches of copyrighted characters having sex with each other.
The twelve were all blessed with the power to respawn less than thirty seconds after they died, though it did not affect aging.
The first set of battles between the Blue Team and the Yellow Team was during a harvest. The goal was for the teams to capture and keep a control point for three minutes.
The battle started and Sara and Fadeline used their bazookas to rocket jump to the control point. Once they saw enemies, though, they pulled out their shotguns and started firing. Once the firefight was over, Fadeline won, noticing Joe attempt to snipe him. She captured it for Yellow Team, but Aadam appeared, healing Karenna as she used her minigun. By then, Sara had respawned, but rather than try to defend or recapture the control point, she fought Tiberus but blew herself up while rocket jumping, meaning she had to respawn again.
Reuben and Fadeline fought, with the former using an airblast from his flamethrower to deflect a fired rocket back at Fadeline.
The battle ended with a victory for Yellow Team.
The next mission was at an abandoned manor that Yellow Team had to defend from Blue Team before they somehow swapped positions and Blue would have to defend from Yellow.
The battle began with Eric and Bukaka defending a control point from Sara, Joe, Seth, and Reuben, Bukaka healing Eric. The four of them killed the two defenders, but as they captured it, a skeleton with a pumpkin for a head wielding an ax appeared from the ground and attacked members of both teams. Rather than form a truce, though, they had to fight each other and the maniac, whose target could be deflected if his current target hit an enemy with a melee attack.
It was then that both teams realized they could be using spells to give themselves an advantage, so they said some fake Latin and used spells to help themselves and harm the other team.
Yellow Team kept the other two control points intact before some cosmic force swapped the two teams’ positions. Blue Team used grappling hooks to get places faster and used their resupply rooms to get power ups for their canteens, which stayed when they died and respawned.
However, Blue Team were worse at defending than attacking and they lost control of the manor.
The third mission was another one where the teams fought over a single control point, but this time, there was another shared enemy. This one, though, was a giant eye that was way smarter than the ax wielding maniac. The giant eye fired explosive projectiles and was smart enough to aim where its targets were going to be rather than where they were and even juggle them. The giant eye could also teleport and leave portals to a segment of Spri like Purgatory, which both teams took advantage of to get health back due to having to call a truce whenever the eye showed up. When they killed the eye, they turned on each other again.
That battle went in favor of Blue Team that time.
After that, they had to go to a haunted fortress where they called a truce whenever a hostile wizard who had both melee and ranged attacks showed up to kill members of both teams. He showed up way more often than the team members would have liked, which was made worse by how a team won by holding the control point for seven minutes and it became unclaimed when the wizard showed up.
After an hour of fighting, Blue Team won before both teams had yet another mission. This mission was to push the corpse of their enemies’ former employer to Everrot, which was like Hell in Christianity.
Besides each other, the teams had to fight reanimated skeletons that caused them all to crap their pants… not due to any power of the skeletons but just from seeing a reanimated skeleton. The skeletons, though, were more of a horde and too weak to justify another truce. The normal skeletons split into three miniature skeletons when they were killed, while the Skeleton King, which was more common than one would expect something with that name to be, split into three normal skeletons when he was killed, those skeletons splitting into three miniature ones.
Blue Team pushed the former employer of Yellow Team into Everrot, but the spirit of Yellow Team’s employer sent his own team to Everrot to punish them for failure while the employer of Blue Team sent his team to Everrot so he wouldn’t have to pay them. After a dash to an exit, which was more pleasant than they expected because they were all still alive, Blue won the whole round since the winner was determined in Everrot, though the winner of the match before had an advantage.
The final mission for October involved a haunted carnival, a slow elevator on the back of a strong man game and a briefcase full of tickets that had to be taken to the top.
Blue Team got it to the top, but it was a trap since both teams were sent to a section of Spri where they were all confined to bumper cars. The game they played was like musical chairs in a three by three grid of floor that they could fall off of. If they did, they died and could only respawn after the mission unless they touched a living teammate, upon which the ghost came back to life. That didn’t even steal the life of the living teammate.
Blue had the advantage due to being the ones to deliver the tickets, so they won again. Overall, the two teams tied.