It was a normal day on Gravel Pit. I was on RED, playing as my favourite character, the Engineer. I was desperately trying to defend as BLU had managed to capture A and B. I heard a player calling for a sentry, so I walked towards their voice with my Construction PDA ready. I found the player, and placed the sentry. My character called out, 'Buildin' a sentry!'. However, I was in for a surprise. As the tool box opened, a strange orange vortex appeared. At first it took the shape of a four-legged horse-like creature, with what looked like wings. It then began to take a human-like shape. Eventually, it faded and revealed a strange looking human with a large head, orange skin and blue hair. It began to speak.
'Hello! My name is Flash Sentry, and I am from Canterlot High School. I am not sure how I got here, but I'm sure there must be a good reason.'
He held out his hand, and strangely, TF2 gave me a taunt prompt. I pressed G, and my character shook hands with this 'Flash Sentry' guy. Seeing this, I just knew it had to be an easter egg from Valve. How else could a taunt prompt appear? Flash Sentry continued speaking.
'I'm going to look around and see if I can find out how I got here, and if I can get back to Canterlot High.'
Flash Sentry walked away. I was just sitting there, at my keyboard, wondering what had just happened. I took a screenshot, so I could prove it happened. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a replay, as I had died before and there was no replay icon.
Suddenly I saw rage in the chat. A few people were calling out about this Flash Sentry guy in chat. Some were calling out 'How did he get here?' or 'Kill the waifu-stealer!' all in capitals. I decided not to join in, because I had no idea what they were talking about. Suddenly I saw the little message: Flash Sentry has left the game (disconnect by user).
Then I heard someone yell out in alltalk, 'RED! Votekick your engineer! He spawned in Flash Sentry!' My team asked who Flash Sentry is, and the person that yelled out before said, 'The orange guy with blue hair. He must be using some kind of strange hack.' Immediately a votekick was called on me, and it was passed, kicking me out of the server. However, before I was kicked, everything seemed to turn Pyrovision. I saw a four-legged creature in the distance, similar to what the orange vortex had looked like before. It was really brightly-coloured. I had no idea what was going on, so I joined another server. It was on 2Fort.
*****
I was all set up near our intelligence. We were winning, three-to-two. Then I saw the message: 'Flash Sentry has joined the game'. However, people in the chat though he was some guy on the internet pretending to be the character. I hoped it was too. I pressed TAB, and it showed that Flash Sentry had joined our team, and he had a class tag. He was a Medic. By then, I was quite sure it was someone random on the internet, since when I had seen him before, he wasn't a TF2 character. However, it could of just been a tag that he was given. I didn't want to leave my nest to check, so I stayed and looked after my buildings.
I saw in the distance a heavy's outline. He was on our team, and he had captured RED's intelligence. I saw him in what I guessed was the bridge area. Suddenly his outline disappeared. He had been killed! But I new one appeared, shaped like a medic. I watched as the medic got closer to where I was. In the corner of my vision, I saw bright colours, but when I turned to look, it was gone. As the medic came round the corner into the room, I saw it was the Flash Sentry guy. He was actually a medic. I guess once he left the previous server he was somehow limited to the TF2 classes. He took the intelligence to our intelligence, then he came and healed me.
Suddenly my sentry exploded, and Flash Sentry changed from a medic to his original form. For a second I thought I saw him as another one of those horse-like creatures, an orange one with wings, and blue... hair? I didn't know what horse hair was called. However, he quickly changed to his human form, so fast I thought it was my imagination. He looked at himself.
'Aww, I liked healing people.'
'Flash Sentry left the game (disconnect by user)'
I saw another player walking towards me crouching. He was a sniper, and was wearing a beard cosmetic.
'Young player–'
I interrupted him. 'Let me guess, you are going to be the cliche old man telling me how to stop this random guy running around in TF2?'
'Dammit, you ruined the mood. Fine, I'll tell you normally then.' He began telling me how to fix it. 'You have to go back to the server you were on–'
I interrupted again. 'I've been votekicked, I won't be able to join for a while.'
'Don't worry about that, it'll be fine.' He continued. 'Once you join the server, you need to take your destruction PDA out, and you will find that it will say you have a sentry. Destroy it.'
'How do you know this?' I asked.
'I don't, he replied, 'I made it up because I was bored. That doesn't mean it won't work though. Also, I almost forgot, you only have five minutes to do this.'
I immediately left the server.
As I was clicking the button, everything seemed to turn into Pyrovision again, and during a moment in which the game froze while I was disconnecting, I saw one of those four legged creatures more closely. However, I couldn't see many features. I could see it had a horn on what I presumed was it's head, and something near what I presumed was it's rear end. That was the closest look I could get.
I rejoined the other server. I was connecting so slow! I looked at the timer I had set, there was only one minute! I connected with thirty seconds left, and selected engineer. I could see Flash Sentry running around with a healing gun. He looked like his original form, but everyone was acting like he was a normal medic. I guess only I could see him this time. I fumbled my number keys. Only fifteen seconds left!
Ahh, here was the UI. No, wait, this is the wrong PDA!
Ten seconds left...
I finally got the right PDA.
5..
I looked at the UI. It said I had a sentry.
4...
I felt for my number keys, I didn't want to look away from the screen.
3...
I closed my eyes.
2...
I pressed the key.
1...
The timer went off. I opened one eye. I pressed TAB. Flash Sentry wasn't on the list!
I had saved TF2! I don't know what from, but I saved it!
After that day, I never played engineer again. Well that is a lie, eventually I did start playing it again, but never again did Flash Sentry appear.
...
Okay, I lied. I never saved TF2. Flash Sentry quickly left the game, and I thought we were good. But I was wrong. Here is what happened:
The first thing that happened was the whole server suddenly getting Pyrovision. It lasted about a minute then stopped. Soon, parts of the map began to turn into green grass, while the buildings all turned into little cottages, once one of the fences that blocked a non-map area was removed, but when we went through, it appeared to have no end. One person walked out a distance and said that he had walked that far in Garry's mod and there wasn't supposed to be land there. He then wondered how all our computers could hold this much data. As soon as the map was fully covered, I saw more four-legged creatures, this time approaching. One was tall and white, with some sort of crown, and strange flowing hair.
The tall one said, 'This land now belongs to...' some word I had never heard of before.
We were then kicked from the server. I looked at the server list. Servers constantly were disappearing. The 'add server' button on the main menu wasn't working. Eventually, there wasn't a single server left. Suddenly, my TF2 closed. I couldn't find the icon on my desktop, and I couldn't find it in my game library. I searched for it on the Steam Store, but it wasn't there. There was not a single trace of it left on Steam.
*****
Sometimes I wonder what happened to TF2. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever come back. Sometimes I wonder if the same will happen to any other games I play. But I know one thing; there was a ton of talk on the internet about those four-legged creatures, or 'ponies', as people liked to call them. Apparently half of the internet watched a show about these characters. I don't know why it happened to be the characters of this show, but I don't really care, as I probably aren't very likely to get an answer if I ask. But that was the story of how TF2 was destroyed, and how I caused it. Goodbye all.
