The Novelty Highlander group!

And so Fruit Fortress's journey comes to an uncomfortable end with a lack of our actual Heavy and Engie for the last match. I'm honestly not too pissed that we lost the playoffs, we made it to them at least which to me is quite astounding as a team with such a variety of experience.

As the team leader, I'm proud of this team, and individually I'm honoured to have been able to see us through this far and watch you all unfold into the next level of competitive players you are now;

Joe, spooks, never let me down once. You showed up to nearly every match (excluding 'Suddenly; homework'), gave us important information regarding strategy and the workings of the rules and UGC in general. Northern English Banter.

Miguel, you carried at times, for which we are ever grateful. You play like you're in silver or gold or something, and watching such a spectacular display of ability was encouraging. Thanks for being here for basically every match, too - it's like you have infinite free time

The Small brothers. For the time that Toby was our pyro, he was high functioning and reliable, his brother identically so. You showed up, you saved my spinal column from knives, and that one time I popped an uber on you it was pretty great.

KK, you showed up all the time, made shifts in your schedule for all 8 of the rest of us, and played like Miguel but more Scottish. We often glaze over it, but you're the main reason we can play as a home team, you get all the servers and it helped us out many a time. I'm still 100% convinced you're black.

Reginald Von Roy has been an excellent heavy, no amount of other lobby-Heavies have given me that many sandwiches or shredded that many bombing soldiers, and I don't believe any ever will. Every time you take a strange festive snack break, remember Toby's kind words.

Testa isn't here.
Jk, he was great and although quiet, gave us the Dispenser we needed, but not the one we deserved [betmen]. Sentries were up to scratch, even when you accidentally ran Gunslinger on defense, everything came up Testy.

Iddy, Ginga and Jamal, I see great things in you. As support classes, you chimed in only when fully necessary and helped keep the comms clear but informative. You got headshots left and right (because valve's hitboxes are poor) and centre, and Jamal gave their medic a good prostate exam a cracking amount o' times, pretty sure we've dropped them once or twice.

Thank-you to Pankrak, the ever reliable sub who once forgot to install TF2 and managed to do it in like 10 minutes, to Olav who helped us not die immediately in the playoff match, and to Zamp and Dreamcat for being reliable German Texas Rangers.

And I'm just a low-tier Medic main who had a funny thought and chuckled about it while writing up a proposal on Reddit, where it all began (back in New Jersey).

Goodbye, all, Goodbye Fruit Fortress. May we maybe make a 6s team or at least lobby some time.