The Team Fortress 2 expanded fan-world as seen by the RED Sniper:
----
It wasn't the RED Sniper's business to do anything but his job and the occasional favor that fell outside the terms of his disclaimer-filled contract. And though he pondered the logic of creating advertisements for an organization that valued secrecy to the point of paranoia, he figured the higher-ups had their reasons. So, like the rest of the team, he let the camera man follow him around for a week while he made small talk about what he did for a living and didn't think much about it afterward--except, of course, nobody on either side of the field would let him live down the fact that his phone calls home weren't edited out of post processing, and after the video heralding the RED Spy's exploits became public, his BLU counterpart decided that the Sniper could use a matching scar. Still, until the recruits started pouring in as a result of these videos, life consisted of the same routines.

From his own experience, and what he heard while chatting up the others, RED had approached each member of this particular team on an individual basis, offering them lucrative deals in exchange for lending their services to the company; he didn't pay much attention to what was going on outside of his assigned locale, but every once in a while one or more of the team--including himself--would be shipped elsewhere to lend support to another group, and the difference in quality both as told in second-hand accounts and seen with his own eyes was obvious. But the other teams at least had some semblance of professional experience even if they didn't have matching job titles in their resumes. Then the promotional campaigns began running every summer, and they were soon inundated by countless fresh-faced Civilians--kids younger than even the Scout, if the first wave of excited wannabes that spilled out of the train were any indication, being the rule rather than the exception--all of them wanting a chance at becoming what they saw on the telly.

Most of them didn't last too long. A significant chunk of them threw a hissy fit and stomped right back on the train they came in on when they found out they'd be confined to their own quarters until they passed the rigorous training regimens. Another large percentage wussed out when the physical demands laid on them proved to be too much for physiques that were much more used to the typical American middle class lifestyle. Many of those who managed to pass that hurdle balked at the idea of pointing a weapon at an actual live human being. Precious few ever made it all the way through the gauntlet, and those who did just fell into the same patterns of personality common to each class. Still, with both sides being manned by so many under-qualified members, the Sniper found his workload rising at an exponential rate.

Things got all the worse when policy shifted to allow females onto the team as full-on mercenaries pulling the same income and authority as the men if they could earn it, not just as staff or to satisfy certain desires. The men were split in opinion: some welcomed the change, seeing it as an opportunity to demonstrate their sexual prowess; some fought it every waking moment, considering the presence of women on the battlefield in combat positions a complete affront to their way of life; some were indifferent, carrying on as before. The Sniper tried to be among those who couldn't give a toss, but whenever he was called in to be the shooting instructor for these new potential teammates he found himself tempted to renounce all women. The ones who weren't throwing themselves at him, expecting things to proceed like a harlequin novel, were hostile man-haters who considered themselves superior to the male half of the species in every way. To his relief, the harsh realities of what it took to work in the kinds of environments the Sniper had long ago gotten accustomed to eliminated all but the most dedicated potentials, and those had the good sense to treat their employment as actual jobs.

The waves of newcomers continued, and whenever enthusiasm for sign-ups waned some new promotion campaign would start up. It was getting ridiculous what some people were willing to kill and die for--the Sniper heard from one of the trainees that he'd signed up over a giveaway hat, of all things.

Snapshots of an Unconventional Team
a series of short stories by Dot
----
Over and over again, the Medic told the Scout to watch what he ate--the rest of the team's sanitary habits made even the Sniper's camper look well-organized, and worse, they had a habit of not throwing out food even when it started growing mysterious green fuzz--but of course the idiot believed himself to be immortal and tried to subsist on nothing but his fizzy soda until he couldn't take it any more and wolfed down half a slimy sandwich left forgotten in the back of the fridge. An hour later, when the Scout failed to show up for their next mission, the Engineer was the one who found the Scout kneeling over the toilet, dry heaves wracking that tiny, too-thin frame.

As the Medic waited for the battery of tests to determine whether the Scout was suffering from mere food poisoning or something more serious, he took the opportunity to order a full, complete cleanup. Everything had to be scrubbed until it shone, he insisted. And for one glorious day everything was clean before descending back into unacceptable levels of filth, though now there at least was some order among the chaos.

For his part, the Scout spent what felt like forever to both him and the Medic laid up in the Medic's office with an IV drip hooked to his arm, working his way up to thin soups (grandmama's secret recipe for sick little Scouts, or so the Heavy claimed) and stale bread after the Medic was satisfied that the Scout would not just vomit everything back up. When the Scout recovered enough to start complaining, the Medic sent the Scout back to his own room with a bottle of antibiotics and strict orders that was to be obeyed on the threat of shots with large, thick needles.

***

As far as the Medic knew, their team was one of the few with two Spies and two Snipers, and despite the potential logistical nightmare this presented on some of their missions, it somehow managed to work. And off the battlefield, one Spy-Sniper pair in particular seemed to all but vanish from view, making such few appearances that everyone would often forget that they even existed. On top of that, the Sniper seemed to go out of his way to avoid the Medic whenever possible; what little the Medic saw of the man, he was always trailing after one of the Spies, holding onto the other man's sleeve like some sort of lost child, refusing to meet the Medic's gaze or even acknowledge him. Sometimes the Medic would catch glimpses of the two of them smoking on the roof, but they would disappear as soon as they thought anybody was nearby.

Everything the Medic learned about these mysterious teammates he got second-hand from judicious eavesdropping. According to the Soldier, the unusual pair had defected from the other team, the Spy showing up first to test the waters to see how accepted they would be, the Sniper never making an official appearance, but his target dot would always hit its mark--his domination over the enemy Medic became so thorough that the opposing team's doctor never dared to make an appearance in the open no matter how poor his colleagues' performance. The other Spy weaved wild tales of horrible scars covering the Sniper's visible features, claiming that the marksman was all but blind in one eye. The other Sniper, meanwhile swore up and down to have caught a rare sighting of his fellow Sniper in action once, shooting left-handed despite not being a southpaw otherwise, and taunting with a defiant gesture when he scored a direct hit to the enemy Heavy's nether regions. The Scout tried to bother the two of them once--running away just as fast--and for weeks the base rang of loud complaints that there was not enough bleach in the world to scrub away the memories of "dose two cockfags".

In the end, the Medic decided that it wasn't his business. They got the job done, and as odd as it was that they would keep to themselves he was sure they had their reasons. As far as he was concerned, the Spy and Sniper who seemed to be all but attached at the hip was just another one of those oddities about the team that the Medic was willing to live with as long as they contributed their part on the battlefield.

***

If the Medic was the team's father figure, the stern disciplinarian that kept them working as a cohesive unit on the battlefield, then the Engineer was the soft-spoken, nurturing mother hen that kept them well-cared for during ceasefires. The man seemed to think of everything: hot soups, jackets, and even little gun cozies during the winter; raspberry iced tea, spritz bottles, and hand-built lawn chairs during the summer; for all times and all seasons he was an endless fountain of invention and helpful advice.

He even somehow found out everyone's birthdays (including those of the elusive Spy-Sniper pair) and made it a point to celebrate them with what goodies or trinkets he could cobble together from the pantry or his workshop. It wasn't before long before even the Medic had one of the Engineer's masterpieces, a headband with a bit of reflective metal attached; no doubt the Engineer spent hours shaping and polishing the thing, but when asked he just gave a modest chuckle and insisted that it wasn't a big deal.

***

The enemy Pyro was an often topic of speculation since all anyone ever saw of the fire-sarter was the all-encompassing suit. The discussion grew more animated when the Spy brought back pictures of what looked like a purse in the Pyro's locker.

This time, it was the Heavy that grew annoyed with the conversation. "Entire team is eediots! I am woman, and I kick more ass than all of you poot together."

The Medic was first to process this declaration. "Vait, you are a voman?"

"Ya!" The Heavy Weapons--well, Gal--puffed out her chest while the rest of the team stared. "Women grow big and tough in my village! Thought everybody knew!"

"But you've taken showers with us and everything and oh my God it makes sense now we thought you were just too fat--" the Scout was blushing to his ears now, mortified at the thought that he'd seen a woman naked without even realizing it.

The Soldier looked like he was ready to have an aneurysm. "But--you--your hair--"

The Heavy ran her fingers over the peach fuzz stubble on her skull. "Shave it all! Too hot here to grow hair long, and it get in the way of fighting anyway."

The Sniper muttered something about going to his bunk, earning dirty looks from the others, but he didn't seem to care.

***

The Medic's predecessor, from what he could gather from the man's notes, believed that any problem could be "solved" with enough medications. The Soldier in particular was prescribed a dizzying number of drugs--mood stabilizers, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotics, just to name a few--that the Medic was convinced couldn't have been safe for the man's liver, at the very least. As tough as he knew a detoxification program would be, the Medic was determined to stick it out and get to the bottom of Soldier's multitudinous mental issues.

It was hell. In battle, the Soldier still functioned on pure instinct and muscle memory, becoming more and more vocal and demanding as the drugs wore off, but most of the team had already learned to tune him out. During ceasefires, however, the Soldier still saw the enemy everywhere, accusing even inanimate objects of being Spies, or became convinced that he had been abducted by aliens. For weeks the Medic wondered if he could ever even begin to have a normal conversation with the Soldier, the temptation to reinstate his original cocktail of pills growing stronger by the day.

But then, the Soldier began to have moments of--well, not exactly clarity, but a dim understanding that a world existed beyond his simple black-and-white (or perhaps red and blue) interpretation. He was even willing to sit down and converse with the Medic, or at least his Shovel, while the Medic sat by and took extensive notes. By now the Medic had disabused himself of the notion of "fixing" the Soldier, and even slipped him a few drugs every now and again to take the edge off the Soldier's wilder delusions, but compared to before the Soldier had shown a marked improvement that even the man himself noticed every once in a while.

Not that the Soldier wasn't anything other than a collective pain in the ass. But now his mannerisms were almost endearing now, in a harmless, crotchety old geezer fashion.

***

Back when the Medic was still new, living in the shadow of the man he replaced--disappeared down the sewers one day and never returned, or so the story went--he found himself fighting an uphill battle against his predecessor's bizarre, almost mad scientist-level reputation and possible connections to the former Third Reich. Save for the Spy who had been at the train depot to welcome and debrief him, and the Heavy whenever the Spy was on hand to translate the broken English combined with smatterings of Russian, no one spoke to him outside of their missions. When the bullets were flying they at least listened to him, but it soon became obvious that he was obeyed out of fear and nothing more; they never called for him, preferring to patch themselves up with the on-field medikits, go to the Engineer's Dispenser, or "borrow" one of the Heavy's sandwiches when they were injured. So whenever he wasn't being shot at, stabbed, blown up, or set on fire, the Medic roamed behind his team training his Medigun on them or charged ahead of them, drawing the enemy's attention.

Since he wasn't living long enough to build up the precious moments of invincibility, the Medic switched to using the Kritkrieg, staying out of his allies' line of sight to boost them without their notice. This in turn drew even more antagonism from the enemy, and some days he was restricted to getting nothing more than his first charge whenever there was be a Setup phase before a hail of death rained down on him.

Six months into the job, his relations with the team had improved to a point of detached politeness, if nothing more. They tolerated his presence more, trying to make small talk and even sharing drinks with him after a hard-earned victory. They remained jumpy whenever he raised his voice anything above regular speaking volume, but at least most of them stopped talking about him behind his back about whether or not he, like the old Medic, was also a Nazi. (As if having a German accent meant automatic unfortunate implications. If the Medic's files weren't confidential like everyone elses, he was tempted to unseal them and show them that he was from Austria and a proud former member of the French Foreign Legion.)

At least the Spy and the Heavy remembered to thank him every time he healed them; if it weren't for their friendship back then, the Medic would have just asked for a transfer and washed his hands of the unpleasantness.

***

With two Spies disguising themselves as all of the classes, mass confusion must have reigned on the other side of the field as to the true makeup of the team. Still, without an actual Pyro, Spy checking was often a hit or miss affair (save for the obvious), and more often than not the knowledge that a Spy was in their midst would be passed on while the victim waited for respawn nausea to wear off. At least some mystical force seemed to keep in check the ability to injure one's own allies, so after the first few attempts to set up a password system proved to be too complicated everyone just took to taking a few swings at each other until they were satisfied that no living enemy Spies lurking among them.

The Medic took it as a compliment when he got his first near shotgun-blast to the face when he managed to catch up to the Scout once. Never mind that he was healing said Scout at that precise moment and he was certain a Spy couldn't impersonate his Medigun's abilities, no harm was done and the Scout even apologized for it.

"And, uh, for what it's worth, I think you're kinda crazy ta chasing after us so you can fix us up," he added, scratching the back of his neck. "But a good crazy."

While the Medic's teammates were warming up to him now that he had proved himself to be nothing like the old one, he took it upon himself to disabuse the enemy of the notion that he was an easy kill. Courtesy of the Engineer, he received a much sharper melee weapon dubbed "the Ubersaw" by the others as soon as they laid eyes on it, and he took shooting lessons from the (non-invisible) Sniper so he wasn't just showering the field with needles and praying for a lucky hit. The team even began keeping score for him, and when he netted his fiftieth Scout kill via "lethal injection", they threw him a party complete with paper-mache trophy.

***

Everyone enjoyed the endless battles, each for their own reason, but of all the classes, the Spy (the one that was friends with the Medic) never seemed to lose his ever-present grin. Sometimes the Medic would wonder if the man was even sane: at least no normal person would twist their bodies in such an uncomfortable position and declare in a loud voice that he was a member of the rare and elusive "Spy Crab" species. But the Spy's devil-may-care attitude meant that he was easy to get along with; even the otherwise Spy-wary Engineer would share drinks and crack jokes with the man.

Still, the Spy was not without his faults, his odd hours being the most prominent of those. The man fancied himself some sort of modern-day ninja and had a penchant for appearing and disappearing at the most inconvenient of times, most of the time managing this using good old-fashioned stealth techniques rather than his cloak, which he claimed was unreliable. Sometimes he would even try to infiltrate the enemy base during ceasefires, disappearing for hours or even days at a time.

The Medic used to stay up nights waiting and worrying, but the Spy would return each time no worse for wear, shaking his finger at his teammates whenever questions were raised.

"Ah, ah, ah. That is a secret," the Spy would say with a wink and a smile.

***

For all of his reputation as a bushman who lived in his own filth, the (non-invisible) Sniper was fastidious about being clean to the point of obsession. Even the jars of questionable liquid had, in the Sniper's mind, a reasonable explanation: what was he supposed to do while he waited for the perfect shot, get up and pee in some corner? Besides, it wasn't like he didn't wash them out afterwards with a thoroughness that would have made a surgeon jealous. He had a system of organizing everything: ammunition, clothes, trophies of his kills...whatever the Sniper laid claim to, woe betide anyone else disrupt his "perfect" order.

Outside of the context of the mission, the Sniper was just about impossible to talk to if the topic didn't circle around guns or big game hunting. And in battle, the Sniper was a man of few words as well, though this was more due to his absolute trust in his teammates' abilities than a lack of good social graces.

The Medic found out just how far this trust went when, while trying to outrun the enemy's maniacal Pyro once, it had been this Sniper who had appeared out of nowhere and nailed the Pyro to the wall with an arrow.

Gathering his breath, the Medic was about to roam the field for teammates to heal when the Sniper blocked his path with a concerned: "'Old still a minute, yer bleedin'."

The Medic was about to explain that his Medigun's aura extended to himself when he worked its magic on the others, and that was enough to keep him alive until he was exploded, headshotted, or backstabbed, but the Sniper was not yielding the right of way and the Medic's wounds were starting to hurt. "If you do not mind, then."

While he was by no means a surgeon, the Sniper proved that his steady hands were useful for more than just shooting. He also spoke words more than the Medic had ever heard him utter, pausing in his ministrations to make sure that he wasn't making things worse. He finished dressing the wound with some topical analgesic and wrapped it up just tight enough so that the stitches wouldn't tear. "Not th' best job, but it'll 'ave t' do." He tipped his hat at the Medic. "Be seeing you around, Doc."

It wasn't until after the battle had ended that the Medic realized that not once during the entire conversation hat the Sniper ever tried to suss out whether or not the Medic might be a disguised Spy. Double checking the records, the Medic was shocked and somewhat horrified to find that the Sniper--while rather adept at avoiding other means of death save for the occasional bout of bad luck--was at the top of the charts for backstabs.

When asked about it, the Sniper just shrugged. "It's not loike death's a big deal. Besides, 'e's just one Spoi; if it makes 'im feel better, 'e can backstab me all 'e wants as long as I get to drop at least two of his mates b'fore he gets me."

The Medic couldn't believe his ears. "But you know about the Friendly Fire Suppression System! It literally vouldn't kill us for you to take a few swipes wiz your knife, or maybe even throw one of those jars--"

The Sniper recoiled at the suggestion. "What? No! That'd be disgusting! Besides, it dun feel roight trying t' shoot one of you gois, even if a Spoi's trying t' sneak 'is way in."

The Sniper had looked so earnest when he said this that the Medic decided not to push the issue.

***

Of course the Scout loved baseball the most, but he was a fan of anything that involved running and jumping. The others tried their best to humor him whenever he got bored, because his idea of "entertaining himself" more often than not involved ridiculous, dangerous stunts like trying to play "don't touch the lava" with the enemy side's Scout during ceasefires. According to the Scout, this involved making one's way across the battle field without stepping foot on the ground, which was now made of burning hot molten earth that would kill you the moment you so much as brushed against it.

On the plus side, this meant that the Scout was that much more unpredictable during battles, since he considered every surface he could reach a walkway, no matter how temporary. The obvious downside was that the Medic was always being called to treat the results of the Scout's recklessness. It got to the point where the Medic refused to treat the Scout with the Medigun for fear that the Scout would try something even more insane the next time.

The Scout never did anything halfway, and his injuries showed it. In addition to the typical youthful belief that he was immortal, the respawn system ensured that he never stayed down for long. Besides from the many minor scrapes and bruises he accumulated from his out of battle "adventures", he had stepped on so many rusty nails that the Medic was convinced the boy had acquired an immunity against tetanus (or just didn't ever live long enough to suffer the consequences) and broken every bone in his body--including a rather terrifying skull fracture that time he somehow found a moped and crashed it moments later. Of course, as soon as the Scout woke up from the concussion he was harassing the Medic to hurry up and heal him so he could go gallivanting about again.

***

When the Medic came up short in his sleeping pill count for the third time that week, he knew it was time to put his foot down. At the risk of getting his throat slit, he made his way to the side of the base everyone else was sure to avoid.

As expected, a Spy soon showed up to intercept him before he could get any further, looking very unhappy indeed. "If you wanted to talk to me, Doctor, you could have left me a memo."

"No, I believe this necessitates me being here in person." He held up a half-empty bottle of sleeping pills labeled as such and shook it. "Are you aware that the side effects of these things include both sleep paralysis and vivid nightmares?"

To his credit, the Spy kept a perfect poker face, but the pitch of his voice changed in a noticeable amount. "I had no choice. He was keeping himself awake to ze point of having hallucinations."

"He needs psychiatric help, not pills." The Medic continued before the Spy could object: "And if he hez a problem with seeing me in person, zere ah vays to vork around that."

The Spy seemed to consider the proposition, but the Medic could tell that he was hesitant. "If he agrees to it--"

The Medic sighed. "I can turn zis into an explicit order, if you prefer to not be the 'bad guy'."

This time, the relief on the Spy's face was obvious. "Thank you, Doctor."

***

Among those who shared cooking duties, the Engineer's cuisine was the universal favorite. Like the Scout, he came from a big family, and he knew how to make delectable meals in portions that even satisfied the Heavy to the point of refusing more seconds. He was also always expanding his repertoire, so anyone who dropped into the kitchen at the right time of day could be sure that they would be asked to taste the results of the Engineer's newest recipe.

While the Engineer preferred making things by hand--nothing added more flavor than a little elbow grease and lots of love, or so he claimed--he was delighted when everyone pooled their resources together to get the Engineer a bread machine. From that day forward the mess hall was filled with the mouth-watering aroma of loaves of all kinds.

Then, with a bit of help and dim memories of family secrets from the Medic, the Engineer began experimenting with pastries, always being sure to make more than enough for everyone to have a bite even while he was trying to figure out how to substitute ingredients that were all but impossible to acquire. In particular, Engineer's attempt to succeed in a souffle became a running gag among the rest of the team. The Medic began to see bits of graffiti claiming that "the souffle is a lie", which always gave him a chuckle. One wondered what the enemy thought of the development.

***

In the more remote bases where weekend furloughs weren't possible, those with family elsewhere relied on the mail to keep in touch. The Scout and Sniper were always getting care packages from their mothers, boxes full of baked goods or handmade trinkets that more often than not found their way into the hands of everyone in the team; the Medic traded postcards with his wife, who passed the time waiting between visits to do her own world-traveling; and the Engineer corresponded with his brood via cassette tape. Should anyone stay up late enough at night to drop by his workshop, he could be heard listening to the voices of his loved ones saying their hellos. Just before they shipped out to Two-Fort, the Engineer bought a collection of children's books so he could record himself reading them out loud to his youngest.

The Engineer proved to be a master storyteller, sometimes even recruiting the others for different voices or sound effects. It wasn't long before just about everyone became a part of the growing project, culminating in an hours-long marathon performance of "The Wizard of Oz". And as luck would have it, a tornado struck the area on the day that the recording was supposed to take place. They spent the day huddled in the bunker, gathered around the tiny lanterns the Engineer had prepared, each of them taking their turn in reading a chapter.

After that, it felt as if the team had become honorary members of the Engineer's family. The Scout became pen pals with one of the Engineer's older daughters, eliciting no end of jokes about the possibility of a shotgun wedding somewhere in the Scout's future. And after the Sniper let slip that he could knit in one of the tapes, he became inundated with requests for booties and hats for the latest addition to the Engineer's burgeoning clan. The Soldier exchanged war stories with the older relatives, while the Medic somehow found himself as the go-to guy for relationship advice. What's more, the team spent that year's Thanksgiving getting a taste of Southern hospitality on the Engineer's farm.

***

After a brief stay in Harvest, the Soldier became inspired to plant his own "Victory Garden". Of course, given the hostile if not outright radioactive environment of the other bases, he had to settle for a small trough and soil from the local goods store. With the Engineer's help, the Soldier managed to coax a few potatoes and carrots into sprouting.

Behind his back, the others set up a betting pool to see how long it took before he gave up on the project, but the Soldier's dedication proved to be absolute. He spent every spare moment out of battle doting over the tiny plants, even giving them names and ranks. And though the plants never produced the unending bounty that the Soldier hoped for, everyone had to admit that seeing something grow was good for morale.

***

Granary, as the center of supplies for all the other bases, was also home to a wide variety of livestock. Since the actual dirty work in taking care of the animals were left to the civilian staff members, the team would from time to time "adopt" one of the creatures as an unofficial mascot. The Heavy in particular had a weakness for all things she considered cute. At first, she would put up great resistance whenever the inevitable need arose to kill them, but all that it took to get her to back down was a gentle reminder from the Medic: "You do realize that the ham from your beloved 'Sandviches' come from pigs, do you not? And you have nevah once crusaded for the lives of the fruits or vegetables that you consume with no qualms vatsoevah."

The Heavy took a moment to consider those words and unclenched her fists. "You are right, Doktor. I am being foolish."

The Engineer patted her on the shoulder. "Now, don't be hard on yerself. If ya really wanna, I can show ya how ta train one of those feral cats that are always hanging about ta be great mousers. And I promise ya we'd never put one of those felines on the dinner table."

"Actually--" the Sniper began, but thought better of it once several glares were aimed in his direction. "Never mind."

***

Whenever the Soldier remembered, he'd get up at the crack of dawn and blast his bugle at deafness-inducing volumes with the intention of rousing his bleary-eyed teammates out for jogging. If no-one came bursting out of their bedrooms to see what the racket was, the Soldier would sometimes even take to kicking doors down and dragging people out, still in their pajamas.

This was a seldom enough occurrence that most of the team humored the Soldier, though they weren't above complaining or dragging their feet. Once, the Heavy destroyed the bugle beyond repair during a hangover-induced rampage, but her actions proved futile when the Soldier just produced another one from his locker--"a man of war has to be prepared for everything!" was all he offered as explanation.

Things got worse when the team moved into Teufort. Thanks to the extreme proximity of the two sides, they discovered that the enemy Soldier had a similar idea. At once a war of escalating noise broke out, each Soldier trying something more extreme the next morning in an attempt to drown the other side out.

The allied Soldier won temporary victory by bellowing out "Yankee Doodle Dandy" through a megaphone while standing on the roof--naked, no less, save for his helmet. This resulted in him losing his voice for a week; perhaps saner heads prevailed on the other side as well, because no further "music" came from the opposing encampment during that week. The team took the chance to talk the Soldier into a compromise: they'd get up of their own volition and jog with him once a week in exchange for him not regaling them with more bugle solos.

***

Once both sides got acclimated to their new surroundings, it didn't take long for things to settle into an even worse standoff than before. In other locations, stalemates were rarer due to various factors, if not outright impossible by the virtue of the mission objectives, but Teufort was too small and had too many simple to defend choke points for either side to make significant pushes. There would be token attempts every so often should either side's Medic build up an Ubercharge, the Snipers never stopped dueling, and the Spies darted in and out of view, but serious battling would grind to a complete halt after lunch, when the heat of the day caused both sides to be reluctant to venture out of their respective bases. On some days the Engineer would just put up his sentry to watch the courtyard, block the other Intelligence Room exit with a Dispenser, and the whole team--even the other Spy and Sniper--would lounge in the second floor Respawn drinking beer while the Heavy kept the sliding door propped open to keep an eye out for trouble.

It was on one of these days that the conversation went in the direction of musical tastes. The Heavy and Engineer preferred their home country's folk music; the Scout, the prank-pulling Spy, and the backstab-prone Sniper were fans of modern pop, whereas the Medic refused to listen to anything not written before the 19th century; the Soldier loved war ballads, marches, and anything patriotic; the other Sniper listened to an eclectic mix of genres; and the other Spy had a taste for Jazz.

"Couldja imagine th' nine 'o us formin' a band?" the Engineer chuckled and shook his head. "We'd never agree ta a playlist."

"Ooh, I know!" The Heavy's eyes lit up. "We could sing your song, Engineer!"

The Medic raised an eyebrow. "You compose, Engineer?"

The Engineer turned beet red. "That ol' thang was jus' somethin' I made up on a lark ta keep my mind off th' tedium while we were cleanin' junk outta Sawmill, way back before you joined up, Doc. Ain't what I'd call proper music."

"I dunno, Hardhat, it was pretty catchy." The Scout grinned from ear to ear. He started tapping out a beat with his empty can. "How'd it go again?"

The Engineer looked like he was looking for a hole in the ground to disappear into. "I don' remember! It was ages ago!"

One of the Spies produced an incriminating cassette and held it up in plain view. "Good zing I had ze foresight to save it for all posterity, non?"

"Indeed!" The Soldier clapped the mortified Engineer on the shoulder before he could even think about slinking away, keeping the other man rooted in his seat. "It's a masterpiece, Engie! You shouldn't be ashamed of it!"

The other Spy was doing his best to keep a straight face, but his eyes were also lighting up with mirth. "Gentlemen, if you would allow me..." with a theatrical flourish, he produced a hand-held tape player.

The whole team was on the verge of giggles even before the song could play; if the Medic wasn't the one sitting closest to the tape player, he doubted that he would have been able to hear anything over the building laughter. This atmosphere proved infectious, as he, too, couldn't help but titter as he heard the recording of the Engineer waxing poetic about the virtues of toast.

For the old kink meme: Soldier/Demoman in Vegas.
----
The Soldier had eliminated every other trace of his ex-friend from his life: what couldn't be burned was smashed or thrown into the nuclear waste disposal pit. But when he got to the class ring, a souvenir of their last trip together, he couldn't bring himself to part with it. They'd meant to get the "marriage" annulled right away, but when they got what was left of their money together they discovered there wasn't even enough for bus tickets. In the end they decided that no wedding overseen by some fake Elvis could be all that official and hitchhiked their way home, though for some time afterward neither man could resist taunting the other about being "Mrs. Doe" or "Mrs. Tavish".

An hour of failed pep-talks later, the Soldier slipped the ring back onto the chain reserved for his dog-tags and tucked that in his shirt. He'll just have to work up the gumption to deal with this later. Maybe it'd be easier once he'd killed that one-eyed traitor.

Those of you who were here before the chan crashed may find this story familiar. Going to write it in installments as inspiration strikes.
----
As Christmas break drew to a close, the team trickled back one by one, each of them showing off the assortment of presents and care packages they received from their loved ones, ranging from clothes and books to toys and gadgets.

The Sniper was the last to report in--or, rather, a temporary substitute did, while the man himself failed to show or even send word. Headquarters likewise refused to comment; the Spy, who prided himself on getting first-hand classified information, could find little more than some oblique references to an "extended medical leave". Speculation--and the subsequent betting pool--grew by the day. Even the Engineer, who was the closest to the Sniper, started wondering if their somewhat aloof gunman had at long last abandoned civilization altogether.

Then, one morning, the team came downstairs to the mess hall for breakfast and found the Sniper sitting at one of the tables as if he'd always been there, except now he was doting over a bundle of cloth in his arms.

The Scout, as always, was the first to react. "Holy crap, the Sniper's kidnapped some chick's baby!"

Aww poor dumb Scout :D I wouldn't bring a baby into a warzone though

The Engineer gave the Scout a knuckle tap to the back of his head. "None 'a yer sass, boy." He approached the Sniper, peering over the other man's shoulder at the bundle. "If ya knocked tha dame up, ya at least shoulda good by her n' marry her."

"Her mum wasn't even going t' tell me," the Sniper muttered. "Caught th' bint tryoing t' give our flesh and blood t' an orphanage."

The Medic, meanwhile, was staring as if the Sniper had grown a second head. "Zis iz unacceptable! A warzone iz no place for an infant!"

The Sniper glared back. "You think I don't know that, Doc? But wot was I supposed t' do, let some total strangers raise my little girl? B'sides, the 'igher ups don't 'ave a problem with this as long as it doesn't affect my performance, so woi should you?"

The Soldier likewise had a scowl on his face. "You'd better not be asking us to babysit while your lazy ass is parked in some tower."

"'f course I won't. Wot kind of parent do you take me for?"

The Spy, meanwhile, was peering into the Sniper's backpack. "One who does not understand zee difference between reading a book and actually changing a diaper."

The Sniper was trying to keep his expression neutral, but his eyebrow began to twitch. "I know 'ow t' change a diaper! I've been doing it for the past month!"

"Ya cleaning out all the little folds between her legs n' stuff?" the Scout interjected. "D'ya burp her after she's done eating? Can ya tell what she wants when she gets fussy?" Then, when he realized that all eyes were staring at him, he crossed his arms. "What? I have a lot of nieces and nephews."

So much for 'poor dumb Scout', Chess.

Good job Dot, amazing as always!

Touche Scout...

I love your stories :)

Anybody have any suggestions for names? Because otherwise I'm being lazy and uncreative and naming her after my pen name. (Not giving my real name because that'd be too awkward.)

You could do what I do in these situations and see what names were popular at the time. Here's something to help you with that:

http://www.behindthename.com/top/lists/100ud1960.php

-- Intermission --

Teaser inspired by the request thread:

RED Spy and BLU Scout's Mom on a tender, romantic date. I'm in a lovey-dovey mood. --------------------------------------------------------------
The Spy had never been the type to commit to relationships, being more of a flavor-of-the-moment sort, but this particular woman had, without the usual clingy female nonsense, managed to remain interesting even after several encounters.

So when company business brought him the town where she lived, he decided to surprise her by showing up at her door with a bouquet of pale yellow roses--her favorite--and inviting her for a nice meal. "Nozzing but zee best for ma petite chou-fleur," he assured her, eliciting an amused eyebrow arch.

"And listen to that snooty Maitre d' make disparaging remarks about my best dress? No thank you." Having secured the roses in a washed out milk bottle on the counter, she slipped her hand into his and pulled him towards the door. "I found the loveliest little cafe, just down the street. You can wine and dine me all you'd like there."

"Eef you eenseest." He let her take the lead until they were outside, then waited for her to lock the door before giving her an extravagant bow. "Shall we?"

She gave him a curtsy in return. "Lead the way, monsieur."

(Whoops, need to go back in and add the distinction of "RED" where applicable. Will do that in the next draft.

Also, do you think I should give Scootma a Bronx accent like her son's?)

-- Intermission, cont'd --

They had walked about two streets, hand in hand, when he pressed her against a wall. "We're being followed," he whispered as he planted a kiss on her ear. "Look to your left and tell me what you see, s'il vous plaît."

She complied, though she also gave him a sharp pinch in the side when his hands roamed to her waist. "There does seem to be a gentleman dressed like you, except in dark blue and wearing some sort of fake beard. At least I hope that's a fake beard." She kissed back with vigor, sneaking in a bite on his lip as well. "Friend of yours?"

"Somezing like zat." The RED Spy pressed even closer. "Would you like me get rid of him, petit, or shall we give him a show?"

She smirked against his lips. "As long as you get a copy of the pictures."

Blame Dr. Inkwell (All Hail the Enableking).
----------------------------------------
Replacement Goldfish
----------------------------------------
Never let feelings get in the way of logic. Never form attachments. Always be Professional.

That was what I kept telling myself, and yet every time I succumbed to temptation and rode the emotional roller coaster all the way to the inevitable heartbreak.

I shouldn't expect things to be different. It wasn't like their kind were known to be affectionate or loyal. And maybe the Medic was right, I was just reading too much into things and he didn't give a toss about me in the least.

And yet, when I come through the door and I get that coy little bob as if he was saying "oh, there you are, haven't seen you all day", I can't help but wonder if he was waiting for me. And maybe he tuned me out when I would be blathering about how the day has gone, but all I would have to do is drum my fingers a bit and there he would be again, eager and attentive.

This one lasted all of three months to the day I found him. I almost didn't even need to see his corpse to know that he was dead: there was no familiar shape to greet me when I walked through the door. I carried his corpse out into the desert and buried him with the others.

The Spy kept me company this time. "Maybe you should get a dog instead," he mused. "Zey tend to last longer."

"You know 'ow it is with th' 'ead Bitch," I answered. "Brucey only got a pass because I listed 'im as 'emergency food supploi'."

The Spy snorted. "As eef zat leetle morsel would make a meal for anyone but somezing his own size."

I gave him a look through my aviators. "Oi. 'ave a li'ell respect for th' dead, would you?"

The Spy rolled his eyes. "Zis ees already Brucy zee, what, Sixth? Seventh? How many times are you going to replay zis farce until you give up?" He shook his head. "Forget eet, bushman, I'm not in zee mood to argue with you today. Let's go to zee pet store and get you another Brucey, <i>non</i>?"

I looked at Brucey's grave. "I dunno, mate. I was thinking about maybe getting a turtle this toime."

This was one I might have seen requested in a Gen thread (or that I requested myself) before board crash.
------------------------------------------
May 25, 1977
------------------------------------------
The Demoman caught wind of some big movie in the making via his friends-of-a-friend on one of his other jobs--all he would say about it was "movie magic" and refused to elaborate, leading the others to speculate that this was Demospeak for "porn star"--and the Engineer and the Pyro both being huge science fiction buffs wanted to be there on the day it hit theaters. One thing led to another--concerns about Spies, curiosity, voyeurs convinced that the resident brainac and firestarter were an item--and this resulted in the entire team insisting that they go along.

The Sniper having vetoed using his camper on pain of dousing everyone's room with Jarate, the others found one of the trucks that the Engineer had yet to take apart and then neglect to put back together and piled into that to ride into town for The Big Debut. A mountain of drinks and snacks between them, they commandeered one of the rows near the front and didn't stop chattering until after the title scroll was done and the Star Destroyer passed over head on the big screen, chasing Princess Leia's beleaguered ship.

Of course, the awed silence didn't last. Like a group of children in a candy store, they ooed and aahed at everything, and though they would burst into raucous cheers and jeers at different points of the movie than the rest of the crowd, everyone was too into watching the story develop to start a fight.

The Scout and Pyro wouldn't stop making lightsaber noises even as they were walking out of the theater and thus were exiled to the bed of the truck, but the others found themselves caught up in the post-movie analysis. Team consensus was that the Empire was in serious need of better management, but most of them agreed that the sole redeeming factor of the Rebel Alliance was the aforementioned lightsabers. The Engineer could also be heard muttering that the physics didn't make a lick of sense and that the other show he was watching was much better.

Still, this didn't stop most of the team from being at least casual fans of the series and indulging the more hardcore enthusiasts in aiding their reenactments. The Scout, to no-one's surprise, always clamored for the role of Luke Skywalker, but the other players tended to be more fluid.

When the sequel rolled around, it was all but inevitable that the team piled in the truck and went to the debut again, some of them even going in costume, the Sniper displaying a rather surprising competence in all matters pertaining to sewing. This time, the post-showing debate was even more heated, as the Engineer was a self-proclaimed so-called "Trekker" by now and nobody could agree whether the Empire or the Federation could win in a prolonged war. Memorabilia of all kinds began piling up in various rooms: posters, action figures, stormtrooper helmets...

They went to see the third movie just for saying that they had attended all three showings on the day they hit theaters, but didn't stay past the Golden Bikini scene.

Random scene for...idk something.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Sniper was going to ignore the Scout using the side of his camper for throwing practice, but the little hooligan soon got bored with that and had the nerve to see how close he could get to the windows without breaking them. Silent as a cat, the Sniper slipped out of his camper and intercepted the next fastball.

"Noice aim." He smirked. "Too bad you still can't shoot worth shite."

The Scout flipped him the bird. "Very funny, Mister I-Spent-My-Childhood-Wrestling-Crocodiles. Gimme my ball back."

The Sniper nodded towards the wilderness beyond the camper and began walking towards it, not bothering to check if the Scout was following. "Wot 'appened t' th' machine Truckie was building?"

"Hell if I know," the Scout could be heard muttering. "The way I saw him going at it, he's prolly aiming ta turn it inta another failed giant robot project again."

"Moight want t' take a page from Demoman's book and ploi 'im with so much Scrumpy 'e can't go all crazy Mad Scointist." The Sniper checked for the wind before positioning himself. "Then again, th' last toime Truckie was off 'is face 'e chopped 'is arm off."

The Scout shook his head. "Don't remind me, man, his workshop STILL reeks something awful." He stretched and then made a 'come on' gesture. "You sure you don't need a glove or nuthin'?"

The Sniper lobbed the ball back at the Scout with an easy underhanded toss. "Never need t' playing cricket."

"All right, man, your funeral."

Okay. I know i must be the stupid person in the world. But why did the team left by the third movie?

You are far from the only stupid person in the world, anon.

>>17 My friend, who's a fan of all things Star Wars, has told me that the third movie, and I quote "sucks harder than my grandmother".
So perhaps this is why? I can't say if it's true, myself, as I've never seen the movie, and I don't wish to imagine my grandmother engaging in fellatio, but still. It's a possibility.

>>19
Well was he/she talking about episode 3 or episode 6?
Here's another confused anon, especially since Return of the Jedi was my favorite of the series.

>>20

Team walked out of Episode 6, as they being the kind of people they were were rooting for the Empire to win.

>>20 I'm not sure. Dude's in Vancouver now, and he doesn't respond to fbook messages, so I've really no way to contact him and ask.
All he ever said was 'the third movie'. That's all I've got to go on.
>>21 Ah. That explains it....or rather, it would probably explain it if I knew anything about Star Wars.

Trying "Nine Men and a Baby" YET AGAIN, this time skipping straight to the fun-filled action parts, because as potentially hilarious as writing about how our favorite mercenaries might raise a kid, right now I don't have the juju to do anything that far beyond the usual "hilariously unqualified people are thrust into parenthood and do some growing up themselves" cliche.

...this means it needs a new title, perhaps. Suggestions welcome.
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In the blink of an eye and despite the Medic's dire predictions that she wouldn't survive childhood, the Sniper's little girl wasn't so little any more. Each gain in height was marked with countless nicks along every door frame of the base, and despite the Heavy's every effort to put more meat on her bones she stayed the same stork build. As she stood in the Respawn room waiting for the Setup period to end on her first day as a full member of the team and not just a mascot-slash-spectator, she all but disappeared under the Medic class's uniform and gear, rolling her eyes when the Sniper made one last adjustment to the ribbon she wore in lieu of a tie while she was already building an ubercharge.

"It's fine, Daddy. Stop fussing."

"I'm your father, luv. It's moi job t' be a worrywart ninny." The Sniper moved onto checking the straps that secured the backpack. "You remember everything we've told you, right?"

This declaration of concern was met with a light sigh. "Maintain a low profile. Watch out for Spies. Don't just stick to one Pocket when other people need heals." She shifted the Medigun to rest its weight on her hip. "Okay, I'm charged. So who wants to go wreck some shit with me?"

Free ideas:
1) Soldier's Post-War European Road Trip. It can be a black comedy (with extra companions for buddy-movie hilarity). It can be an intense drama. It can be a police procedural with the authorities hunting down a psychopath serial killer. It can be a horror story of how a town got hunted down, one by one, by an unstoppable monster.
2) Once upon a time, [ Insert Class Here ]'s teammates decided he needed a woman in his life and sent off for a Russian Mail Order Bride. What they got was a Heavy Weapons Guy (gender of your choice). Extra bonus points if this Class is not the Medic.
3) The mental image of our favorite stupid sexy classes on a chain gang just won't go away, but I can't think of a context to go with it. 1920s AU a la "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou"? The FBI finally nails Team Fortress Industries for tax evasion and shuts the whole operation down? Or they all just coincidentally all met in a prison before they signed on as mercenaries?

Team Fortress 2 as a Harem Comedy...sort of.
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The Administrator was beginning to regret digging into her employee's metaphorical dirty laundry. "So you're telling me--" She massaged the bridge of her nose, wondering if she should call for a drink after all. "That delusional, trigger happy moron has such a loose grip on reality that he's gotten himself married to half his team?"

Miss Pauling nodded. "To be fair, ma'am, we listed him as the spouse for both the Heavy Weapons Guy and the Medic so we could expedite their papers."

"I know that," the Administrator snapped. She stabbed an accusatory finger on the other marriage certificates. "I meant the rest of these."

Miss Pauling began to look through the thick files. "Well, in the case of Mister Degroot, I believe it was a result of a trip to Los Vegas...that's strange, I'm sure there's pictures somewhere..."

"Those aren't necessary." The Administrator lit a new cigarette. "I don't need them to know that the Engineer wasn't on that trip."

"Oh, marrying the Engineer was for the tax breaks. As much of a patriot Mister Doe claims to be, even he's not a fan of the IRS."

The vein on her forehead began to throb even more. "Did he not get the memo? Those assholes are always looking at our books hoping to catch us in some sort of slip-up!"

Miss Pauling nodded. "I was worried about that, too, but it turns out that he's never even been flagged for audit."

The Administrator's eyebrow went up, but she refused to acknowledge the possibility that one of her useful idiots were more shrewd than she gave them credit for. "Lucky bastard. And the Spy?"

"It happened before we hired him, while he was traveling under one of his female aliases. I'd have to do a bit more digging, but I'm guessing it was just a part of whatever job he was doing at the time."
----------------------------------------------------------------
(I was going to do this for the whole team, but I couldn't think of anything else. Any suggestions?)

Random thing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Engineer was never very much a morning person, busy as he was with his tinkering that he often forsook sleep or even food, so when the Soldier burst into his room on Sunday morning--the one day of the week the team's self-appointed drill sergeant didn't kick everyone out of bed for another one of is inane drills--acting like the world was coming to an end, the Engineer slugged the other man with his robot hand.

The Soldier, for his part, just looked irritated at getting his jaw broken. "Dammit, Engie," he warbled through a mouthful of blood, holding his face together with one hand. "Now's not the time to be throwing one of your hissy-fits, not when we're getting invaded!"

"Now look here, Solly, I don't care if it's the Goddamn Second Coming of Jesus Christ Himself, I don't want no-one wakin' me on Sunday mornin'--"

"HOLY CRAP, SPY!" Scout's high-decibel screeching could be heard even from the Engineer's workshop, "WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, MAN?"

That got the Engineer moving. Without even bothering to change out of his sleeping clothes, he hurried up to the Spy's room, and found it already crowded with about half the team.

The man himself was seated at the foot of his bed lighting a new cigarette while he sucked the old one down to the filter, his immaculate white undershirt marred with blood spatter. On the bed itself, in a much bigger pool of blood, lay the Sniper. "I told him many times, did I not, zat I would kill heem in his sleep one day?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't think you'd actually--" the Scout couldn't stop staring at the gaping entrance wound made by the Ambassador. "I mean, he was an ass, I'll give ya that, but he was a fucking good Sniper! Now we gotta go ask for a new one, and God knows how long that's gonna take!"

"You leave zat for zee grownups to vorry about." The Medic stepped forward, patting the Heavy Weapons Guy on the arm. "Make room, would you? Let's get zis body out of here before it stinks up zee whole base."

Continuing the random thing.
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The Scout wanted to argue the point, but the Pyro clapped a glove hand on the younger man's shoulder and shook its head, mumbling about breakfast. The others tried to talk to the Spy, but he just continued to chain-smoke in stony silence, so once the Heavy carried the Sniper's corpse out of the room, the rest of them shuffled downstairs for breakfast. The Engineer, for his part, decided that dealing with this mess could wait until after he'd gotten more sleep, and shuffled back downstairs, giving the Soldier the hairy eyeball when they passed in the hallway but otherwise not saying anything else.

When the Engineer woke again, his clock read close to noon. He sat up with a yawn, pretending not to notice the Spy-shaped displacement of air squatting next to the Dispenser he kept near his work bench. Nor did he remark upon the fresh leftovers he found on said work bench once he had changed, washed up, and shaved. He did, however, pour an extra cup of joe and left that on the Dispenser while he dug into his brunch.

And all of a sudden this story went from drama to dark comedy, because the plot bunnies are weird like that.
--------------------------------------------------------------
That afternoon, the Engineer was called into the Medic's laboratory and found himself staring at the abominable mess that the other man had made of the impromptu machine he'd slapped together.

"Ze Scout's assessment of ze Sniper got me zinking," the Medic was saying as he put the finishing touches on the Sniper's corpse. "Ze portions of ze brain zat govern muscle memory are different from his higher mental functions. Zo why not reanimate him and have ourselves a Sniper wizzout zee unsufferable personality flaws?"

"You know me, Doc," the Engineer knelt and began the meticulous process of rewiring everything so it wouldn't blow up on them once it had current flowing through it. "I don't got no problem with you creating an abomination 'a science--"

"Please," the Medic sniffed, cleaning flecks of blood from his glasses, "zis would be a medical breakthrough nozzing short of a miracle."

The Engineer was glad that his dark goggles obscured the eyeroll he was making. "Yer aimin' ta turn tha Sniper inta Frankenstein's monster, Doc. If yer gonna tamper in God's domain and all that, at least make sure ya have everything else going fer ya."

The Medic shrugged. "Zat iz what I have you for, ja? Besides, I was able to make ze team Ubercharge ready wiz only minor complications, was I not?"

"If nuthin' else, at list this oughta get tha Scout ta shut up about how you sewed a bird inta his chest," the Engineer muttered.

I like this

Trying not to state team colors is getting kind of awkward, but I want to try to keep it that way so the reader can imagine their team of choice as the protagonists. Let me know if I should just make a decision.
--------------------------------------------------------------
At the Engineer's insistence, the attempt to reanimate the Sniper was delayed until the Engineer could attempt a few dry runs. In the meantime, the corpse was stashed in the meat locker--the Medic, with a smirk, added a yellow sticky note to the dead gunman's forehead reading: "DO NOT EAT--DEMOMAN, THIS MEANS YOU".

On Monday, everyone went back to work as if nothing had changed, not one of them giving the Spy any lip about being a team-killer thanks to the Engineer smoothing ruffled (metaphorical) feathers beforehand. It also helped that being in Turbine meant fighting while down one team member--a Sniper in particular--wouldn't tip the balance too far in the enemy's favor. On top of that, the Spy went about his job like a man possessed, and the notification feed soon cluttered with his kills and saps. In response, the other team hunkered down on their side, keeping the choke points too well defended to push far beyond the center room, but that meant they made no attempts to steal the Intelligence, either. The day ended with the battle being determined on points, Spy's record-breaking contribution putting their side over the top.

Said Spy didn't hang around for any post-battle kudos or show for dinner, so the Engineer saved him some leftovers in the common room fridge and went back to brainstorming contingency plans in case bringing the Sniper back from the dead backfired on them. The Medic, still in a good mood due to his better than average kill-to-death ratio, took all of the Engineer's suggestions in good grace, joking that starting a zombie apocalypse would be too irresponsible even for him. (He was not, however, too irresponsible to keep unlabled canisters of neurotoxin lying about for whatever other science-related projects he was also working on.)

The Engineer had made contingency plans for every possible scenario except disappointment: while the body did show signs of life while hooked up to inadvisable amounts of voltage--including being able to be healed by the Medigun--as soon as the juice stopped flowing, so did the movement.

"I waz even willing to cackle and exclaim 'eetz alive'," the Medic sighed as he failed to find a pulse yet again.

"Maybe it's like jump-starting a car," the Engineer mused. "What if we let the engine run fer a bit, so ta speak?"

The Medic thought about this for a moment before he nodded in agreement. "Eet vould be wortz trying."

An entire night's worth of experimentation later, the Sniper's organs were all working again--with a little help from the medigun--and he even showed signs of independent movement, but he couldn't get very far from the slab before falling into a heap of limbs. Still, the Engineer found this an encouraging sign. "Well, whaddaya know, this might be crazy enough ta work after all."

The Medic rubbed his hands together. "Ja, if zis works, I could turn zee whole team into my minions and never haff to vorry about you idiots again." He took one look at the Engineer's scowling face and amended with a forced smile: "Just kidding, ov course!"

Yeah. ov course you're kidding.
Now that this is bumped back up, I'd like to take the opportunity to say how much I liked your "snapshots of an unconventional team" vignettes. They were really atmospheric, and I especially liked that you extrapolated the different extreme interpretations of the Spy personality, and managed to make two completely different characters out of him. Very cool.

Thanks! Even if the "real" teams are probably not as nice as I wrote them, I had a lot of fun with those vignettes and I hope to add to them in the future.

Shameless Self Promotion Time!
Pretty much all of my posts to /fic/ are also on my webpage http://dotchan.com and my ElJay (same username). The porn I wrote, however, is not available from me due to personal reasons--don't worry, you're not missing much.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled randomness still needing a title.
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The next day, the Engineer was called in for a video conference with a very irritated Administrator. "Having fun playing mad scientist with the good 'doctor'?" she sneered, the acrid tone in the word "doctor" making her true opinion of the man clear.

The Engineer wasn't shaken by the attempt to intimidate him in the least. " You saw the results for yerself, ma'am, and if you don't mind I'd like ta get back ta givin' 'im a hand."

"I do mind. I do mind very much." The Administrator narrowed her eyes, and the Engineer was certain that the temperature of the room dropped by a few degrees. "Why did you not report that you were down a team member as soon as it happened?"

The Engineer shrugged. "We're doin' jus' fine without 'im, ain't we?"

"And what happens when you transfer to a place like Thunder Mountain, hm? Stop wasting time with this reject of a science fair project and trigger a manual Respawn at once, before I do it for you and punish you all for insubordination."

The Engineer squared his jaw. "With all due respect, ma'am, I don't give a damn. That son of a gun got what was coming to 'im and if we bring 'im back, he wouldn't last a day before one 'a us blew 'im a way agin."

The Administrator arched an eyebrow. "You seemed to have tolerated him just fine before."

"That was before," before the Spy grew a pair, the Engineer added to himself, but if the Administrator didn't know about what had happened, she sure as hell wasn't about to hear it from him, and if she did, he didn't have to elaborate. "Now, I don't want 'im on this team even if he be tha best damn Sniper y'all have."

The Administrator smoked in stony silence for a good five minutes before answering. "Fine. I'll try to find you a less insufferable crazed gunman, but I make no promises."

The Engineer tipped his hat. "Glad we could come to an understandin', ma'am."

Poor Spy. Even when his story was still the A plot, I was not planning to go into the details of what was going on between him and Sniper. Now that the spotlight's been stolen by the Medic, Spy's backstory's gone into full Noodle Incident territory. Feel free to imagine for yourself why he resorted to murdering a man in his sleep--for all we know, it was because the Sniper ground his teeth.
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The Spy was waiting for the Engineer against the opposite wall of the narrow corridor where the conference room was located, the pile of spent cigarettes at his feet showing that he'd smoked at least a whole pack and then some. "Well? What was zee word from zee salope suprême?"

"She was none too happy, but when is she ever?"

"True."

The Engineer reported the news to the rest of the team, all of whom except for the Medic--still too busy playing with his new "toy"--were waiting for him in the common room to bring word back. They discussed the merits of Snipers in general and speculated on the personality of their new team member in specific for a while, and then each man went back to his own business.

Intermitting to repost that request post with a bit of a correction. I may also expand on it and rewrite that other Fem!Pyro story I have at the top of the page to incorporate this bit, we'll see.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Heavy was the first to speak, stating the obvious. "Leetle Pyro eez girl!"

The Demoman grumbled and handed a hundred dollar bill to the Sniper.

The Spy flipped open a page in his little black book labeled "Pyro Demographics" and made a mark in the "Tits" column.

The Scout turned away and covered his face, though he couldn't help sneak some more peeks through his fingers and become more disgusted each time. "Ah, geez! Put that back on already! Nobody wanted ta see dat!"

The Medic, who already knew the Pyro's identity by virtue of being the team physician, crossed his arms and scowled. "Are ve done? Can ve go back to killing now?"

Without saying anything, the Engineer picked up the fallen mask and handed it back to the Pyro, who snatched it, jammed it over her head and stormed out of the room muttering obscenities, shoving the still gobsmacked Soldier aside.

Is that implying that Scout is gay or that Pyro is really ugly?

Is that implying that Scout is gay or that Pyro is really ugly?
/shrug

Up to you. It can be any amount of Column A or Column B that you like. Personally, I'd imagine that any Pyro, male or female, is going to be sporting some pretty hideous burn scars.

And now for the thrilling (?) conclusion of the random thing.
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For the Engineer, the week leading up to the arrival of the new Sniper was a blur of the usual routine broken up with all-nighters at the Medic's laboratory. The old Sniper, in the meantime, "improved" to being able to respond to basic commands, and the Medic showed off the fruits of his labor by leading it around on a leash.

The (re)addition of the team's ninth official member coincided with the move back into Thunder Mountain, so they all shared a six-hour long train ride where most of them took turns chatting up the lanky Australian. The Engineer said his hellos and then he hung back with the Spy, who was watching the Sniper with an expression the Engineer hoped wasn't dreamy or lovestruck.

"Three years ago," the Spy murmured, perhaps more to himself than the Engineer, "I sat, much like zis, staring at what seemed to be zee perfect human specimen, and thought to myself, 'self, you must be insane eef you zink pursuing zis eez a good idea'." He exhaled a long stream of smoke. "But zen I thought, 'zee only difference between a madman and myself eez zat I am not mad; what eez zee worst zat could happen?'"

"Well, lesson learned, right?"

The Spy shrugged. "Perhaps."

Here's a sort of sequel to >>35 the opposite team's reaction to finding out what's under the suit.

Warning: Contains pretty gross imagery, but I'm too lazy to dig up my /afic/ post just for what amounts to a drabble.
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The enemy Pyro had put up an impressive fight, but in the end there was no beating off or running away from nine men who had, since discovering that the firestarter was of the fairer sex, spent every night in their rooms imagining the kind of supple flesh that lay beneath the mysterious rubber suit and what they were planning to do once they had their prize. They paid no mind to her screams increasing in volume and pitch as they bound her hands and legs. Then the Heavy grabbed her head while the Spy cut open her mask.

The first thing all of them noticed was the smell, a nauseating mix of sweat, wet rubber, and burnt flesh. More peeling revealed the bottom half of the Pyro's face--if that even was a face. Countless flirtations with flames had left the skin in a permanent state of damage to varying degrees of scabbing. Pus oozed from an open sore on the woman's neck.

Now the Pyro was laughing, the voice emerging from the suit not even sounding human, much less male. "See anything you like, boys? There's plenty more of that where it came from!" She strained and twisted against the ropes, slipping out of one glove and then the other, revealing that she'd lost several segments of fingers on each hand as she reached down to untie her legs. "None of you mind if I slip out of this into something more comfortable, right?"

By now most of the team had already left. The Medic stayed behind out of pure scientific curiosity, the Soldier--if the look on his face was any indication--remained for the bile fascination, and the other Pyro was making unimpressed noises to the tune of "been there, done that, got the T-shirt".

The enemy Pyro crossed her arms. "Oh, really? Care to prove that? You show me mine, and I'll show you yours?"
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I may or may not continue this after I've had some time to digest my dinner, we'll see.

>>39
Didn't gross me out at all!

Those of you who were here before the board crash may recognize some of the scenes that are to come as being from "Forget Me Not". I'm doing a more or less complete rewrite of it to change both the tone and characterization. I'm putting it in /fic/ this time around because I'm editing out all of the explicit references to sex (and part of me is kind of mad at myself for being a gigantic hypocrite because torture porn is technically still porn, but I'm too much of a wuss to do sex scenes right now).

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He woke to the sensation of movement that he couldn't decipher. Was it already time for the enemy team's sick games again? Or would he be granted death at last?

"Holy crap, is he popping a boner?"

"Either 'elp 'im or shut up, kid."

The persistent motion happening overhead stopped and he found himself dropping to the floor. The feeling he had lost in his limbs rushed back as cool, healing energy surrounded him, but even if he had the strength to make a sound he bit down on his lip to keep any noise from escaping. The enemy had yet to succeed in breaking him, and hell if he was going to let them win now. He would give them nothing.

A large hand grabbed him by the crook of one elbow. "On your feet, crouton! We stuck our necks to get you outta that hellhole; now it's your turn to pull your own weight!"

He blinked as a gun was shoved into his hands. This was a dream. This had to be. Any minute now he would wake up and find himself back to square one.

"Come on, fellers! We gotta git outta here right now!"

Or maybe he could just go with it and see where things led him.

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It wasn't just the unfamiliar ceiling I found myself staring at, the bed to which I was strapped, or the blind panic I had to fight in binding myself unable to move.

I didn't recognize any of the nine faces crowded around my bed like they were expecting something. I couldn't explain what I was doing there. Hell, I wouldn't even be able to tell anyone who I was.

"I stll suh hhs nuh our Sphh." This almost incomprehensible jumble of words came out of the rubber suit to my immediate right, and I found myself unable to take my eyes off of it, feeling the hairs on my arm stand on end. It poked me with one gloved finger, and though I tried to downplay my reaction I was sure I flinched. "I suh wuh brrn hmm tuh mk shuh."

"Later," was the distracted response from the man in the white coat, and I felt a corresponding yet inexplicable clench in my gut. He shined a flashlight into my eyes. "Well, Herr Spy? How do you feel?"

Say nothing. Give him nothing. The thought sprang to mind unbidden. "Ah--I--that is--" I hedged, trying to give away as little as possible.

"Hey, what happened to the accent, huh, Frenchfag?" The younger man near the foot of the bed crossed his arms. "Where's all dat 'hon hon hon' stuff you always do?"

My answer was immediate, without any conscious thought on my part? "Why don't you ask your mozzer?" I sneered back, speaking in a manner I don't remember using. But hearing me talk like that seemed to put the others at ease somewhat.

"Scout, don't be bothering Spah none," a short man in a hardhat and overalls patted this 'Scout' on the shoulder before he could start an argument. He tipped his hat at me. "Glad ta see yer awake."

"Yes, yes, as you can see, he iz fine." The man in white--it was a labcoat, some corner of my mind provided--began pushing the rest of the people out of the room. "Now, get out, you are interfering viz mein vork."

The thought of being in a room alone with that man--any of them--sent my pulse racing moreso than having them all here. They bickered and fought each other all the time, that much I knew. But I couldn't ask for any of them to stay without giving away that they had the advantage.

The Scout, meanwhile, continued to run his mouth even as he was going out the door. "What, Spy's fine, ya said so yourself! Your Medigun did the job, didn't it? Okay, so we did hafta keep talking to him to make sure he wasn't completely nuts, but I don't blame him for going on dat rampage. I mean, we all saw how badly dose assholes fucked him up!"

The scars that I could see corraborated this story, but no matter how much I tried to think back about it, I kept drawing a blank.

"Ach, zat boy never shuts up, I swear!" Labcoat-man slammed the door shut behind the last straggler, a tall lanky fellow who kept sneaking backwards glances at me, before turning his attention back to me. "Now, zen, let's get zis ovah wiz so I can get back to some real science."

It took every bit of my willpower to not leap from the bed and take off running when he undid the straps and began checking my reflexes. I had to play along until I could come up with a clearer game plan.

It seemed like an eternity before Labcoat-man clapped me on the back. "You seem to have a clean bill ov health, more or lesz. I must admit zere vas a moment where I was vorried zat you vould not be able to valk out of ze enemy encampment on your own two feet, but I should haff put more faith in mein Medigun."

I touched my neck, as if I was reaching for something there. "Eef you don't mind, I would like to rest here a bit longer." He gave me an annoyed gaze, but I managed to hold my ground. I let on that right now, I couldn't even find my way out of a wet paper bag. "You won't even know I'm here."

He considered this withi a hand to his forehead. "Fine. But if I zo much as hear a peep out of you, you are going back to your own room."

I forced myself to lay back down. "Thank you."

----------------------------------------------------------------


"Look at him! Frenchy here likes dis nasty shit!"

Agony lanced his entire body. Liquid pain ran down his back, his arms, his legs.

"Don't worry, dere's plenty more where dat came from!"

He stifled the urge to make any noise. They would not have the satisfaction of hearing him scream, or moan, or beg for mercy. He would give them nothing.

"Heh, keep dis up and you'll only be able ta hop like da frog you are!"

Darkness was descending, and he welcomed it.

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Labcoat-man wasn't around when I woke the next morning, but there was still someone sitting in his chair watching me. I was trying to make sense of the man's outfit when he drew a cigarette out of a slim case and lit it up.

God, I wanted that cigarette.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he began. "I am--"

"A man of wealth and taste?" I interrupted, forcing a smile I didn't feel.

He chuckled. "Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor, at least." He exhaled a long stream of smoke. "Non, mon ami, I am zee Spy our magnanimous employers sent to replace you when you were reported missing een action."

It wasn't difficult to guess what had happened to me, but everything before I had woken up in this room was still more or less blank. "Are you worried zat I would want my job back, zen?"

He scoffed. "Hardly. What use would zee team have for a Spy who doesn't even remember who he eez?"

I tried to play it cool. "Zat means I have no secrets to geeve away, even under zee pain of torture, non?"

He took something out of the inside of his jacket and threw it onto the bed. "Do you even remember which end of zee gun to point at zee enemy?"

I cupped the weapon between my hands, testing its weight. In a series of motions that must have been well-practiced, I picked it up, checked to see if it was loaded, cocked it, and aimed it at him. "And how do I know you are not zee enemy, hmm?"

"An enemy Spy wouldn't give you zee tools to become useful again." the Spy chuckled again as I raised an eyebrow at him. "Believe what you like."

I blinked as he dumped a number of additional objects into my lap, as well as several maps.

"You will be asked to participate een battle again next week. Happy studies."

And then he was gone, leaving me to contemplate what he had given me.

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A hand grabbed his hair and lifted him up. "You must have noticed, haven't you? Your teammates are doing just fine wizzout you. I'll bet zey don't even realize you're here. Nobody eez coming for you, mon ami." The hand let go and he fell back into a kneeling position, causing fresh blood to ooze from his wounds. "But eef you cooperate, I may be eenclined to show you mercy.

He refused to reply. There had never been any relief from his torment before, and he knew that all that awaited him was more of the same. He would give them nothing.

"Still playing zee hero, are we? Well, we shall see how long zat lasts."

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Thanks to the maps, I was able to find my way back to my own room, and though it was locked, picking it open was a trivial matter. Though I wanted to lock--and perhaps bar--the door behind me, just being in such a small room, even my own, was making me anxious, so I left it open and began searching to see if I could find any clues.

Even if this was my room, I must have been very cautious, because I couldn't find anything besides the closet full of the same striped suits and masks my replacement was never seen without. The choice of wardrobe both seemed like it was the most natural thing in the world and complete nonsense. Why would I ever choose to wear a silk tuxedo a battlefield, even if I was some sort of secret agent? Nevertheless, once again my body seemed to move on its own, and I found myself changing into one of the suits.

I got as far as draping the tie around my shoulders before I grabbed it and threw it as far away from me as I could as if it were a poisonous snake. As I tried to control my shaking hands, my gaze went to the other pile of items on my bed.

I was fiddling with the knife, flicking it open and closed with a snap of my wrist, when Overalls, with Gasmask hovering behind him like a guard dog, came to my door with a bowl of something or other. "Don't mean ta bother ya none, Spah, but seein' as ya didn't come in fer breakfast I thought I'd bring some."

I set the knife down before I got up to accept the food. "No, I should thank you."

As Overalls handed off the bowl, Gasmask pointed two fingers to the dark lenses covering its eyes, then jabbed them back towards me in a threatening manner. This caused Overalls to chuckle. "Don't you mind Pyro. He's jus' watchin' out fer me."

I nodded back. "No offense taken."

The oatmeal, though bland, was palatable, so I sat on the bed and continued to study the items I had been given. The function of the knife was obvious, as was that of the disguise kit, and I could guess that the large rectangular box full of indicators, knobs, and wires was some sort of sabotage device, but what was I supposed to do with a watch that didn't tell the time? I put it on, pressing what I assumed to be the dial to adjust the settings, and dropped the bowl when I found myself turning invisible. When I tried to clean up the mess I made, I discovered that while I could still touch both the bowl and the oatmeal, I had no effect on it until I turned the invisibility off.

Having ruined half of my meal, I leaned against the wall and smoked the cigarettes from my disguise kit until lunchtime.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Though the heat was so intense that all he could feel was the searing flames, he could also smell his flesh burning. He tried to pull away, but the bindings held him fast.

He was pulled closer still by the choke chain around his neck. "Guess I should be impressed. I was sure you'd 'a cracked by now."

He refused to give any kind of answer. His jaw ached from the effort of keeping it shut, but he knew that should he unclench his teeth now all the effort of remaining silent would be for naught.

He had to give them nothing, or die trying.

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Falling into routine was easy. Whatever it was that I was doing, it was obvious that I was an expert at it and had been for years. All I had to do was not think too hard about the task at hand I could feign a level of general competence that, even if it might have been on the whole sub-average was passable enough for normality that I could pass scrutiny.

Reintegrating with the team--though I couldn't dismiss the nagging doubts that I hadn't been rescued at all, I forced myself to think of thse people as "my" team--was much more problematic. As far as I could tell, I wasn't any sort of social butterfly to begin with, so it'd seem suspicious for me to hang around most of the others. And I couldn't allow the ones who did show signs of having known me well figure out that I still just had a vague idea of who they were. At least I'd learned all of their job titles by way of judicious eavesdropping and I could at least make smalltalk with them without any obvious gaffes.

All too soon it was time for me to take to the field again. I stood waiting with the others in the ready room, and though I was able to project the illusion of unflappable calm, I wondered just how effective I would be.

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Down, down, down went the plunger, draining the syringe of its ominous-looking fluid. And all he could do was watch. And wait.

The rubber gloved hand ran across his forehead. "Oops, zat was not medicine. Ah, well, no use wasting a perfectly good shot of whatever zat was, I suppose."

Music began to play somewhere, soft and soothing and not at all fitting for a situation like this. His mouth began to feel dry and his vision went blurry.

As his mind began to lose focus as well, he held onto one thing, repeating it like a mantra: say nothing. Give them nothing. Even if he were to die here, he would not betray his team.

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The first time I came back to life since going back to the job, I spent a good minute or so vomiting into the sink until I had nothing left. Most of my other attempts to cross the battlefield ended up in varying ways of death, but each trip became less and less harrowing until it was just a momentary inconvenience.

At last I was able to sneak my way up into the enemy Sniper's nest without being detected. I uncloaked, but did not drop my disguise as their Pyro in case he glanced back, and approached him with my knife raised.

He took that moment to yawn and stretch, his arm catching mine.

It all happened too fast and too slow at the same time. I swung at him, my knife catching something but failing to do anything except make him even more angry. He tackled both of us to the ground, slamming my hand into the ground over and over again until I'd dropped my weapon.

"Gotcha, you slippery little--" his anger melted into confusion, then astonishment. "Spoi? You're alroight?" Still straddling me, he threw his weapon aside and cupped my face with both hands. "By gum, we all thought you were dead or worse!"

"Cher--" I began, trying to figure out if he was bluffing or not. He looked sincere enough, but I wasn't in any position to trust my judgement.

"Shh!" He clapped a hand over my mouth and triggered the invisibility function of my watch again.

I tried to follow his gaze, but with him on top of me I couldn't see anything. I did, however, hear the sound of muffled cries and regular bursts of flame. The nausea I fought off before returned with full force.

"It's all roight," the Sniper whispered into my ear. "Truckie's been 'aving a bit 'f trouble, so Pyro won't come up 'ere unless I yell for 'im." He got up, but gave me a push as I tried to do the same. He shook his hand at me and indicated for me to wait where I was before picking up his rifle and returning to his task of making pretty little headshots.

My mind reeled as I lay there watching him and listening for the Pyro to go away. I did always have my doubts, but even in my most paranoid moments I thought the idea that the enemy would go through the trouble of pretending I was on their team seemed too far-fetched. Yet this Sniper seemed convinced that I was his ally acting as a double agent. What if the enemy had discovered my ruse, beat me until I had lost all memory of my original mission, and was playing along so that I would be loyal to them instead?

The possibility wasn't zero.

The Pyro moved on to other areas and I found myself leaving the enemy base without attacking anyone. Pulling out my earpiece so I wouldn't have to hear the progression of the battle, I squeezed myself, still invisible, into a cubbyhole that I had seen everyone pass without a second glance. My head between my legs and my arms draped over that, I closed my eyes, berating myself for my inability to do anything when push came to shove, but my heart was no longer in the fighting.

----------------------------------------------------------------

They watched him bleed, some of them bored, some unredable, and some leering.

"I'll tell you wot, it's downroight eerie. I 'aven't 'eard a single peep out 'f 'im."

"He must have been trained to rezeest torture." A spent cigarette was extinguished on his collarbone and a new one lit. "Be patient. Everyone breaks sooner or later."

He sucked in air through his teeth as he was pulled up. Any sound he made would be taken by the enemy as a sign of defeat. He refused to let them win.

He would give them nothing.

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I didn't let myself be found until the day had ended, trudging into Respawn with a limp that wasn't quite faked due to the soreness I felt from having hidden in a very uncomfortable position for several days.

I shouldn't have bothered. Just one person was there waiting for me, the other Spy. "Got cold feet?" He asked between puffs on his cigarette, leaning against the locker as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"You could say so." I shrugged out of my suit and dumped it down the laundry shoot before putting on a new one, my hand lingering at the knot in my tie as if to make sure that it wasn't something else. I scrounged my mind for a good excuse when a stray thought struck upon it. "Eet occurred to me zat eef I were at full strength, zee teams would no longer be balanced, and I have no desire to use my skills for zee enemy."

"You don't have to worry about zat. Eet will just be a matter of time before zee ozzer team catches on and requests anozzer Spy to even zee numbers." Now the other Spy turned to leave. "You just worry about getting well."

The train records? Of course. That was one piece of information neither team could interfere with. If I could find out which team got a new Spy first, it would determine once and for just what was true and what was a fabrication.

I was in my room studying the maps to make sure that my plan would work when I heard the stomping of boots approaching. I stuffed the maps under my pillow and lit up a new cigarette; the pile of smoked ones in the ashtray on the nightstand would make it look like that was all I had been doing.

The Soldier burst in without knocking. "That other Spy said not to bother you, but seeing as you've skipped another meal, I brought it to you!"

I stared as a tin of some unidentifiable material was plopped next to the ashtray. "Zat eez alright, I'm not hungry--"

"Doesn't matter! You need to keep your strength up! I won't have any of my men getting sent home because of Shell Shock!"

"I'm fine, sir," I lied, wondering if that was what the other Spy said about me to explain my absence.

"Like hell you are! Don't think I haven't seen you with a Thousand Yard Stare!" He grabbed me by the shoulders. "Look at yourself! The old Spy wouldn't have let me lay hands on him like this!"

In a flash my open knife was at his neck. "What makes you think I have any interest een being manhandled now?"

He let me go, but his expression didn't change. "Eat your goddamn dinner, Frenchie. That's an order."

I didn't retract my weapon. "Eef you eenseest."

He stepped out of my range and was about to leave when he slapped himself upside the helmet. "Almost forgot!" Some fishing in his pockets later, a bottle cap with a ribbon glued to one end joined the tin of mess. "Until you get an actual Purple Heart," was all he offered as explanation before he marched out.

I poked a finger into the substance and tasted it. Salty, but palatable. Or maybe it was just the hunger from missing lunch that made me inclined towards mysterious substances. Still, the Soldier was right about needing sustenance. I fished out the bottle of wine I found during one of my searches and used that to wash the rest of the tin down and then forced myself into a meditative rest.

Tonight, I promised myself. Tonight, I would get some real answers.

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The first thing the Spy noticed as his world swam back into focus was that his arms and legs were bound with thick rope and his mouth gagged with bad-smelling cloth. He tested the ropes, but found no give in the knots. He peered into the darkness, trying to make out any details in the darkness; aside from some light seeping through the cracks in the door, all he saw were worn plastered walls.

It was obvious he'd been captured by the enemy. That means they must have gotten wise to him. And instead of just killing him, they had other plans.

He tensed as he heard footsteps echo down the hallway headed in his direction. Whatever was in store for him couldn't be pleasant, even if he could survive the ordeal.

But he was a Spy, the best of the best, trained to give as well as take. Those amatures could destroy his body, but not his spirit.

He would give them nothing.


----------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as I stared at the records. There had just been two transfers in the past year: two Spies, one for each team, both arriving on the same train. They even checked in at their respective bases within seconds of each other.

Of course the other team would have had a similar idea, and lost their Spy at the same time as ours. But one of the teams weren't so lucky--cross-checking the current roster showed that I was still the odd man out.

"Might as well toss a coin," I muttered to myself, sinking to the floor.

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"Ye huvnae said a single true hin' aw nicht, hae ye? Ye ur sae foo ay it, loon!"

He accepted the toast, smirking around the edge of the glass. "Eet depends on how you look at zings, non? Besides, I am a Spy. Keeping secrets eez my job."

"But doesnae it bortha ye? Whit if someday ye gonnae-no bein' a Spy an' discowre 'at there's nae 'yoo' left onie mair?"

He shrugged. "Zen I simply construct a new self and start over. Eet eez not as eef I have not done so before."

It was a necessity in his business. Of all the things that an agent could be compromised over, their private life was the number one risk. By throwing away everything, he had nothing to give away.

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Temporarily stopping here because I can't figure out how to end this mess. I feel like I've painted myself into a corner.

Is there any way to view the original at this point? Just wondering.

Is there any way to view the original at this point? Just wondering.
Nope.avi. It was a fairly bog standard hurt/comfort 'fic, just without any healing sex at the end. You're not missing much.

(Now that I've had some time to let the glow of 'this is the best idea ever' fade, I'm wondering if the rewrite is still not well paced. It feels like I'm relying too much on the narrator telling us that he doesn't feel like part of the team rather than showing it, and the plot twist with the enemy Sniper is a bit, IDK, out of left field? I mean, it's supposed to be, but it doesn't seem to make sense from a storytelling point of view, either.)

Lady Heavy on The Rag
---------------------------------------------------------------
The signs had all been there: the increasing bursts of temper, the rising frequency of trips to the "leettle Ladies room"--as if there were anything about the Russian brick shithouse that was little or ladylike--and the growing preference towards red meat to the point of eating slabs of raw beef. Everyone else was now in a state of constant vigil as if on pins and needles as they counted the days.

Then It happened. The walls shook as she stomped up and down the hallways, bellowing in broken English: "HEAVY WANT SNU-SNU!"

They had succeeded too well in avoiding her. There was no placating the enraged beast now without at least one of them gave in to her demands. And since no-one was willing to provide, she headed to the first room she could find and began bashing down the door, punctuating each slam with her mantra.

"HEAVY!" Bash. "WANT!" Bash. "SNU!" Bash. "SNU!" Bash.

The door held, as it was reinforced against greater ordinance than even that of the Heavy, but the hinges did not, and the Heavy claimed her prize, dragging her wailing, screaming victim back to her own room with no heed to his cries.

"Leggo! C'mon, please, leggo!" The Scout tried to grab onto something, anything, but the Heavy proved too strong. "I changed my mind, I wanna die a virgin! I wanna die a virgin!"

Meanwhile, on the third floor, the Sniper sipped at his coffee and watched the sunrise. "Huh, sounds loike she got th' 'ooligan this toime." He chuckled. "Poor bastard."

The Engineer frowned even deeper, making himself look all the more ridiculous as he had managed to wedge the rest of his body under the bed. "That ain't funny, Slim."

The Sniper wasn't phased. "You feel so bad for th' kid, you go down there and take one for th' team, then."

The Engineer paled at the suggestion. "Hell, no! I don't put my dick in crazy!"

The Sniper chuckled again. "You and me both, mate."

The poor Scout. This oneshot had me in stitches, the mental image is just too powerful. It would have been even more hilarious if she had gotten her hands on the Soldier though.

*snicker* Oh my god that last one was just amazing. I'm gonna be giggling aboout it all day. Please never stop being awesome.

> 45
Bonus ending, just for you:

As the sounds of destruction began again that next month, the Soldier set his jaw. "Enough is enough, men! I'm not cowering like some maggot while that Commie goes on her rampage!" He jammed his helmet on and saluted the others. "I'm going down there and doing what I should have done last month!"

The Demoman was the sole member of the team who could return the salute with a straight face. "Godspeed, ye daft bastard."

With that, the Soldier started stomping downstairs, yelling at the top of his lungs: "All right, you pinko monster, let's see if you can handle a taste of some real all-American manhood! Charge!"

Ogodthisissosillyyes

I must know if Solly survived with what little sanity he had left

I like to think Soldier would be a bit of an overly aggressive lover. He probably enjoyed lady Heavy hehe

Here's a little something inspired by the lovely picture KGBigelow drew over in /afanart/.
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The Engineer knew from the beginning that his teammates were strange, to say the least, but he was raised better than to make a stink about who was doing what with whom. Granted, it took him longer than he'd like to admit to stop hiding in his workshop because he wasn't that comfortable with everyone else letting it all hang out as it were, but it was impossible for him to stay aloof when they were fighting and bleeding together. And as much as he loved to tinker with his babies, they couldn't talk to him or share drinks with him or empathize when a run of bad luck left him dead with his nest destroyed.

So when the team got ready for a night on the town dressed in a way that even a faggot would find over the top, the Engineer didn't think much of it, not even the Scout went over and asked him why he wasn't in costume. One whirlwind conversation later, the Scout ran off laughing that the Engineer hadn't "popped his cherry yet" while the man himself scratched his head trying to figure out what in tarnation was going on.

He still couldn't make heads or tails of anything as the team crammed into a too-small theater with a group of other people dressed the same when. Any attempts to ask just got a wink and a reassurance to relax and enjoy himself.

He spent the next week or so with "Time Warp" stuck in his head.

Er, I'm not sure if this is the proper way to contact you, but what happened to your archive page on dotchan.com? If I click on "team fortress 2" in tags, all I get is "Lady Heavy on the Rag" and "Practical Problems", which doesn't display anything if I click on it. There's nothing else at all. I'm just wondering what happened to everything else.

Yes. Just yes. Rocky horror fortress 2.

Thanks for the catch on my Archive, Anonymous! I had mis-typed some HTML on "Practical Problems" and as a result the wordpress template had an aneurysm. It's all fixed now.

I think someone might've requested something like this before, but I'd really like to see something where a tentaspy masters his new body and becomes a useful member of the team again.
Have an introduction while I try to figure out how to make the rest of the plot work given how few of the current maps have deep enough water. (Yes, in the past, I just made them up, but for whatever reason my brain decided to nitpick this time.)
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With Apologies to Franz Kafka

One morning, anxious dreams, waking up a monster, blah blah blah.

You know how it goes. Take one normal Spy--or as normal as a Spy was going to get--switch his lower half for tentacles and viola, instant hilarity.

Except I wasn't laughing. Not when I'd been transformed into an aquatic creature and we were miles away from natural bodies of anything even moist. On top of that, I was thrashing around so hard from panic that I was hurting the teammates who were trying to help.

The Medic must have shot enough tranquilizers in me to kill two elephants before I stopped trying to strangle anyone within range. After that, because I sank into a useless pile of limbs that was about as easy to carry as wet cement, it took the whole team to load me onto an unused bomb cart and wheel me into the communal showers.

I regained conscious thought under a constant stream of both water and healing, my new appendages doing things to the Engineer's old Dispenser that even made me, master of making people uncomfortable, feel embarrassed. "Well," I began, trying to get the limbs under control, but they seemed to have a mind of their own. "Zis eez razzer awkward."

"I'll say," the Engineer agreed, watching me from the other side of the room.

That he was my babysitter didn't surprise me, but the lack of a certain science-happy German did. "Where eez zee Medic?"

"After it hit him that yer a half-man, half-octopus, I think his brain overloaded a bit. Last I saw 'a him he was foamin' at tha mouth in 'is room. And me, well, I'm more worried about figurin' how yer gonna stay on tha team right now."

As much as I loathed the idea of being vivisected by the Medic, being passed onto the higher ups as nothing more than a specimen was a much more frightening prospect. I felt myself circling closer to the Dispenser. "One zing at a time, oui? I haven't even figured out how to work zese new 'legs' yet."

I like, please continue

Expanded a bit more on the RED Spy/BLU Scootma date thing.
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The RED Spy had never been the type to commit to relationships, being more of a flavor-of-the-moment sort. And yet this particular woman had, without the usual clingy female nonsense, managed to remain interesting even after several encounters ranging anywhere from light flirting in the disguise of casual dialogue all the way to a hands-on demonstration of his cunning linguistics.

So when company business brought him the town where she lived, he decided to surprise her by showing up at her door with a bouquet of pale yellow roses--her favorite--and inviting her for a nice meal at his favorite restaurant. "Nozzing but zee best for ma petite chou-fleur," he assured her, eliciting an amused eyebrow arch.

"And listen to that snooty Maitre d' make disparaging remarks about my best dress? No thank you." Having secured the roses in a washed out milk bottle on the counter, she slipped her hand into his and pulled him towards the door. "I found da loveliest little cafe, just down da street. You can wine and dine me all you'd like dere."

"Eef you eenseest." He let her take the lead until they were outside, then waited for her to lock the door before giving her an extravagant bow. "Shall we?"

She gave him a curtsy in return. "Lead da way, monsieur."

They had walked about two streets, hand in hand, when he pressed her against a wall. "We're being followed," he whispered as he planted a kiss on her ear. "Look to your left and tell me what you see, s'il vous plaît."

She complied, though she also gave him a sharp pinch in the side when his hands roamed to her waist. "There does seem to be a gentleman dressed likecha, ;cept in dark blue and wearing some sorta fake beard. At least I hope dat's a fake beard." She kissed back with vigor, sneaking in a bite on his lip as well. "Friend 'a yahs?"

"Somezing like zat." The RED Spy pressed even closer. "Would you like me get rid of him, petit, or shall we give him a show?"

She smirked against his lips. "As long as you get me a copy 'a da pictures."

"Your wish eez my command." He pretended not to notice their obvious tail as they continued towards their destination. They sat down at an outdoor table with her facing the street, sharing a chuckle as their shadow ducked into the bridal shop.

Then she began to laugh in earnest. "He isn't--oh, he is--" she doubled over with mirth. "Ah, sweetie, you hafta see dis."

He picked up the menu, but his gaze was directed back towards his rival, and he, too found it difficul to keep from laughing as he saw the other man try to pretend to be a manniquin, wedding dress and all. "You have to geeve him points for creativity, at least."

"I s'pose so." Having laughed herself to tears, she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief before going back to the menu. "Anything catch your eye, or wouldja like me ta ordah for ya?"

"You do zat. I need to make sure our friend stays where he eez."

"Should we switch seats, then?"

"D'accord."

He coughed into his glove to keep from laughing again now that he had the BLU Spy in full view. Poor bastard. Maybe he should let the other man have some jucier pictures than just holding hands after all.

In no time at all the food had arrived and he raised an eyebrow when he saw that his date had ordered a rather large hotdog piled high with condiments on his behalf. "Eef I didn't know better, petite, I would almost zink zat you are encouraging me to play for zee ozzah team, as eet were."

She snorted and began cutting her sandwich into dainty lady-sized pieces. "Sometimes a hotdog is just a hotdog, dear. Besides, don't try ta tell me you ain't fucking some dude silly when yer stuck in that hellhole you call 'work'."

As tempted as he was to give his audience a show, the Spy did the same with his hotdog. "Non, zey are far too uptight to entertain zee idea of being wiz a man. Eet eez much more amusing to insinuate and zen watch zem squirm."

"Well, if ya do hook up with somebody, I wanna meet him, too." She bit down on a slice and then let the fork linger between her lips as she smiled at him. "You'll do that for me, wontcha?"

He mirrored this action, smirking back with his own shark grin. "I cannot make any promises, but I'll see what I can do."

>>54

OP here, I really like where this is going.

I'm trying to write additional scenes to pad "Forget Me Not" to make the Spy's inevitable freakout have bigger impact and make it obvious that he's a giant paranoid idiot of an unreliable narrator, but I've hit a writing block. I need at least two or three more scenes of the Spy interacting with his teammates and some suggestions on an ending. I've brainstormed to the part where the team catches him trying to sneak off base (in the rewrite, he never makes it to the train station), triggering a full flashback on Spy's part and the rest of the team realizing just how bad things were for him--they saw him naked and bloody, of course, but most of them didn't 100% connect the dots and were in their own form of denial about it.

Is it really paranoia if he doesn't trust his teammates because he was captured, tortured, lost his memory, got replaced by a new Spy, can't remember anything at all about his allies but one of the enemies treats him like a friend?

Unless he is an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator (like, none of the things he describes actually happened and he got amnesia when he slipped and hit his head, or something), those sounds like pretty good reasons to be suspicious.

Is it really paranoia if he doesn't trust his teammates because he was captured, tortured, lost his memory, got replaced by a new Spy, can't remember anything at all about his allies but one of the enemies treats him like a friend?
Part of the new rewrite is to make everything more ambiguous. Now he has allies who don't treat him like shit (the new distribution is about 1/3 suspicious, 1/3 friendly, and 1/3 couldn't give a fuck) and he chickens out on stabbing the enemy Sniper even before interacting with him.

This is probably the closest thing to porn you'll get from me for the time being.
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Once again the Spy was whinging about his terrible day--as if he was the only one who did any work and died too many bullshit deaths--and I decided enough was enough.

His rant died mid-sentence as I picked up his legs, dropped them in my lap, and popped his shoes off. "What on earth do you think you're doing, bushman?"

I gave his big toe an experimental pinch, eliciting a string of foreign expletives. "Just shut up and relax, Spook." I shifted so I could pin him if he got too frisky on me. "Boi th' way, this moight 'urt a bit."

"You could have told me zat before you manhandled me--!" His voice went up an octave as I pressed in harder, tutting as I felt the tension and callouses.

"Fat lot 'f good those six 'undred dollar shoes are doing you. They're th' wrong shape for your feet." As I kneaded the ball of his foot, the Spy howled and gripped into the cushions of the sofa. "And stop making such a scene. This is nothing compared t' getting set on foire."

"I'd razzer be torched to death zan--aah!" The Spy was now as bright red as his suit. "Oh, God, zere should be some article een zee Geneva Convention against zis!"

"We're mercenaries. We don't get any protections under international treaty." I deadpanned back.

By the time I moved on to the Spy's other foot, he had exhausted himself with his hissy fit and just laid there in a pile of sulk, though the noises he was making now sounded less like protest and more towards reluctant enjoyment. "Should have known you were good wiz your hands," he muttered, draping an arm over his eyes.

I didn't dignify him with a response and just kept working my way up his thigh until I got to his knees. "That's all you get for free," I told him, my tone somewhere between serious and joking. "I charge for th' rest."

"I shall have to zink about taking you up on zat," he all but purred, staying where he was.

Now with at least 100% more filler.

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He was falling asleep with his eyes open, he was sure of it. He hadn't been allowed to sleep, eat, or drink except for the pittance they allowed so he wouldn't die. He had retreated so far into himself that it was as if he was no longer in his body, but watching from afar, impassive as they tortured him.

This was different from before. He was still surrounded, but the uniform colors clashed with the walls of his prison. Then his hands were no longer bound so that he hung from the ceiling, strong arms catching him before he fell into a useless heap to the floor. Cool, healing energy surrounded him, while a jacket was draped around his shoulders.

He often hallucinated of escape or rescue, but this was the first time the process had been so detailed. He remained silent even as strength returned to his limbs, wondering if he had at long last lost his sanity or if this was another trick.

Now he was lifted up by his elbows. "On your feet, crouton! We stuck our necks to get you outta that hellhole; now it's your turn to pull your own weight!"

He blinked as a gun was shoved into his hands. This was a dream. This had to be. Any minute now he would wake up and find himself back to square one.

"Come on, fellers! We gotta git outta here right now!"

Or maybe he could just go with it and see where things led him.

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It wasn't just the unfamiliar ceiling I found myself staring at, the bed to which I was strapped, or the blind panic I had to fight in finding myself unable to move.

I didn't recognize any of the nine faces crowded around my bed like they were expecting something. I couldn't explain what I was doing there. Hell, I wouldn't even be able to tell anyone who I was.

"I stll suh hhs nuh our Sphh." This almost incomprehensible jumble of words came out of the rubber suit to my immediate right, and I found myself unable to take my eyes off of it, feeling the hairs on my arm stand on end. It poked me with one gloved finger, and though I tried to downplay my reaction I was sure I flinched. "I suh wuh brrn hmm tuh mk shuh."

"Later," was the distracted response from the man in the white coat, and I felt a corresponding yet inexplicable clench in my gut. He shined a flashlight into my eyes. "Well, Herr Spy? How do you feel?"

Say nothing. Give him nothing. The thought sprang to mind unbidden. "Ah--I--that is--" I hedged, trying to give away as little as possible.

"Hey, what happened to the accent, huh, Frenchfag?" The younger man near the foot of the bed crossed his arms. "Where's all dat 'hon hon hon' stuff you always do?"

My answer was immediate, without any conscious thought on my part. "Why don't you ask your mozzer?" I sneered back, adopting the most foreign-sounding affectation I could manage.

"Scout, don't be bothering Spah none," a short man in a hardhat and overalls patted this 'Scout' on the shoulder before he could start an argument. He tipped his hat at me. "Glad ta see yer awake."

"Yes, yes, as you can see, he iz fine." The man in white--it was a labcoat, some corner of my mind provided--began pushing the rest of the people out of the room. "Now, get out, you are interfering viz mein vork."

The thought of being in a room alone with that man--any of them--sent my pulse racing moreso than having them all here. With more than one man there, I could play them off each other, but I couldn't ask for any of them to stay without giving away that they had the advantage.

The Scout, meanwhile, continued to run his mouth even as he was going out the door. "What, Spy's fine, ya said so yourself! Your Medigun did the job, didn't it? Okay, so we did hafta keep talking to him to make sure he wasn't completely nuts, but I don't blame him for going on dat rampage. I mean, we all saw how badly dose assholes fucked him up!"

The scars that I could see corraborated this story, but no matter how much I tried to think back about it, I kept drawing a blank.

"Ach, zat boy never shuts up, I swear!" Labcoat-man slammed the door shut behind the last straggler, a tall lanky fellow who kept sneaking backwards glances at me, before turning his attention back to me. "Now, zen, let's get zis ovah wiz so I can get back to some real science."

It took every bit of my willpower to not leap from the bed and take off running when he undid the straps and began checking my reflexes. I had to play along until I could come up with a clearer game plan. "Well, what eez zee prognosis?" I asked, playing cool.

It seemed like an eternity of poking and prodding before Labcoat-man clapped me on the back. "You seem to have a clean bill ov health, more or lesz. I must admit zere vas a moment where I was vorried zat you vould not be able to valk out of ze enemy encampment on your own two feet, but I should haff put more faith in mein Medigun."

I touched my neck, as if I was reaching for something there, but found nothing. "Eef you don't mind, I would like to rest here a bit longer." He gave me an annoyed gaze, but I managed to hold my ground. I couldn't let them have any hint that something was wrong with me. "You won't even know I'm here."

He considered this with a hand massaging the bridge of his nose. "Fine. But if I zo much as hear a peep out of you, you are going back to your own room."

I forced myself to lay back down. "Thank you."

He moved out of my line of sight, no doubt to his so-called 'real science'. I turned my gaze to the rest of the room, trying to find something, anything that I found familiar.

Still nothing. I went to cataloging what I did know instead. My general knowledge seemed to be intact, at least: I rattled off to myself all of the useless facts I had learned in grade school without any hesitation. But when I tried to turn those thoughts inward, to anything I knew of myself or the current situation, I would keep getting stymied. It was as if my mind was refusing to think about anything related this place.

I lay there counting ceiling tiles for who knows how long when the largest of the nine men came through the door with a tray of food. "Dinner time, Doktor!" he exclaimed with a cheerful voice.

"Ach, already?" Labcoat-man moved back into view, his arms soaked up to his elbows with blood. "Let me wash up first." He flicked a glance in my direction. "Spy, you haff some, too. You should be able to digest solid foods wizzout any problems."

Brief as it was, I found it hard to meet his gaze. "I don't zink I should--"

"No worries! I brought enough food for Spy, too!" The large man put one plate next to several beakers full of mysterious fluids and then came over to set the tray on my lap. "How are you feeling?"

I shrugged as I dug in. "As well as can be expected, I guess."

"Take your time. I've seen my share of people who've survived ordeals such as yours. It takes them months, even years, to recover." He scratched the back of his head. "I would ask you to talk to the Medic about this, but he's not what I'd call an expert in psychiatry."

At this point the Medic turned his attention to us, looking as cranky as ever. "I may not be able to speak Russian, but I can understand it just fine."

I almost dropped my fork. Did I just have an entire conversation in Russian? "Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--" I trailed off mid-sentence as I realized I couldn't tell which language I was speaking in.

The large man didn't seem as concerned. "Ah, Doktor, you know my English is no good. Wanted to talk to leetle Spy without, how do you say--" He chuckled and shrugged. "Well, that."

The Medic wasn't placated, but neither did he press the point. Instead, he muttered something to the effect of "idiots" in German and went back to finishing his food.

The large man shook his head and gestured to me that he'd talk to me later before letting himself out.

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"Look at him! Frenchy here likes dis nasty shit!"

Agony lanced his entire body. Liquid pain ran down his back, his arms, his legs.

"Don't worry, dere's plenty more where dat came from!"

He stifled the urge to make any noise. They would not have the satisfaction of hearing him scream, or moan, or beg for mercy. He would give them nothing.

"Heh, keep dis up and you'll only be able ta hop like da frog you are!"

Darkness was descending, and he welcomed it.

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Labcoat-man wasn't around when I woke the next morning, but there was still someone sitting in his chair watching me. I was trying to make sense of the man's outfit--an immaculate pinstripe silk suit as well a mask that covered everything except his eyes and mouth--when he drew a cigarette out of a slim metal case and lit it up.

God, I wanted that cigarette.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he began. "I am--"

"A man of wealth and taste?" I interrupted, forcing a smile I didn't feel.

He chuckled. "Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor, at least." He exhaled a long stream of smoke. "Non, mon ami, I am zee Spy our magnanimous employers sent to replace you when you were reported missing een action."

He hadn't told me anything I hadn't already gussed. "Are you worried zat I would want my job back, zen?"

He scoffed. "Hardly. What use would zee team have for a Spy who doesn't even remember who he eez?"

I tried to play it cool. "Zat means I have no secrets to geeve away, even under zee pain of torture, non?"

He took something out of the inside of his jacket and threw it onto the bed. "Do you even remember which end of zee gun to point at zee enemy?"

I cupped the weapon between my hands, testing its weight. In a series of motions that must have been well-practiced, I picked it up, checked to see if it was loaded, cocked it, and aimed it at him. "And how do I know zat you are not zee enemy?"

"An enemy Spy wouldn't give you zee tools to become useful again." The Spy chuckled again as I raised an eyebrow at him. "Believe what you like."

I blinked as he dumped a number of additional objects into my lap, as well as several maps.

"You will be asked to participate een battle again next week. Happy studies." With that, he was gone, leaving me to contemplate what he had given me.

Well, no time like the present. Finding the map that corresponded to the current base, I put that on top of the stack while I threw the rest of the things in a box.

It didn't take long for me to I find my way back to my own room, and though it was locked, picking it open was a trivial matter. Though I wanted to lock--and perhaps bar--the door behind me, just being in such a small room, even on my own, was making me anxious, so I left it open and began searching to see if I could find any clues.

Even if this was my room, I must have been very cautious, because I couldn't find anything besides the closet full of the same striped suits and masks my replacement was never seen without. The choice of wardrobe both seemed like it was the most natural thing in the world and complete nonsense. Why would I ever choose to wear a silk tuxedo a battlefield, even if I was some sort of secret agent? Nevertheless, once again my body seemed to move on its own, and I found myself changing into one of the suits.

I got as far as draping the tie around my shoulders before I seized it and dashed it against the ground as if it were a poisonous snake. I left it there, going over to the box of items I had left on the bed. At once I reached for the first thing I noticed, a small butterfly knife. The shaking in my hands disappeared as I played with it, flicking it open and closed with a snap of my wrist.

This was about when Overalls, with Gasmask hovering behind him like a guard dog, came to my door with a bowl in his hands. "Don't mean ta bother ya none, Spah, but seein' as ya didn't come in fer breakfast I thought I'd bring some."

I set the knife down before I got up to accept the food. "No, I should thank you."

As the handoff happened, Gasmask pointed two fingers to the dark lenses covering its eyes, then jabbed them back towards me in a threatening manner. This caused Overalls to chuckle. "Don't you mind Pyro. He's jus' watchin' out fer me."

I nodded back. "No offense taken."

This time, I waited to be alone again to try the food. The oatmeal, though bland, was palatable, so I sat on the bed and continued to study the items I had been given. The function of the knife was obvious, as was that of the disguise kit, and I could guess that the large rectangular box full of indicators, knobs, and wires was some sort of sabotage device, but what was I supposed to do with a watch that didn't tell the time? I put it on, pressing what I assumed to be the dial to adjust the settings, and dropped the bowl when I found myself turning invisible. When I tried to clean up the mess I made, I discovered that while I could still touch both the bowl and the oatmeal, I had no effect on it until I turned the invisibility off.

Having ruined half of my meal, I leaned against the wall and smoked the cigarettes from my disguise kit until lunchtime. I joined my colleagues for the meal, but I didn't involve myself in any of their conversations until I had learned all of their names by way of judicious eavesdropping, and even then I kept my answers as vague as possible. I spent the rest of the day reacquainting myself with my revolver alone.

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A hand grabbed his hair and lifted his head up. "You must have noticed, haven't you? Your teammates are doing just fine wizzout you. I'll bet zey don't even realize you're here. Nobody eez coming for you, mon ami." The hand let go and he sank down again, causing fresh blood to ooze from his wounds. "But eef you cooperate, I may be eenclined to show you mercy.

He refused any sort of reply. There had never been any relief from his torment before, and he knew that all that awaited him was more of the same. He would give them nothing.

"Still playing zee hero, are we? Well, we shall see how long zat lasts."

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Next update probably not coming any time soon since I've mind-blanked on what else to write.

Aww poor Spy! Great writing Dot. This and the one about the foot massage. I want a foot massage now...

Super short story theater time!
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You just couldn’t resist the temptation, could you? That I was the enemy was just icing on the cake. You must have fallen in love with the very idea of seducing the supposedly frightened virgin the very moment you knew of my existence.

But now it’s over, and no amount of sweet talk is going to change that. All that’s left for me to treasure are the memories of the admittedly amazing sex and the souvenir I intend to keep for a long, long time.

“Kill me.”

I smile and resist the urge to pat you on the cheek. “Later.”

Another one totally unrelated to #64. I like these 100 story drabbles because it's easy to write and it leaves a lot of space for the reader to imagine what else is going on.
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I tried to downplay my reaction when the Spy’s hand emerged from the shadow to light my cigarette, but he’d startled me and we both knew it. “Relationship problems?”

I didn’t look him in the eye. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a war on. Don’t have the time.”

He shrugged. “The heart wants what it wants. If I begrudged your choice, what sort of friend would I be?”

“He does.” I found myself muttering. “Says his heart, unlike mine, isn’t big enough for more than one person.”

Another shrug. “You’ll have to decide if he’s worth the choice, then.”

More implications of off-screen shenanigans (still unrelated to either of the above), because if anybody's having inadvisable amounts of off-screen shenanigans, it's the Spy.
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BLU Scout, as usual, didn't accept the usual offer of the post-sex cigarette, but this time he didn't immediately go peeling off, not even to look for his missing sock. "I've been thinkin'."

RED Spy scoffed. "Now there's something new."

"Shut up, Frenchfag, and listen: you're still fucking my Ma, right?"

"What I do off hours eezn't your business."

"Dat's a yes, den. And now I'm fucking you." At this the Scout gave the Spy a sidelong glance. "So wat does dat make us, exactly?"

"I'm sure Freud would have had eenteresting zings to say, eef he were still alive."

Dotchan, I wanted to ask you, if you are not going to continue your re-write of "Forget Me Not" do you still have the original fanfiction posted somewhere?

I never got to read the first version of the fic, and if the new version is going to remain unfinished then I'd love to read the original.

Dotchan, I wanted to ask you, if you are not going to continue your re-write of "Forget Me Not" do you still have the original fanfiction posted somewhere?
I hate giving up on stories, so right now it's still considered In Progress even though I've hit a writer's block for it--like I said above, I'm stuck on a few filler scenes on building up the Spy's interaction with his teammates, the critical confrontation scene, and which way to go with the ending. Having it end on "and then they lived happily ever after" doesn't feel realistic, but I'm also reluctant to go for a totally bleak "Spy falls apart and everyone's standing around asking themselves 'now what?'" sort of thing.

You pretty much are reading the original right now, except with the flashback scenes toned down to be more suggestive rather than explicit and a few of the interaction scenes swapped around with more filler tossed in. Also, in the original, the team accepted the Spy back right away and he was just struggling with his own mental trauma--the problem is "solved" when he runs into an enemy Scout who lets slip that they were the ones who held him prisoner.

The reason I went for a rewrite instead of a repost is that I felt that it as a whole wasn't well paced and that the ending was weak--I actually wanted to try the idea of both the team and Spy trying to figure out whether the other was the enemy the first time around, but writing the flackback scenes had been so mentally draining that I wussed out on making the plot darker. Now that I've had time to let it sit for a while, my inner perfectionist isn't happy with what I had and I've decided to start over.

This post has been deleted.

Progress was slow because I kept getting distracted and wussing out on writing the emotionally intense scenes. Now to let it sit so I can nitpick it later.

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He was falling asleep with his eyes open, he was sure of it. He hadn't been allowed to sleep, eat, or drink except for the pittance they allowed so he wouldn't die. He had retreated so far into himself that it was as if he was no longer in his body, but watching from afar, impassive as they tortured him.

This was different from before. He was still surrounded, but the uniform colors clashed with the walls of his prison. Then his hands were no longer bound so that he hung from the ceiling, strong arms catching him before he fell into a useless heap to the floor. Cool, healing energy surrounded him, while a jacket was draped around his shoulders.

He often hallucinated of escape or rescue, but this was the first time the process had been so detailed. He remained silent even as strength returned to his limbs, wondering if he had at long last lost his sanity or if this was another trick.

Now he was lifted up by his elbows. "On your feet, crouton! We stuck our necks to get you outta that hellhole; now it's your turn to pull your own weight!"

He blinked as a gun was shoved into his hands. This was a dream. This had to be. Any minute now he would wake up and find himself back to square one.

"Come on, fellers! We gotta git outta here right now!"

Or maybe he could just go with it and see where things led him.

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And then I woke up.

I flexed just far enough to confirm that I was, as I suspected, strapped down. I would have resigned myself to staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, but that was also when I noticed the nine other people crowded around my bed.

"Uh," I began, trying to figure out where I was or who these people were.

"I stll suh hhs nuh our Sphh." This almost incomprehensible jumble of words came out of the rubber suit to my immediate right, and I found myself unable to take my eyes off of it, feeling the hairs on my arm stand on end. It poked me with one gloved finger, and though I tried to downplay my reaction I was sure I flinched. "I suh wuh brrn hmm tuh mk shuh."

"Later," was the distracted response from the man in the white coat, and I felt a corresponding yet inexplicable clench in my gut. He shined a flashlight into my eyes. "Well, Herr Spy? How do you feel?"

Say nothing. Give him nothing. The thought sprang to mind unbidden. "Ah--I--that is--" I hedged, trying to give away as little as possible.

"Hey, what happened to the accent, huh, Frenchfag?" The younger man near the foot of the bed crossed his arms. "Where's all dat 'hon hon hon' stuff you always do?"

My answer was immediate and without any conscious thought on my part. "Why don't you ask your mozzer?" I sneered back, adopting the most foreign-sounding affectation I could manage.

"Scout, don't be bothering Spah none," a short man in a hardhat and overalls patted this 'Scout' on the shoulder before he could start an argument. He tipped his hat at me. "Glad ta see yer awake."

"Yes, yes, as you can see, he iz fine." The man in white--it was a labcoat, some corner of my mind provided--began pushing the rest of the people out of the room. "Now, get out, you are interfering viz mein vork."

The thought of being in a room alone with that man--any of them--sent my pulse racing moreso than having them all here. With more than one man there, I could play them off each other, but I couldn't ask for any of them to stay without giving away that they had the advantage.

The Scout, meanwhile, continued to run his mouth even as he was going out the door. "What, Spy's fine, ya said so yourself! Your Medigun did the job, didn't it? Okay, so we did hafta keep talking to him to make sure he wasn't completely nuts, but I don't blame him for going on dat rampage. I mean, we all saw how badly dose assholes fucked him up!"

The scars that I could see corraborated this story, but no matter how much I tried to think back about it, I kept drawing a blank.

"Ach, zat boy never shuts up, I swear!" Labcoat-man slammed the door shut behind the last straggler, a tall lanky fellow who kept sneaking backwards glances at me, before turning his attention back to me. "Now, zen, let's get zis ovah wiz so I can get back to some real science."

It took every bit of my willpower to not leap from the bed and take off running when he undid the straps and began checking my reflexes. I had to play along until I could come up with a clearer game plan. "Well, what eez zee prognosis?" I asked, playing cool.

It seemed like an eternity of poking and prodding before Labcoat-man clapped me on the back. "You seem to have a clean bill ov health, more or lesz. I must admit zere vas a moment where I was vorried zat you vould not be able to valk out of ze enemy encampment on your own two feet, but I should haff put more faith in mein Medigun."

I touched my neck, as if I was reaching for something there, but found nothing. "Eef you don't mind, I would like to rest here a bit longer." He gave me an annoyed gaze, but I managed to hold my ground. I couldn't let them have any hint that something was wrong with me. "You won't even know I'm here."

He considered this with a hand massaging the bridge of his nose. "Fine. But if I zo much as hear a peep out of you, you are going back to your own room."

I forced myself to lay back down. "Thank you."

He moved out of my line of sight, no doubt to his so-called 'real science'. I turned my gaze to the rest of the room, trying to find something, anything that I found familiar.

Still nothing. I went to cataloging what I did know instead. My general knowledge seemed to be intact, at least: I rattled off to myself all of the useless facts I had learned in grade school without any hesitation. But when I tried to turn those thoughts inward, to anything I knew of myself or the current situation, I would keep getting stymied. It was as if my mind was refusing to think about anything related this place.

I lay there counting ceiling tiles for who knows how long when the largest of the nine men came through the door with a tray of food. "Dinner time, Doktor!" he exclaimed with a cheerful voice.

"Ach, already?" Labcoat-man moved back into view, his arms soaked up to his elbows with blood. "Let me wash up first." He flicked a glance in my direction. "Spy, you haff some, too. You should be able to digest solid foods wizzout any problems."

Brief as it was, I found it hard to meet his gaze. "I don't zink I should--"

"No worries! I brought enough food for Spy, too!" The large man put one plate next to several beakers full of mysterious fluids and then came over to set the tray on my lap. "How are you feeling?"

I shrugged as I dug in. "As well as can be expected, I guess."

"Take your time. I've seen my share of people who've survived ordeals such as yours. It takes them months, even years, to recover." He scratched the back of his head. "I would ask you to talk to the Medic about this, but he's not what I'd call an expert in psychiatry."

At this point the Medic turned his attention to us, looking as cranky as ever. "I may not be able to speak Russian, but I can understand it just fine."

I almost dropped my fork. Did I just have an entire conversation in Russian? "Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to--" I trailed off mid-sentence as I realized I couldn't tell which language I was speaking in.

The large man didn't seem as concerned. "Ah, Doktor, you know my English is no good. Wanted to talk to leetle Spy without, how do you say--" He chuckled and shrugged. "Well, that."

The Medic wasn't placated, but neither did he press the point. Instead, he muttered something to the effect of "idiots" in German and went back to finishing his food.

The large man shook his head and gestured to me that he'd talk to me later before letting himself out.

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"Look at him! Frenchy here likes dis nasty shit!"

Agony lanced his entire body. Liquid pain ran down his back, his arms, his legs.

"Don't worry, dere's plenty more where dat came from!"

He stifled the urge to make any noise. They would not have the satisfaction of hearing him scream, or moan, or beg for mercy. He would give them nothing.

"Heh, keep dis up and you'll only be able ta hop like da frog you are!"

Darkness was descending, and he welcomed it.

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Labcoat-man wasn't around when I woke the next morning, but there was still someone sitting in his chair watching me. I was trying to make sense of the man's outfit--an immaculate pinstripe silk suit as well a mask that covered everything except his eyes and mouth--when he drew a cigarette out of a slim metal case and lit it up.

God, I wanted that cigarette.

"Allow me to introduce myself," he began. "I am--"

"A man of wealth and taste?" I interrupted, forcing a smile that I didn't feel.

He chuckled. "Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor, at least." He exhaled a long stream of smoke. "Non, mon ami, I am zee Spy our magnanimous employers sent to replace you when you were reported missing een action."

He hadn't told me anything I hadn't already gussed. "Are you worried zat I would want my job back, zen?"

He scoffed. "Hardly. What use would zee team have for a Spy who doesn't even remember who he eez?"

I tried to play it cool. "Zat means I have no secrets to geeve away, even under zee pain of torture, non?"

He took something out of the inside of his jacket and threw it onto the bed. "Do you even remember which end of zee gun to point at zee enemy?"

I cupped the weapon between my hands, testing its weight. In a series of motions that must have been well-practiced, I picked it up, checked to see if it was loaded, cocked it, and aimed it at him. "And how do I know zat you are not zee enemy?"

"An enemy Spy wouldn't give you zee tools to become useful again." The Spy chuckled again as I raised an eyebrow at him. "Believe what you like."

I blinked as he dumped a number of things on the bed next to me.

"You will be asked to participate een battle again next week. Happy studies." With that, he was gone, leaving me to contemplate what he had given me.

Well, no time like the present. Finding the map that corresponded to the current base, I put that on top of the stack while I threw the rest of the things in a box.

It didn't take long for me to I find my way back to my own room, and though it was locked, picking it open was a trivial matter. Though I wanted to lock--and perhaps bar--the door behind me, just being in such a small room, even on my own, was making me anxious, so I left it open and began searching to see if I could find any clues.

Even if this was my room, I must have been very cautious, because I couldn't find anything besides the closet full of the same striped suits and masks my replacement was never seen without. The choice of wardrobe both seemed like it was the most natural thing in the world and complete nonsense. Why would I ever choose to wear a silk tuxedo a battlefield, even if I was some sort of secret agent? Nevertheless, once again my body seemed to move on its own, and I found myself changing into one of the suits.

I got as far as draping the tie around my shoulders before I seized it and dashed it against the ground as if it were a poisonous snake. I left it there, going over to the box of items I had left on the bed. At once I reached for the first thing I noticed, a small butterfly knife. The shaking in my hands disappeared as I played with it, flicking it open and closed with a snap of my wrist.

This was about when Overalls, with Gasmask hovering behind him like a guard dog, came to my door with a bowl in his hands. "Don't mean ta bother ya none, Spah, but seein' as ya didn't come in fer breakfast I thought I'd bring some."

I set the knife down before I got up to accept the food. "No, I should thank you."

As the handoff happened, Gasmask pointed two fingers to the dark lenses covering its eyes, then jabbed them back towards me in a threatening manner. This caused Overalls to chuckle. "Don't you mind Pyro. He's jus' watchin' out fer me."

I nodded back. "No offense taken."

This time, I waited to be alone again to try the food. The oatmeal, though bland, was palatable, so I sat on the bed and continued to study the items I had been given. The function of the knife was obvious, as was that of the disguise kit, and I could guess that the large rectangular box full of indicators, knobs, and wires was some sort of sabotage device, but what was I supposed to do with a watch that didn't tell the time? I put it on, pressing what I assumed to be the dial to adjust the settings, and dropped the bowl when I found myself turning invisible. When I tried to clean up the mess I made, I discovered that while I could still touch both the bowl and the oatmeal, I had no effect on it until I turned the invisibility off.

Having ruined half of my meal, I leaned against the wall and smoked the cigarettes from my disguise kit until lunchtime. I joined my colleagues for the meal, but I didn't involve myself in any of their conversations until I had learned all of their names by way of judicious eavesdropping, and even then I kept my answers as vague as possible. I spent the rest of the day reacquainting myself with my revolver alone, using that as an excuse to dodge anyone who was trying to talk to me.

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A hand grabbed his hair and lifted his head up. "You must have noticed, haven't you? Your teammates are doing just fine wizzout you. I'll bet zey don't even realize you're here. Nobody eez coming for you, mon ami." The hand let go and he sank down again, causing fresh blood to ooze from his wounds. "But eef you cooperate, I may be eenclined to show you mercy.

He refused any sort of reply. There had never been any relief from his torment before, and he knew that all that awaited him was more of the same. He would give them nothing.

"Still playing zee hero, are we? Well, we shall see how long zat lasts."

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Whatever plans I could have made for the rest of the week was dashed to pieces by the arrival of sudden torrential rain. The shoddy construction of the base meant every joing in my body felt as if it had swollen to at least twice the normal size. I tried to keep myself busy by helping the consistent effort to keep the water out, but when I kept dropping sandbags on the account of my hands not being able to close into a proper fist, I was shooed away by the others for being a nuisance. I wandered the hallways looking for a place to kill time without breaking into a cold sweat, wanting to vomit, or shaking like a leaf. From the maps that I had been given, it was obvious that the two opposing sides had near-identical base layouts, and though my conscious mind still refused to acknowledge what I had been through, I knew without a doubt that every nook and cranny was reminding me of some horrific trauma.

I was still wandering the hallways some time later when the Heavy Weapons Guy spotted me. "Spy! You look pale. You need to eat more. Come, I make you soup!"

"That's all right, I'm not hungry, don't trouble yourself over me," I squeaked out as the Heavy threw and arm around my shoulders and all but picked me up.

"No worries. Is Gramama's secret recipe, no trouble at all. Is delicious!"

As it was obvious the Heavy wasn't about take no for an answer, I let him herd me into the kitchen and plant me into a chair. While he prepared the soup, I kept my gaze fixed to the ceiling and counted dust bunnies. I was well into triple digits before the Heavy declared his masterpiece done and plunked a bowl of what looked to be abstract art onto the table. I stared at it, not sure what to make of the contents. "So what eez zis, exactly?"

The Heavy wagged a finger at me. "Secret recipe, remember? Just eat! Trust me, you'll like it."

I dawdled for as long as I could; solid food had not been sitting well with me so far, with the result that some smells were enough to make me nauseous. I scooped up a tiny bit on the spoon, wondering to myself if I could keep it down long enough to make a run for the bathroom as I tasted it.

It was the best dish I've eaten so far. The balance of flavors were exquisite, indeed evoking the sense that I was partaking of some ancient family recipe passed down for generations. "I thought you were exaggerating, but eet seems I was wrong. Give thanks to your grandmozzer for me."

The Heavy grinned from ear to ear as he sat down with his own bowl. "What did I tell you? Eat, eat!"

As hungry as I was, I took my time savoring every bite, while the Heavy seemed to drink his bowl straight down with almost no chewing. But instead of getting up to leave me to finish my food by myself after he dropped the bowl off into the sink, the Heavy sat down again, his expression more serious than I'd ever seen him before.

"We talk, da? In Russian, like last time?"

"I'll do my best," I answered in what I hoped was the Heavy's preferred language.

Whether it was or not, the Heavy made no indication, but instead plowed right on ahead. "You need a vacation, Spy. Being here not only isn't doing you any good, I'll bet good money it's making things worse."

I shook my head. "Where do you think I'd be allowed to go?"

He shrugged. "Anywhere would be better than here, don't you think?"

I stared into the soup. "I don't know."

The Heavy stood up and patted me on the shoulder. "Well, think about it."

As if I could ever leave this place. Even if the higher ups agreed to a transfer, I was sure that at least half of the team would assume that I was deserting. Besides, I was already expending all of my energy into mere surival and had nothing to spare for anything else.

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Though the heat was so intense that all he could feel was the searing flames, he could also smell his flesh burning. He tried to pull away, but the bindings held him fast.

He was yanked closer still by the choke chain around his neck. "Guess I should be impressed. I was sure you'd 'a cracked by now."

He refused to give any kind of answer. His jaw ached from the effort of keeping it shut, but he knew that should he unclench his teeth now all the effort of remaining silent would be for naught.

He had to give them nothing. That was all he had left.

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Too soon, and yet at the same time not fast enough, the day that I was scheduled to go into battle crept up little by little. As everyone else busied themselves with restocking the supplies, I made myself scarce and manage to avoid most interaction.

Go figure, the one guy I couldn't avoid right before bed ended up being the Scout.

"Dude, have you taken a shower at all this week?" He sniffed in my direction, making a face. "You reek even worse than you usually do."

Part of me wanted to exhale a long stream of smoke right into his face, but I lacked the nerve and aimed it at the ceiling instead. "How I smell eez none of your business."

"It is when even yer faggy French perfume isn't da foist thing I smell on ya! What, do ya got some national aversion ta watah or somethin'?"

"Non, I am not a fan of mouthy brats." I made a shooing motion with my hand, hoping that and a bit of harmless snark would get him to leave. "Don't you have someone else to annoy?"

He seemed to think about this for a brief moment before breaking out in a wide grin. "Nope! Now hurry up already." Then he crossed his arms. "Don't make me toss your naked ass inta da showah myself."

I had no interest in testing whether or not he was bluffing. "Since you are so adamant about eet, I suppose I will freshen up." I mirrored his grin the best I could as the best way to rid myself of the pest bubbled to the surface of my mind. "Care to join me?"

As I thought, the Scout rankled at the idea and peeled away, backstepping all the way into the wall. "Woah, woah, woah! Keep yer fruity hands ta yerself!"

I gave him a cheeky wave back before doing my best impression of a saunter towards the bathroom.

The showers were--thank God for small mercies--empty, but I remained on edge the while I was there. The others had long ago used up all of the hot water, but I didn't linger; I scrubbed hard and fast, not bothering to feel sorry for myself over the mess of scars my skin had become.

I fell into bed too drained to worry about my performance tomorrow; I had, after all, plenty of time to fret about that during the pre-battle Setup phase.

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He was drowning. As blood dribbled from his lips, he could feel more of it filling his lungs and spots danced in his vision.

Then he heard the familiar hum of the Medigun and soon the sensation of suffocating faded, replaced by the persistent dull ache that no amount of healing could erase.

The boots that had been kicking him in the ribs filled his vision again. "You're cutting it close, there, Doc. That maggot almost got away from you this time."

"Nozzing to vorry about, Herr Soldat. I know vat I am doing. Trust me, ja?"

So even death was being denied him. No matter. He still wasn't going to give them anything.

The boots reared up for another stomp.

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My first respawn of the day left me spending a good minute or so vomiting into the sink until I had nothing left. My other attempts to cross the battlefield also ended up in varying ways of death, but each trip became less and less harrowing until it was just a momentary inconvenience.

At last I was able to sneak my way up into the enemy Sniper's nest without being detected. I uncloaked, but did not drop my disguise in case he glanced back, and approached him with my knife raised.

"Sphh chhk Sphh chhk Sphh chhk!"

I jumped back, cloaking and pressing against the back wall as soon as I heard the cheerful mantra approaching from downstairs. My heart thudded in my chest with both terror and anger: if I had made my move, I would have at least taken out their Sniper; a fair trade considering my abysmal performance so far.

But what if my rescue had been staged just so the enemy could use me against my own team?

The notion seemed absurd. Did they think that I would give them valuable Intelligence if I thought them to be allies? Or were they that desperate for me to be on their team instead? Going through the trouble of the pretense seemed to be the most roundabout way of accomplishing either goal, and it wasn't as if every one of my current teammates had welcomed me back with open arms.

Nevertheless, I still couldn't eliminate the possibility. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember anything pleasant, not even in what was supposed to be on familiar ground. And I couldn't help but overhear the little whispers in the corners.

Of all the thoughts running through my head, "but what if" kept repeating itself and kept me paralyzed.

The Pyro moved on to other areas without checking the Sniper's nest and instead of capitalizing on the opportunity, I found myself leaving the enemy base having not attacked anyone. Pulling out my earpiece so I wouldn't have to hear the progression of the battle, I squeezed myself, still invisible, into a cubbyhole that I had seen everyone pass without a second glance. My head between my legs and my arms draped over that, I closed my eyes, berating myself for my inability to do anything when push came to shove, but my heart was no longer in the fight.

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Down, down, down went the plunger, draining the syringe of its ominous-looking fluid. And all he could do was watch. And wait.

The rubber gloved hand ran across his forehead. "Oops, zat was not medicine. Ah, well, no use wasting a perfectly good shot of whatever zat was, I suppose."

Music began to play somewhere, soft and soothing and not at all fitting for a situation like this. His mouth began to feel dry and his vision went blurry.

As his mind began to lose focus as well, he held onto one thing, repeating it like a mantra: say nothing. Give them nothing. Even if he were to die here, he would not betray his team.

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I didn't let myself be found until the day had ended, trudging into Respawn with a limp that wasn't quite faked due to the soreness I felt from having hidden in a very uncomfortable position for several hours.

I shouldn't have bothered. Just one person was there waiting for me, the other Spy. "Got cold feet?" He asked between puffs on his cigarette, leaning against the locker as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"You could say so." I shrugged out of my suit and dumped it down the laundry shoot before putting on a new one, my hand lingering at the knot in my tie as if to make sure that it wasn't something else. I scrounged my mind for a good excuse and soon found one that I hoped would be accepted. "Eet occurred to me zat eef I were at full strength, zee teams would no longer be balanced, and I have no desire to use my skills for zee enemy."

"You don't have to worry about zat. Eet will just be a matter of time before zee ozzer team catches on and requests anozzer Spy to even zee numbers." Now the other Spy turned to leave. "You just worry about getting well."

The train records? Of course. That was one piece of information neither team could interfere with. If I could find out which team got a new Spy first, it would determine once and for just what was true and what was a fabrication.

I was in my room studying the maps to make sure that my plan would work when I heard the stomping of boots approaching. I stuffed the maps under my pillow and lit up a new cigarette; the pile of smoked ones in the ashtray on the nightstand would make it look like that was all I had been doing.

The Soldier burst in without knocking. "That other Spy said not to bother you, but seeing as you've skipped another meal, I brought it to you!"

I stared as a tin of some unidentifiable material was plopped next to the ashtray. "Zat eez alright, I'm not hungry--"

"Doesn't matter! You need to keep your strength up! I won't have any of my men getting sent home because of Shell Shock!"

"I'm fine, sir," I lied, wondering if that was what the other Spy said about me to explain my absence.

"Like hell you are! Don't think I haven't seen you with that Thousand Yard Stare!" He grabbed me by the shoulders. "Look at yourself! The old Spy wouldn't have let me lay hands on him like this!"

In a flash my open knife was at his neck. "What makes you think I have any interest een being manhandled now?"

He let me go, but his expression didn't change. "Eat your goddamn dinner, Frenchie. That's an order."

I didn't retract my weapon. "Eef you eenseest."

He stepped out of my range and was about to leave when he slapped himself upside the helmet. "Almost forgot!" Some fishing in his pockets later, a bottle cap with a ribbon glued to one end joined the tin of mess. "Until you get an actual Purple Heart," was all he offered as explanation before he marched out.

I poked a finger into the substance and tasted it. Salty, but palatable. Or maybe it was just the hunger from missing lunch that made me inclined towards mysterious substances. Still, the Soldier was right about needing sustenance. I fished out the bottle of wine I found during one of my searches and used that to wash the rest of the tin down and then forced myself into a meditative rest.

Tonight, I promised myself. Tonight, I would get some real answers.

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They watched him bleed, some of them bored, some unredable, and some leering.

"I'll tell you wot, it's downroight eerie. I 'aven't 'eard a single peep out 'f 'im."

"He must have been trained to rezeest torture." A spent cigarette was extinguished on his collarbone and a new one lit. "Be patient. Everyone breaks sooner or later."

He sucked in air through his teeth as he was pulled up. Any sound he made would be taken by the enemy as a sign of defeat. He refused to let them win.

He would give them nothing.

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"Ghhng shmwhrr, Sphr?"

I froze like a deer in the headlights. My mouth dropped open to say something, but my brain refused to catch up and form words. I couldn't even work up the strength to run as the soulless monstrosity advanced on me, demanding answers from me in that incomprehensible mumble of his.

I knew it.

I'd made the mistake of getting caught, and now the game was over. I was going back into the hole.

Things were foggy after that. I may have fallen to the floor, or maybe I was punched and then kicked a few times before someone came rushing in and pulled the Pyro off before he could turn me into too much of a mess--they had to make sure I could still talk, after all.

But after that, no one paid me much attention for a good while. There was a lot of yelling and agitated pacing as I remained on the floor. As much as I wanted to make a break for it, a persistent voice inside me told me to stay put--any motion on my part would be seen as a hostile act, and even if I could get lucky and evade one or two of them, against all nine I was asking for something worse than a sore jaw and aching ribs. All I could do for now was keep myself as small as possible.

There were sounds of a Dispenser going up, and the Engineer sat me up against it and asked me something, but I found the words coming out of his mouth as nonsensical as the Pyro's had been. I watched as he tried several more times before calling the Medic over to wave his little flashlight in my eyes. Then I felt myself being lifted up and slung over the Heavy's shoulders.

The last thing I remember before everything going black was repeating to myself that I had somehow lasted this long without breaking.

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The first thing the Spy noticed as his world swam back into focus was that his arms and legs were bound with thick rope and his mouth gagged with foul-smelling cloth. He tested the ropes, but found no give in the knots. He peered into the darkness, trying to make out any details in the darkness; aside from some light seeping through the cracks in the door, all he saw were worn plastered walls.

It was obvious he'd been captured by the enemy. That means they must have gotten wise to him. And instead of just killing him, they had other plans.

He tensed as he heard footsteps echo down the hallway headed in his direction. Whatever was in store for him couldn't be pleasant, even if he could survive the ordeal.

But he was a Spy, the best of the best, trained to give as well as take. Those amatures could destroy his body, but not his spirit.

He would give them nothing. He was sure of it.

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And then I woke up.

I didn't even bother with checking for restraints; no doubt they would be there, 'just in case'. "Deja vu," I muttered to myself, staring up at the same unfamiliar ceiling.

The Heavy--and no one else, I suppose they couldn't be bothered--was sitting next to me, reading from a thick tome with too-small reading glasses perched on his nose. "You wake," he rumbled, looking up from his reading material. "Sleep for a long time. Everyone worried."

I looked past him at the mess of papers on the Medic's death. "Don't bother. I'm a Spy. It's my job to be tough."

"Pyro says is sorry. Thought you were their Spy." The Heavy chuckled at this, as if there was something funny about that.

If I wasn't feeling the same way about them, I might have laughed as well. Instead, I just shrugged. "That's what happens wiz Spies."

"You rest now. We talk later, da?"

"Later," I repeated in a hollow voice.

This story keeps mystifying me, and I hope I'll see the update someday soon ! This is a very great story !

>>71

I've mentioned this before, but as unsatisfying the current ending (or non-ending) is, I honestly have no idea where to go with the plot. I kind of don't want have the team rally around the Spy because it's been done a million times before. But I'm also too much of a wuss to go that much darker. Leaving things ambiguous means I can leave the hard work of imagining what happens next up to the reader.

For the small number of you who are curious as to what happened to "Forget Me Not", I've cleaned up a number of typos and rewrote a few scenes. The story so far in its entirety can be read at my blog, http://dotchan.livejournal.com/258887.html

Meanwhile, have some m-preg! (Not really.)
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The Sniper, as it befitted his job of being the team's lookout, was the first to notice. After all, while he could explain away everyone else's symptoms, it was rather impossible to deny what was happening to his own body, and not even someone with as loose a touch on reality as the Soldier would not be able to put two and two together if he paid any attention to it.

But he stayed quiet about it. The team had at long last began coalescing as a unit instead of being the collection of bickering, mistrusting sociopaths that they had started out as. While most of the team would get over the implications of what the Medic was doing to them behind their backs soon enough, the very thought that More Secrets were being kept would forever destroy what little camaraderie existed between them now.

Plus he had some theories about just how they were getting the so-called benign growths, and he didn't want to give anyone on his team ideas. Bad enough that the enemy Scout was supplementing his milk with things that shouldn't be there.
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More later, maybe, if I can figure out how to write the rest of it.

I'm glad you decided to not abandon this fic, I quite liked it when I first read it and the total lack of resolution was very frustrating. Frankly, the previous ending wasn't really ambiguous, it was more like inconclusive.

I couldn't tell whether most of the re-written scenes are better or worse, to be honest they seem about the same to me. But I did really like the new ending.

While technically things are still extremely bleak for Spy, at least now his teammates know, and can at least try to help. This new ending is actually ambiguous: as far as we know, their attempts to help could all fail, but now there is the possibility that he could get better. Whereas as long as he kept pretending that everything was fine, he could do nothing but get worse.

I'll definitely keep reading this story if you decide to continue it. But if you decide to stop writing, at least this new ending is IMO much more satisfying than the previous one.

I kind of don't want have the team rally around the Spy because it's been done a million times before. But I'm also too much of a wuss to go that much darker.

I suggest you do whatever you like better, it's your story and it should please you before anybody else. But, if the only reason you want to avoid a certain development is that it has been done many times before, that's kind of a weak reason. Everything has been done a million times before. What really matters is the execution.

As if I could ever leave this place. Even if the higher ups agreed to a transfer, I was sure that at least half of the team would assume that I was deserting and react in accordance. Besides, I was already expending all of my energy into mere surival and had nothing to spare for anything else.

Besides that, if he can't even remember his own name, he probably can't remember how to access his savings. He's not going to go far without a penny.

Until I had a better idea of who he was, I was not aboutu to tell him anything.

Extra U there.

The function of the knife was obvious, as was that of the disguise kit

This line made me raise an eyebrow. How is it obvious that a cigarette case would project an ologram to transform you in somebody else?

Anyway, can I just say HOLY CRAP SOMEBODY ELSE IS STILL USING LIVEJOURNAL??? Nearly my whole flist left for Tumblr years ago, but I really, really dislike Tumblr (I think I'm the only person in TF2 Fandom who doesn't have a Tumblr), so I ended up staying with a dying LJ. It's kind of lonely ;_;

Btw, given the way everybody freaked out when Spy's vitals went crazy, I'm assuming that Respawn only works during battle, right?

If that's so, does that mean that the guys were <i>actually</i> risking their lives when they went to rescue Spy? It didn't seem like a standard battle, I got the impression it was a surprise attack. If I'm right, their willingness to risk their lives to help a teammate (in the case of the new Spy, a teammate he doesn't even know) adds a whole new layer to the story.

Everything has been done a million times before. What really matters is the execution.
And I have no idea how to execute except in the broadest of cliches. The only thing I can think of right now as far as continuing the story is explaining exactly what was going on "off screen" from someone else's point of view.

This line made me raise an eyebrow. How is it obvious that a cigarette case would project an ologram to transform you in somebody else?
Whoops, I was assuming that everyone was familiar with the in-game user interface (and that this was how the characters see things as well), so I've changed that part to make more sense.

Besides that, if he can't even remember his own name, he probably can't remember how to access his savings. He's not going to go far without a penny.
Spy could theoretically reinvent himself, but he hasn't thought that far ahead yet. His brain is still stuck in self-preservation mode.

Btw, given the way everybody freaked out when Spy's vitals went crazy, I'm assuming that Respawn only works during battle, right?
Nope, Respawn's always on. The risk the team took when they went to rescue him was in assigning people to do something other than achieving the main objective and losing, possibly facing capture, because of that. (And every time they managed to win, the enemy had already moved the Spy somewhere else.)

The freakout wasn't over Spy's panic attack, not at first. Most of the rest of the team was arguing over Pyro's insistence about a conspiracy theory (and as I was implying with the dialogue, not the first time they'd had this argument). The only ones who were genuinely concerned was the other Spy, the Soldier, and the Heavy--i.e., the three people who personally witnessed how bad things were when the rescue happened. It's not until Spy does his thing that the lightbulb goes off for everyone else.

An idea I left out of this draft: a suicide attempt. It was originally going to happen in the climax, complete with the line "Kill me!" played for drama instead of laughs, but I decided that having Spy having a more quiet meltdown was more emotionally powerful than him being a screaming, hysterical wreck.

The only thing I can think of right now as far as continuing the story is explaining exactly what was going on "off screen" from someone else's point of view.

I'd love to read that!

...Well, except Heavy's, though. Because in this story he is so knowledgeable, wise, collected and focused, that his pov would probably read like a calm and precise list of events, which would be very boring IMO.

But I'd love to read the pov of any of the other eight characters.

The only ones who were genuinely concerned was the other Spy, the Soldier, and the Heavy--i.e., the three people who personally witnessed how bad things were when the rescue happened.

Wasn't Engineer there too? You wrote that "cool, healing energy surrounded him," and if Medic wasn't there then it had to be a dispenser (which makes sense to me, because even if Medic wasn't there, if he had seen the full extent of Spy's wounds he would have known how bad things were. Even if we assume that Medic isn't a very caring man, for him to be that clueless it's necessary that Spy's wounds were at least mostly healed by the time he saw him).

Btw, I forgot to mention something in my last reply.

playing cool and using what I hoped sufficed for a foreign-sounding enough accent.

This sounds kind of weird to me. I mean, English is not my first langauge, and I've been told that when I speak English I have a thick accent; but it's completely involontary, I don't choose to speak with an accent, I just do. So it sounds pretty weird to me that Spy, a Frenchman, would lose his accent along with his memories. I'm not sure if that's possible or not...

Wasn't Engineer there too? You wrote that "cool, healing energy surrounded him,"...
Oops, that's what I get for not deciding what the exact details surrounding Spy's rescue was! I think that was supposed to imply the presence of the Medic, but I got caught up in assigning exactly three people into each group of attitudes (suspicious, couldn't really care less, really worried) that I glossed over this section.

Off to edit again.

This sounds kind of weird to me. I mean, English is not my first langauge, and I've been told that when I speak English I have a thick accent; but it's completely involontary, I don't choose to speak with an accent, I just do. So it sounds pretty weird to me that Spy, a Frenchman, would lose his accent along with his memories. I'm not sure if that's possible or not...
That's supposed to be a hint that the Spy's not even really French.

This is semi-inspired by old RP.

(And the thing being discussed is apparently true. Hooray science?)
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The Scout's look of utter confusion and bewilderment was impossible to miss as he headed to the breakfast table. "Uh..." he began, scratching the back of his head. "Is it just me, or did somebody paint little targets on all da urinals in da bathrooms?"

"I did." The Sniper raised his hand in a lazy two-finger wave, then brushed away the liquid that sprayed on his shoulder from the Demoman snorting his drink up his nose. "Bit 'f an experiment for th' Doc. I've found that I piss a lot cleaner--"

"Slim!" the Engineer exclaimed in dismay. "Not over breakfast, goddamn!"

"--when I've got something t' aim at," the Sniper continued over the Engineer, ignoring him. "Doc wanted t' see if it was true, all soientific loike and all that."

The Scout raised an eyebrow. "Ain't dat what we got janitas for?"

"And aren't you ze one always giving zee Sniper a hard time about Jarate?" the Medic wanted to know. "You do remember zat little tour we had wiz ze blacklight, ja?"

"Oh, yeah." the Scout shuddered at the memory. He was never, ever, ever touching anything in the Spy's room, ever. Hell, he was never, ever, ever so much as stepping foot in the Spy's room. Different strokes for different folks and all that, but the Scout was so not into touching another man's spunk.

(Inspired by playing MvM mode as Scout.)
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This must have been what being Superman felt like.

Being more powerful than a locomotive was still several upgrades out of reach, but Scout was sure that he had the "faster than a speeding bullet" and "leaps buildings in a single bound" parts covered and then some. He darted in and out of the robots like a bee, each pile of money he stuffed in his trousers somehow making him tougher and tougher to kill.

"Gotta go fast gotta go fast gotta go fast," he chanted to himself as he pumped his legs and soared into the air.

He never wanted to do anything else ever again. Five point CP or Payload Race? Kingdoms have risen and fallen before one of those rounds ever resolved in a way that wasn't complete bullshit. Capture the Flag? He'd long ago gotten sick of getting his ass shredded by eleventy billion sentries.

Here, he got to kick so many different kinds of ass that he wasn't sure he'd ever get sick of it.
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(And then some days you don't feel so awesome...)
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They let the front line collapse and they died.

They couldn't save the sentry from the Sentry Buster and they died.

They missed a Scoutbot at the choke-point and they died.

They didn't Spycheck and they died.

They neglected to stop the Medicbots from popping ubers and they died.

They failed to stop the Tank and they died.

But nobody wanted to quit, not now, not ever. They couldn't abandon this place to the robots like some of them did in the other areas. This was the last human bastion; if the robots were not repelled here, it would be the end for everyone.

They made a headcount of who was in any shape to fight and came up with a mere six who wasn't too exhausted or injured to carry on. This time, they vowed. This time, they would win.

Or die trying.

>>80 For some reason, the description of Scout stuffing money in his pants made me laugh. I really do love stories that follow Scout's P.O.V., though, because he's such a cocky little bastard and it's hilarious.

Hey Readers of Dot's Concept Space

I've been running the current layout of DCS for several years now and I believe it's time for a change, maybe.

So what do y'all think? Does it need a way of presenting the content? Or at least a fresh coat of paint?

Please keep in mind that Dot's Concept Space, as its name implies, is a general writing/art blog, so I probably wouldn't go for a complete TF2-ification makeover, but I might add little touches here and there.

Trying to get my writing mojo back and trying to get a head start for NaNoWriMo, so I'm going to start a story based on an idea that's been percolating in my head using a "prompt" table.

Because this is /fic/, I'll be keeping the sex, if any happens, strictly in "implied off-screen land" zone. I may or may not write an /afic/ version later; we'll see.

(Not using "the" for class names this round because they're not canon classes. This is just The Story of A Spy and A Sniper of Some Indeterminate Team Or Teams Of Your Choice.)

100 Days of Sniper/Spy
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1. Beginning (500 words)

Spy was, as the rest of the team might put it, "European", which meant that his tastes were much more eclectic than anyone else. He loved women as much as any other so-called normal man might, but he never refused the opportunity to seduce a man, either. Sometimes, this was part of the job of being the resident espionage expert; sometimes, he fell head over heels in love and he didn't consider gender to be a barrier to true love, however temporary; sometimes, the sex was just that good, all other potential downsides notwithstanding; and sometimes, he was just plain bored.

His relationship—if one could even call what was going on with Sniper a relationship—somehow fell into both "all of the above" and "none of the above" at once. There was no useful Intelligence to be gained from seducing the Sniper, and yet Spy found himself obsessed with getting more secrets out of him, and Sniper always seemed to have something to hide. There was nothing about Sniper worth loving—rugged convict bushmen were not Spy's general preferred type at all—and yet Spy couldn't bring himself to hate him. The sex was awful at best and nightmarish at worst, but there was no looking for other partners any more, not after Sniper walked in on him on what was supposed to be his stress relief day. And though for the most part, Sniper's routines were such that Spy could predict what he was doing where down to the minute, it had been Sniper showing up when he hadn't been expected that had put things into official "We Need To Talk About Where This Is Going" mode.

Spy had never made any promises that he would be faithful. And, as far as he knew, the Sniper had known that. But seeing Sniper slouch at the foot of his bed gazing at his bed-stand where the little plastic squares lay and declaring in his usual stoic tones: "I'm nothing but another rubber to you, aren't I" had robbed Spy of the usual eloquent speech he'd prepared for such occasion.

Spy wasn't ready to admit to Sniper—or to himself—that he'd built a relationship on "nothing". There had to be something besides a severe lapse in judgment that kept Spy from walking away or putting a bullet in Sniper's brainpan.

Perhaps Sniper deserved his own category. Spy once eavesdropped on Sniper talking to his parents over the phone over how he was seeing someone, being careful, of course, to keep certain details vague. While Spy couldn't hear what was being asked on the other end of the phone, he could see all of Sniper's various interesting and very non-standard reactions.

Too bad Spy wasn't carrying around his camera beard at the time. He could have saved Sniper's grimace just before he said (discussing what was between the two of them, no doubt) "It's—complicated" for all eternity.

"It's Complicated"—Spy couldn't think of better way to put it himself.

I like this. Please do go on.

Glad someone likes it. I myself will certainly have a lot of fun writing my favorite pairing as a horribly dysfunctional match made in hell.
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2. Middle

Like the phases of the moon, Sniper waxed and waned between various states of mind with predictable regularity. At his most navel-gazing, it did not take much prompting from Spy to talk about himself; for a man who prided on not investing his feelings into his work, Sniper folded at the slightest provocation, not being able to stand up even in the emotional equivalent of a light breeze.

He was in such a contemplative mood when he was doing what he called "cuddling" with Spy on the couch. For his part, Spy found being planted in Sniper's lap to be too close for comfort--he preferred to be the one taking the initiative, so he snaked his hand down Sniper's shirt and discovered a thin silver chain with two rings hanging from it; he had suspected its existence, but this was the first time that he confirmed something to be there. Nevertheless, he feigned shock. "Oh, my. Should I be scandalized?"

"It's none 'f your business," Sniper snapped, yanking the chain back. "I don't want t' talk about it."

Spy just smiled and began a silent count in his head.

It didn't take long before the proverbial floodgates opened. "She was--a colleague, I guess. We posed as a couple mostly for th' convenience, but it didn't take long for us t' get Complicated."

Spy rolled his eyes; Sniper couldn't have been more obvious with the allusion, but he said nothing, knowing that Sniper had more emotional baggage to dump on him.

And indeed, Sniper kept going, now so lost in his memories that he was oblivious to his captive audience's reactions. "I figured, you know, we were pretty much acting loike a married couple already, woi not get th' roings and soign th' papers? And she was foine with that, at first anyway. Then--" he shrugged. "Then one day I wake up to a 'Dear John' letter."

That explained Sniper's obsession with Spy's other partners. "And so from zen on, you are afraid zat history will repeat eetself?" He clicked his tongue. "Nozzing lasts forever; you must simply enjoy eet while eet lasts."

"Why 'ope for th' best and be disappointed?" Sniper wanted to know. "It's just a matter 'f toime before you get toired 'f boring old me and look for better pastures."

Such a piss-poor level of self worth was incomprehensible to a narcissist like Spy. "Just think of zat as extra motivation to keep me."

"Moight 'ave t' toi you t' th' bed then," Sniper deadpanned in that 'could be joking, could be serious' voice he had raised to an art form.

Spy was not phased; he had contingency plans in place should Sniper ever carry out that often-repeated threat. "All you need to do eez ask nicely and you can do to me whatever terrible things you wish."

Sniper made sound of half-hearted annoyance to cover his obvious embarrassment--the tips of his ears had turned pink. "I told you, I'm not loike that!"

Not sure what else to say, other than I'm enjoying the humor and can't wait to see how things turn out.

I could use feedback on how clear I'm coming across in the narrative, since I often forget that people can't read my mind and don't make the same intuitive leaps that I do.

Specifically for this story, is it clear that Spy's an Unreliable Narrator?
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III. End

Spy, though he did live in the moment, also expected that things between him and Sniper might end at any time; not so much because either of them wished it, but by the will of The Almighty Bitch. It didn't seem possible that she had yet to discover their relationship, considering that Sniper made sure to spend almost all of his waking hours in Spy's presence whenever possible. Perhaps they were safe from her wrath because she didn't yet consider them to be friends. Perhaps the fluid nature of the teams stationed with them--both Sniper, Spy, and everyone else would change sides multiple times even in the course of a particular round depending on some arbitrary idea of "balance"--meant that she was less paranoid about leaks. Perhaps they were just not high enough on the totem pole for her to care.

Or perhaps she was entertained by what she saw, just as drivers tended to slow down to watch the scene of a car accident. There was precedence for Spy to believe this: when he showed her the pictures he took as explanation of why it was necessary to sleep with the enemy (that being the most efficient way to get the best view of the apartment across the street), she raised an eyebrow at him in response but made no further objections to his affair with his "petit chou-fleur".

Of course, now that Sniper was part of the equation, Spy's non-Sniper-related social visits dwindled and, in time, became almost nonexistent. Spy didn't mind being the sole person orbiting Sniper's tiny universe, and he considered the temporary shrinking of his own to be an acceptable price to pay in exchange for Sniper's company. It wasn't as if this arrangement would last forever anyway, and Sniper being quite aware of Spy's sacrifice made for an excellent bargaining chip whenever Sniper was not receptive to what Spy wanted. Of Sniper's many shortcomings, what Spy found most egregious was that Sniper lacked both imagination and experience when it came to sex. Even considering the biological imperative, Sniper was not just ignorant of alternate means to achieving pleasure but also reluctant to try new things. For a man with a reputation of a perverse weirdo, Sniper's tastes were vanilla to a depressing degree. If Spy always allowed Sniper to take the proverbial wheel, they'd be doing nothing but sex in the missionary position.

"But I loike seeing your face," Sniper would protest whenever Spy brought up the prospect of alternate body arrangements.

On one of these occasions, Spy reached up to stroke Sniper’s stubble. "As do I, but zat eez what we have mirrors for, non? Besides, I also enjoy admiring zee rest of you."

"Can't imagine woi," Sniper mumbled, brushing Spy’s hand aside. "I'm 'ardly wot you'd call pretty."

"But zat doesn't make you any less interesting," Spy pointed out, exploring the rest of Sniper’s body. "Eef you simply adhered to some abstract platonic ideal, zat would be boring beyond belief."

I'm not sure I'd call this an unreliable narrator. I'm well aware that the narrator is biased towards Spy's perspective, and I do end up making some minute adjustments in order to get from what the narrator says happened to what probably actually happened. But in order to earn the title of "unreliable narrator," I'd probably need to think he was spewing pants-on-fire bollocks at least part of the time, and I don't feel like that's the case.

Either way, I'm enjoying it.

Since I'm hoping to write a longer story, I'm building up Spy's unreliable-ness bit by bit and saving the juicy stuff for later. Right now it just suffices to know that you shouldn't take Spy at his word.

Well of course I wouldn't take Spy at his word. He's Spy.

I'm not worried about being unable to make sense of your narration. I trust the clarity of your writing enough to expect that when you get to the bits where the narrator isn't reliable at all, I'll know.

Hm. I have half an evil idea percolating, but I dunno if Spy would really go there.
_____________________________________________________________
IV. Inside

Though the aesthetic of the two sides was different for each area under contention, the general layout was identical. Each man (or whatever the Pyros were) was assigned his own place of residence labeled with the obvious alias they provided to their respective employers when they signed on, no one being dumb enough to use their real names. When anyone was assigned to the other side, he would either claim one of the bunk beds in the main team barracks or any place he could secure for himself.

As part of his attempt to keep things with Sniper interesting, Spy endeavored to have sex with him in every room of whichever base he was assigned in except the places where Sniper might get the wrong idea. This meant that Spy's room, Sniper's room, and Sniper's van were off limits.

So when Sniper offered an altogether unexpected invitation to his private quarters, Spy tried to downplay the significance of it, but he was certain he gave himself a few more gray hairs thinking it over. Even if they had been on opposite sides of the battlefield and he hadn't been paying as much attention to Sniper as he perhaps should have, there should have been some sign that Sniper was planning such a thing. Spy played through several worst-case-scenarios in his head before he decided that it wasn't worth the stress. He picked out the finest bottle of wine he was willing to part with, changed out of his usual suit so he wouldn't have to worry about Sniper ruining it, and knocked on Sniper's door at the appointed hour.

The solemn look on Sniper's face as he let Spy in was otherwise inscrutable. For his part, Spy kept his own expression a perfect mask of bored nonchalance and presented his offering, glad that his gloves wicked away the cold sweat beading on his hands.

Sniper didn't accept the gift. Instead, he sat down on his bed and stared at the far wall, away from Spy. "I got a Letter."

(Given Sniper's tendency to make mountains out of molehills, this could have meant anything from a death in the family to a bounced check, so Spy stayed silent.)

Sniper was still avoidant when he spoke again an eternity later. "I don't know wot t' do, Spoi. She—she says she needs me."

Relief gave way to a twinge of disappointment. This 'she' was, without a doubt, the old flame that Sniper spoke of before, and her wanting to rekindle their past relationship was the very first scenario Spy had imagined. "Zen go to her."

Sniper shook his head. "It doesn't make any bloody sense. She chose someone else ages ago. Woi me? Woi now?"

"Perhaps you should ask her and not me."

"I can't." Then, after a pause, softer: "I shouldn't."

"Because she betrayed you? Or are you choosing to insist on zee moral option now, of all times?"

"I—" Sniper grimaced. "I don't know."

"Go to her," Spy repeated.

Note to self: I am so going to have to go over this and edit for voice consistency on whether Spy makes contractions or not, and not worry about hitting 500 words each time exactly.
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V. Outside

To Spy's considerable surprise, Sniper didn't become an insufferable melodramatic tosser as per his normal tendency when facing an emotional crisis but rather threw himself into his work. Gone were those awkward moments where Spy noticed the targeting laser of Sniper's rifle dancing over his body even if they were on the same side; Sniper now lived up to his boast of being a one-man murder machine to such an extent that he was also the top priority target.

By the technicality that Sniper's personal life was anything but detrimental to his performance, Spy wasn't supposed to poke his nose into it, but he wasn't about to stop doing something just because it wasn't proper. Besides, it wasn't his fault that Sniper couldn't bother to keep his mail more secure than locking it up in his room. It was a trivial matter for Spy to let himself in and do a little snooping (he refused to call rummaging through Sniper's things "gathering Intelligence"; that would be attributing far more importance to the task than it deserved).

As soon as he had a few days to go on extended leave, Spy hopped on a plane to the city listed on Sniper's letter. The address itself--a run-down apartment not unlike the kind he frequented in the past--did not seem to be occupied, however, so a little more snooping around in the corresponding mail slot overflowing with bills directed him to a nearby hospital.

Though the place was a company-owned facility and thus not bound by the normal rules, Spy felt that it was more appropriate to keep a low profile and thus used the old-fashioned method of disguise and Camera Beard rather than murder and replace even if nobody would miss a random janitor or give much thought to finding a corpse stuffed in a broom closet. To make sure that no one was there to look the other way while he went through the person-of-interest's medical records, Spy engineered a diversion via inducing a medical emergency on some unlucky sap and made off with the little manila folder while the intensive care unit was caught up in the chaos.

She listed Sniper as her legal husband. That wasn't the pertinent detail Spy was looking for—her reason for being in the hospital was, and though he couldn't decipher medical Latin he understood the prognosis just fine; her condition wasn't fatal by any means but it would rob her of her sight, a death sentence for any normal person, and even more so if she was a mercenary like Sniper claimed her to be—but Spy couldn't take his eyes off it.

As far as medical procedures were concerned, the laws of the land gave precedence to whomever was given the right of attorney if there was one, then to immediate blood relatives if there wasn't, and then to the doctor after that. She and Sniper shared blood types; she must need him as a potential donor, and nothing more.

Hey Dotchan, I just noticed the colourchange on your website. It looks pretty good. It's a bit easier for me to read on my ipod.

Glad you like it. Having suffered through the eyeblinding cacophany of neon, blinking text that was 90s web design (and not having good monitors in the process), I favored a dark background/light text color scheme in pretty much every iteration of Concept Space, but apparently the general audience prefers the opposite. Guess our generation isn't going to shake off the influence of print any time soon.

Most 'fics here on the 'chan have Engineer be the reasonable, nice one of the team, so being contrary I felt like writing one who was anything but. I might have overdone it, though. Maybe it's better to make him "veneer of nice, innards of asshole" instead.
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VI. Time

Having found out all the juicy details that pertained to the current situation, Spy went back to his regular job. After all, Sniper had yet to descent into a spiral of self-destruction, and the Almighty Bitch had yet to give any orders on the matter.

Spy also couldn't decide what "taking care" of Sniper's problem for him would entail. If the result of Spy's meddling wasn't something Sniper wanted, even if the act itself was a favor, Spy's actions could result in Sniper being angry at him. On the other hand, doing nothing might also be a losing proposition if Sniper expected Spy to take matters into his own hands. There was also the matter of just how much this woman meant to Sniper. He had given her the alias he used for his current job, but that could just mean he was bad at coming up with fake names.

For the moment, it seemed that discretion was the wisest course of action. Except Spy wasn't the sole member of either side who had a vested interest in Sniper's love life, and it was becoming more and more obvious that the status quo had changed. One Engineer in particular—what Spy bothered to remember about this man to distinguish him from his counterpart was that his so-called degrees weren't worth the paper they were published on and compensated that lack of knowledge with a hair-trigger temper—had a crush on Sniper that everyone except the gunman could see from a mile away. It didn't take long for that Engineer, already quite antagonistic towards Spy, to beat a path to Spy's door and demand answers.

"What makes you zink I know anyzing about zee Sniper's personal business?" Spy asked, putting special emphasis on the last three words in the miniscule hopes that the other man would take the hint.

Of course, the Engineer's mind was too obsessed with other thoughts to do so. "Don't pretend you don't know what's going on with Slim!" He jabbed a meaty finger into Spy's chest. "Hell, I'd bet good money that you had somethin' ta do with it!"

Spy didn't dignify the other man with any answer, instead making motions to leave. If the Engineer couldn't see that Sniper dedicating himself to peak combat effectiveness was a good thing, even with the downsides, then he deserved to know nothing.

Except the Engineer wouldn’t let Spy go on his way. He squared his diminutive frame in the doorway, grabbing Spy by the arm with his robot hand and putting just enough squeeze on to imply that he was going to break some bones if he didn’t get the answer he wanted. “You ain’t weaslin’ yer way outta this one, ya no good lyin’ snake! Yer gonna tell me what’s goin’ on, come hell or high water!”

Spy was saved from injury by the beginning of a new combat round, but he knew it was just a matter of time before the Engineer raised the issue again.

I'm surprised how quick I get to 500 words once I sit down and start writing. This makes me somewhat hopeful that I might get to the magic number.
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VII. Peace

Spy's relationship with the Engineer who was giving him trouble again had always been strained, but prior to this most recent rash of harassment he'd put up with it in the name of team unity. For whatever reason, Spy couldn't muster up the wherewithal to pretend that nothing was wrong. It had been obvious from day one that beneath the Engineer's amicable veneer was a ticking time bomb; in the past, Spy took it upon himself to serve as an outlet for the man's ever-building frustration, but he decided that now was as good a time as any to see if he couldn't make it so that the Engineer was some other team's problem.

Riling up the Engineer was a trivial matter. All Spy had to do was make himself unavailable by any means necessary when the other man came looking for him while maintaining the perfect picture of good behavior, and then wait for the inevitable fireworks. Because the Engineer craved approval from everyone else on the team and didn't dare to so much as raise his voice in public except for in battle where it could be excused, this meant several entertaining days of watching the man's resemblance with a malfunctioning water heater grow by the moment.

In the meantime, now that it was obvious to everyone that Sniper's singular interest was in doing his job, Spy's routine went back to rebuffing the unwanted advances of his other teammates. As much as he enjoyed sex, he was by no means addicted to it, but they were convinced that he was a nymphomaniac and would not be dissuaded. Some of them asked nicer than others: the Soldier in particular always looked so pathetic when asking that Spy didn't have the heart to say no; the Demoman could be taken care of with enough amounts of alcohol and touches in the right places to convince him that something much naughtier had taken place once he sobered up; the Heavy was still in denial about Medic's lack of interest in him and didn't approach except at his most desperate, and even then he tended to be quite considerate given the size difference; the Medic was more interested using Spy's body as a guinea pig for experiments and his "science orgasms" tended to leave him too exhausted for sex. As for the rest of the team, the Pyro was too busy following the Engineer around like a mother hen to do much more than make threatening gestures, the Engineer himself was too busy failing to contain his growing rage, and the Scout was not all that serious about trying to sleep with Spy, not when Spy couldn't remember whether or not it was this Scout whose mother he was romancing.

"Yeah, that'd be too damn weird," the Scout had agreed when Spy brought this up. "But if you weren't fucking my Mom, you'd totally do me, right?"

"I'd consider it," Spy equivocated, causing the Scout to break out in a wide grin.

The day that the Engineer couldn't take it anymore and exploded started like any other, with the battle having ended in an overall draw for both sides. The team congregated for dinner and analyzed their performance while they ate—the general consensus being that while it wasn't their worst outing, there could be room for improvement—then went their separate ways. Soon the group lounging in the common room watching grainy television shows was down to Spy and the Scout, who took the opportunity to stretch out across the sofa, draping himself over Spy's lap.

"Doesn't have to be me fucking you, ya know," he began, flashing what he thought to be his most charming grin. "I can totally give you awesome head right now."

Spy didn't even make a show of considering this. "Pass."

"Aw, c'mon! You ain't even giving me a chance heyah!"

Whatever snarky response Spy was going to say was lost in the roar of the Engineer's shotgun fired into the air, and his attention was drawn to the Engineer himself, cradling his shotgun like one might a woman. His immediate, instinctive response was to shove the Scout out of the way.

The Scout's mouth reacted before the rest of him did, exclaiming a bewildered: "What the hell?"

The Engineer let his gun do the talking for him, firing another shot, this time shattering Spy's kneecap, causing Spy, who was already half out of his seat, to drop to the floor.

"Dude!" That was the Scout, now on his ass due to having scrambled behind cover. "What's wrong with you?"

"Don't worry, I've got this." The Engineer advanced on Spy, leering. "No more funny business, Spy. I turned friendly fire on just for this. You ain't getting' away from me no more."

Spy, having experimented with his counterpart to determine that Respawn was on all the time in all lands being contended by the two sides, could've just ended the confrontation right then and there one way or another. But the rest of the team would be running towards the sounds of gunfire any moment and the Scout was the most credible witness Spy could've hoped for; plus, he wanted to see his plan to its inevitable conclusion. He remained where he was, silent, pretending to be frozen in fear.

"Woah, woah, woah!" The Scout jumped to his feet again, though he hesitated to move forward. "Easy, man, Spy's on our side!"

"That's just what he wants you ta think. Then, when ya least expect it—" the Engineer pounded the sofa with his robot hand, leaving a sizable dent in it. "Bam!"

"Hardhat, dat ain't how things work and ya know it. Yer just picking on Spy 'cause you don't like him!"

"And why should I like tha lyin', no good, selfish sonofabitch? If he ain't screwin' with ya, then he's just after yer ass!" The Engineer shoved the shotgun against Spy's face. "Watch, I'll prove it. The little cocksucker'll put his mouth to anything."

Just wanted to say I've been camping out in this thread, chin in hands, and have been extremely pleased with each update. Please do go on.

Whoops, that was supposed to be prompt #8, "War"

Intermission: 2 more scenes inspired by Mann vs. Machine
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(#1 - BLU Engie really cares about his team colors)

"No. No way in hell." The BLU Engineer crossed his arms over his chest. "We may be fighting on tha same side now, but I'm still a BLU, and I'll die one if I hafta."

The BLU Soldier, meanwhile, had already stripped down to his Captain America underwear. "It's just clothes, Engie. And this'll be the only way we can make sure we don't shoot one another by accident."

"It ain't fair, I tell ya. Once--just once--I'd like ta make a stand against those mother-hubbard machines in my own uniform."

"So do I, Engie, so do I. But beating back those robots means more to me than what color I'm wearing."

The BLU Engineer scoffed. "Yer jus' happy 'cause you get ta be around RED's Demoman without anyone raisin' ruckus about it."
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(#2 - What if those rewards were more than just cosmetic?)

The Scout kicked down the door to the Medic's office--an easy task now that both of his legs had been replaced with mechanical ones from the knees down. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME, DOC?!? WHAT DID YOU DO?"

The Medic, for his part, didn't even bother looking up from his newest patient, holding the Heavy's new arm in place while the Engineer welded supports into the unconscious man's skeleton. "I did zee best I could given zee circumstances; you yourself said you did not wish to become a cripple."

"I said I didn't want you to amputate, you bonesaw-happy ass! We're supposed ta be fighting dose robots, not become them! Look at me now!" The Scout gestured to the mess of gears, wires, and pneumatic tubes that snaked the length of his lower body. "I'm a freak, and it's all your fault!"

The Engineer stepped into the Scout's path, poking his robot hand into the Scout's chest. "Boy, stop pitchin' a fit and listen ta reason fer once. It's a miracle you even lasted this long with Respawn on tha fritz, and now Doc's givin' ya fightin' chance ta hold out until we can get things workin' again. You wanna be a baby about this, do it somewhere else." He gave the Scout a shove. "Now git. Yer bein' a distraction."

Back to your regularly scheduled padding, I mean, plot advancement.

(Yeesh, at this rate, I'll never get back to what's going on between Sniper and Spy.)
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IX. Warmth

Spy couldn't have planned things better himself. He'd rather not have to fellate a firearm, of course, but whatever dignity he was losing was more than made up for in the sympathy that he was winning from the Scout. "What--" he asked in a shaky voice. "What do you want?"

"Don't play dumb, Spy. You've done this plenty 'a times before." The Engineer gave the rifle a not so subtle nudge. "If ya do a good enough job, I just might letcha in on tha fun."

The Scout's eyes grew wide as saucers as Spy opened his mouth and began to tongue the edge of the gun. "Dude. Dat is so fucked up."

The Engineer, taking that statement to refer to Spy, gloated. "What did I tell ya? He'll do anything so long as it gets him off."

The Scout made a noise of utter disbelief. "You've gotcher goddamn gun pointed at'im!"

"So? He's got plenty 'a ways ta get outta this, but no, he's giving head to this 'goddamn gun'!"

The Scout turned his attention to Spy. "Hardhat's blowin' it outta his ass, right?" He waited all of three seconds for Spy to answer, and when there was none, he grew impatient. "C'mon, man! Say somethin'!"

Spy gave the Scout a look that could be interpreted either as "why aren't you helping me" or "I'm doing just fine" and then bleated out the most piteous-sounding "Please--!" that he could muster.

The Scout froze in indecision a moment longer before fleeing the room--to get the help that was congregating down the hall. The Engineer heard the sounds of stomping feet and muffled talking, too, but he also didn't back down. "Good, good. They're all coming. Now the whole team will get to see for themselves just what they've been stickin' thar dicks in." He gave the gun enough of a shake that Spy wasn't prepared for it and gagged. "Well? Don't just sit there and stare at me like you've never done this before. Pants down, ass up, you know the drill."

The Scout came back into the room with the rest of the team just in time to see Spy in all of his (half) naked glory being sodomized by the Engineer via shotgun; it was about now that Spy started to think that maybe he was in over his head. Even putting this moment into consideration, the Engineer still had much higher standing than Spy, and every man there (and whatever the Pyro was) had his own reason to turn a blind eye even if Spy's plight was genuine.