BLOODY BATTLE The snow was falling lightly that day, and the bullets were not. Heavy turned towards a yell behind them, and cut an on-rushing RED Scout nearly in half at the waist, the minigun bullets firing so close that they left a shadow of powder-burn across the sleeve of the Doktor's stiff white coat. They were exposed from nearly all sides as they defended the ruined cabin, it was a horrible place for a control point... but that also meant that between them nearly everything they could see from the low, snow-drifted buildings on one hand to the dark rocks that lay behind was their own private shooting gallery. For his part, the Medic crouched in one corner of the ruined building, training the medigun on the Heavy, trying to repair the damage he'd taken in capturing the point. He didn't like the position- anything other than a scattergun could rip through the decrepit boards like tissue paper. He just had to hope that anyone who tried that tactic would be aiming for a standing man's centre of mass. They might hit the Heavy, but the flak jacket and the medigun could handle that. Even if the RED Sniper got up on the cliff, he'd have to be shooting practically straight down. All they had to do was hold on here until the rest of the team captured their assigned points. The Scout went down with a sickening stumble and lurch as his spine parted, upraised bat falling from his nerveless fingers to slide back down the hill behind him. Heavy turned again, eyes searching... THERE- a Sniper, but he hadn't been able to re-aim in time. Elsewhere on the battlefield, a series of grenades and explosive flares went off, explosive following incendiary, incendiary replying with hollow WHOOMPHs of fire. On the cliff above, back under the snow-laden pines, a wounded RED Demoman used his teeth and one hand to rip off the loose end of the gauze bandage he'd just tied around his knee. He spat a string out of his mouth and lay back against the mounded snow for a moment, taking a long, fortifying draft from the thick-walled brown bottle at his side. "Sniper!" Medic shouted. "Five o'clock, on the rocks!" The Sniper was lower than the Medic had expected, and this verdammter shack offered no decent cover. The rocks were just at the edge of the Minigun's range- damn, damn, damn- and the Ãœbercharge was miles from full. Heavy didn't ask questions, and he had no time to turn. He simply jerked his head suddenly down and left, shoulders half-following the motion. The round hit him anyway, but it destroyed his right ear and tore a sudden furrow through his flesh from jaw to cheek instead of dropping him like a trophy bear. The Sniper had just managed, to borrow one of the Scout's favorite expressions, to Piss Him Off. Before the prone man under the trees across from them could re-load, Heavy swung around and let loose on the Sniper's position with an insultingly short burst, plowing up the snow in high white plumes across the edge of the rocky shelf, and blasting the Sniper's butchered remains back against the base of a tree in a wet, anonymous heap. Medic grinned, broad and savage, as his Heavy took down the impertinent Sniper. He watched with fascination as the bullet wound healed over again. He was usually moving too fast to watch this minor miracle, but he cherished the sight. He could watch his Heavy's skin knit together, over and over, forever. On the ridge above, the Demoman was regrouping. He checked over his supply of grenades and stickies, tugged down the edge of his black skullcap over his ears, and got to his feet snarling, "Peshpot-weerin sonofaHOORE!" when he tried putting weight onto his rocket-shrapnel-damaged knee. Heavy -felt- his ear healing, but he didn't dare let that thought become important. The explosions had stopped, which probably meant that the combatants had been seperated by the death of one or the other, and a Pyro, Demoman, or Soldier would coming their way soon.Yes, it was the RED Soldier, but- -there was a sudden concentrated explosion, and the RED Soldier's neck gibbed backwards across the coat of the RED Medic following him. Standing straight and unconcerned by a low building half the field away, the BLU Sniper re-loaded, quickly and methodically. YES. Their allies had undisputed command of at least one of the other control points, they had a CHANCE now. Heavy spotted a familiar BLU Engineer running toward them up the hill with a pistol in one hand. "There's just the Command center left now," he called out to them. -Wrong, the Medic realised. The Engineer should be holding position between the two RED base points, maintaining a sentry to cover the RED spawn and a dispenser to resupply the BLU attackers. He switched the Medigun for his Blutsauger and fired a single syringe at the approaching figure. The needle struck the approaching man's right shoulder and went in right up to the gleaming glass tube, shorting out the revealed Spy's cloak with a dying flicker. The cigarette fell from the Spy's lips as he looked down the black barrel of the shotgun the Heavy was holding trained on him, one-handed. "...Merde," the RED whispered. The Spy's long nickel-plated revolver fired first, but his aim had been too hasty, and the Heavy's answering blast of buckshot ended the duel decisively. The Spy went down and attempted to turn his dive into rolling down the hill out of range, but the Heavy's next shell finished him. Heavy switched his smoking shotgun out for the more familiar weight of the minigun, and looked over at the Doktor. "No vasting of ammunition..." he grinned appreciatively. They'd long since worked out what the Heavy was to do when the Doktor went for his Blutsauger like that... The brief burst of energy as the Blutsauger dart hit the Spy was delicious, bracing as a shot of schnapps. "Why expend our efforts on mere vermin?" the Medic agreed. He loved the Heavy's broad smile, the big man's approval. He didn't dare bask for too long, though, and kept his eye out for the next attack. From the sound of things, the REDs were busy defending their innermost control point. This too, was a sound Heavy knew well. He had a feeling over the past month or so that they were ever so slightly gaining -ground- here here on the Coldfront station. He couldn't prove it, but it seemed they were putting the REDs on the defensive just a little more- SLOPPY. Very sloppy, and if he hadn't turned back towards the RED base as his train of thought took him there, he'd have missed the twin flashes of red charging up from behind them. One was that determined Scout again, but the other attacker announced itself with a ball of fire. Heavy took the hit along his left side, and hissed through his teeth as he felt his skin and vest catch fire. The Scout would be on them first, and both were strike-and-run classes... Heavy spun up his minigun as the RED Scout closed, then turned at the last moment to silence the Pyro's muffled and questionably-sane laughter with a short but intense burst. Then the Scout closed, firing a stinging hail from his shotgun and yelling insults, too close now to bring the minigun into play. The Medic trained the Medigun on his Heavy to extinguish the flames. As they went out, he saw the aggravating RED child charging toward the point. Hoping that the big man could do without healing for a moment, he put up the arm of his medigun and unshipped the Ãœbersaw from its holster. He stepped smoothly around the Heavy, impaling the Scout with the immense needle before wrenching the blade down to gut him. On the cliff above, the RED Demoman had just finished laying a trail of sticky-bombs above BLU respawn three- a necessarily SHORT trail, because his knee hurt like fury. Those two down there... They hadn't seen him yet, they had to be dealt with. Yes. Their loss of the central point would put SUCH a satisfying hitch in the BLU team's advance... Yesss... The Demoman backed up for a running leap off the edge, but when he got there his mouth was set in a hard line of pain already. "Baws..." he swore, and drained the last of his Scrumpy, throwing the bottle behind him when he was done. A sticky-jump with THIS fecking knee, it would have to be... The dull explosion of a stickybomb being launched was barely noticeable over the sounds of battle, much less the beep as the charge was detonated, but an explosion coming from the previously-secure BLU side of the war zone was all too noticeable. The Medic looked up to see a crazed Scotsman blocking out the pale winter sun. And down he came, yelling triumphant abuse in a brogue far too thick for Heavy's Russian-trained ears to peirce. There was no time. He couldn't really be said to have PLANNED what happened next, but the Heavy reacted, swinging the joined barrels of his minigun almost straight upwards and cramming his finger down on the trigger, feet braced. He drew a line, like connecting the dots in a long-ago childrens' game, but each of those three black dots around the incoming man HAD to be stopped, each one was a bomb. Heavy's bullets knocked what was now a swiftly falling body off-course, and destroyed one of the three incoming grenades, the one that he would have chosen if he'd had TIME to think, because it was the one that would've impacted closest to the Doktor. And then the Heavy's world exploded. The shockwave from the two remaining grenades made the Medic bite deep into his tongue. He fell to one side, but kept the trigger of the medigun mashed down, trusting the vitalising technology to find its target. He hoped the Heavy wasn't dead. It threw off their tactics, it made him seem incompetent... it hurt, in some way he could not explain. Tasting blood on his tongue, the Medic struggled to stand, disoriented by the flash and bang. There was a wrenching in his chest as the medibeam took hold, and the Heavy gasped as consiousness crashed back in over him, a brief shout ripped from his throat. He didn't cry out often, but the feeling of what felt like at least four caved in-ribs on the left side of his chest suddenly reversing out into convexity with an audible grinding crack was one he'd remember. It meant something though. He was ALIVE, and the blast hadn't killed his Doktor either. THEY were ALIVE. As the Medic's vision cleared, he saw his Heavy in the centre of a crimson pool. The big man was lying on his side, desperately wounded. His ribcage was open, but knitting itself together under the medibeam even as he watched. The German could still see the tender pink of his Heavy's lungs, the surprising velvety burgundy of his liver. He crept forward, hoping for a glimpse of the Russian's heart. The back of his neck was sweating despite the chilly air, he was salivating. Looking down into the big man's crushed chest cavity, he realised that he had an erection. Heavy breathed easier as his ribs knit, the shrapnel-puncture in his side closed, and the wide, raw, skin-stripped area from the elbow of his left arm to the top of where his left ear had been sealed into the unnatural smoothness of freshly-daubed oil-paint, and began to grow back detail. The Doktor was standing over him, unnaturally tall from this angle, seeming to hold a twisting rope of blue light in his hands, a lifeline... The Medic's eyes were feverish, intently blue, focused completely. Things shifted and stilled beneath the Heavy's new-grown skin. Tearing pain and dull aches subsided there, because the Doktor -made- it so. This was power. This was himself, inside-out. The Heavy took a deep breath as he lay there looking up at his friend, then let it out as he finally sat up. They had a job to do. As the skin sealed over the Heavy's wounds, the Medic felt a surge of fierce, protective jealousy. What he had just seen was his, and his alone. The Heavy's viscera were secret, sacred, should be inviolable. The Medic vowed then that no-one else would ever see what he had just seen. The clamour of the BLU Scout on his approach was muffled by the roaring of blood in the Medic's ears. "WHOA, whoa, that was like-" the BLU Scout began, arriving on the point beside the Medic with a bounce. He broke off with a suprised jump-back when the Heavy sat up however. "Yuh- -h- how are you not dead?!" he demanded, pointing a finger only slightly downwards at his larger teammate. "I have good Doktor," Heavy replied with satisfaction. He glanced at the Medic with the same quiet smile still in place, got to his feet, and scooped the Scout back onto the cover of the control point with one hand. "-Stand on point and votch back," Heavy instructed, raising his minigun again, "-dis battle is not fenished..."