1 . Name: Sparky @ 2011-08-03 05:53

Otherwise known as 'Sparky has a bad case of word vomit'
Yep, this is the fic I've been wanting to write. Here's the first chapter. Read, enjoy, gimmie crits, and know that none of this would have occured if not for AyesDyef's Robogineer, here: http://tf2chan.net/projects/res/557.html

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Sniper gazed into the dark workshop. It was almost too dark to see in, but for the moonlight that shone through the windows, illuminating the shelves and tools in a ghostly pale glow.
"Hello? Truckie?" His voice echoed as he spoke.
He'd thought maybe he'd find Engineer here, working on some project or another as he often did, but evidently it was too late at night even for him. He wondered if Engineer had finished the repairs on his SMG, and considered helping himself to a look, but decided against it.
Sniper sighed and turned to leave, but something caught his eye in the darkness. A shadowy figure, leaning against the back wall of the workshop, surrounded by various tools and gizmos. As he crept closer, he could start to make out the shape of a man, standing stock-till against the wall. He frowned; the only person he could think of who'd be snooping in Engie's workshop with the lights off at this hour would be Spy, but the figure was too tall and lanky for him.
He stepped closer, and his eyes adjusted to the dark enough to see a face on the figure. It had unnaturally large eyes that stared into nothingness, dead and empty. Its jaw seemed to be missing, with what looked like a tangle of cords spilling from its gaping maw.
It wasn't human.

As he stared, more grisly details became apparent: a visible spine, tangled with more ropes and tubes; long, skeletally thin arms, dented and with no hands; and some sort of carapace in place of a chest and shoulders, its surface pitted with dents and scratches.

Sniper stepped back, tearing his gaze from the not-human, and almost cried out as he suddenly noticed more of the same figure, except they were all different shapes and sizes. One had legs that ended in long, slim metal bars. One had huge, armoured feet resembling army boots. One had what appeared to be a miniature cow-plow on its face, and one had no face at all. Many of them seemed to have limbs missing. They all appeared to stare blankly into the darkness, although Sniper swore the tallest one seemed to be looking straight at him.
He noted that his heart rate had elevated, and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. Suddenly, he heard something to the far left of the row- something like mechanical whirring. Evidently, one of the... things was alive. This one appeared shorter than the rest, and rather bulky. Its perfectly round eyes glowed orange, and it turned its head to look right at Sniper.

He would later come to deny it, but he leapt backwards and cried out something unintelligible (he may have been aiming for a swear word, but what came out was 'BLAARGSHIFAAAARGH'). He collided with the lathe behind him and knocked a few things off it, but he didn't stop to check what they were. He high-tailed out of that workshop as fast as he could, and didn't stop until he got outside the building complex to catch his breath.

He looked around; it was too late at night for anyone else to have seen him, at least, but he was worried that maybe he'd woken someone up in his panic. Seeing nobody, he trotted back to his van, shut and locked the door, and sat on his bed, clutching his kukri in both hands.
He didn't get any sleep that night.

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The next morning, breakfast continued as normal; food was flying before they had even started cooking. Apparently, Demoman had made yet another smart-alec quip about his alleged relationship with Medic's wife, who had responded with a well-aimed ball of raw mince (it was his turn to cook). Scout jumped at the chance to join in, and it all went downhill from there.
Sniper sighed quietly and opted to simply take an apple and a mandarin from the fridge, grabbed a coffee, and sat down by the window to watch.
Last to arrive in the mess hall was Engineer, who took one look at the commotion (Soldier was now sitting on Heavy's shoulders and attempting to strangle him with a string of linked sausages) and sat down at Sniper's table. "Mornin', Stretch."
"G'mornin', Truckie." Sniper mumbled, taking a bite out of his apple.
"Some commotion. How'd it start this time?"
"Demoman said somefin' to the Doc 'bout his wife." Sniper shrugged. "Somefin' about positions. I dunno, I wasn't listenin'."
"Huh, smart move fer sure. Listen," Engineer leaned in, "You haven't seen anyone skulkin' round mah workshop, have you?"
Sniper frowned and stopped chewing for a moment. "...No." he replied. It wasn't technically a lie. "Why?"
Engineer shook his head and looked back at the food-fight. "Nothin' much, jus' I found mah box of screws and mah drill on the floor las' night."
"Last noight?"
"Yeah, well, I woke up an' I thought I heard somethin'. So I went to go have a look."
"And?"
"And nothin', cept fer what I jus' told you."
"BLU Spy?"
Engineer shook his head. "Nah, I don't think so. A Spy wouldnt'a been so darn clumsy."
Sniper tried not to look insulted.
"Who, then?"
"That's jus' the thing. I got no clue." He leaned in again. "I got a little project goin' on in mah workshop, that I wanna keep on the down-low until it's closer to gettin' finished. That's why I'm askin' you, you're a trustworthy man."
Sniper didn't know what to say to that. "Uh... okay then."
Just then, a speeding piece of buttered toast collided with Sniper's face, where it stuck. "OI!"
He grabbed his mandarin and flung it into the fray, and let out a short laugh when it struck Scout square between the eyes. Scout stopped for a moment, holding his face, and looked up at Sniper for a second before he was tackled by Pyro.
"Careful, they might expect ya'll to join in." Engineer chuckled.
"I never join in."
"True. I wouldn't reccommend eatin' that, by the way." A moment's pause, then; "Hey, why don't you come down to the 'shop after breakfast and check out my work?" He whispered with a grin.
Sniper stared for a moment. "Uuh-"
"Good man. Make it ten thirty."
Sniper decided not to protest. So, Engineer was the man behind the line of abominations in the workshop; maybe with a bit of explanation, and some light, they'd turn out to be not so sinister? Somehow, he felt this was a false hope. He finished his apple and threw it into the fighting crowd. "Alroight, Truckie. Sure."

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"Truth is, Slim," Engineer said after Sniper showed himself into the workshop, "I've been dyin' to show these babies to someone for a good while now. But due to the nature of the project, I thought that'd be a bad idea."
Sniper didn't say anything. He wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, but he felt somwhat nervous at the prospect of coming face-to-face with those figures again.
"Here we are." Engineer strode to the back wall and stood there, holding his arm out towards the figures. Sniper loped over towards them, a little slower than he normally would. "None o' them are at all finished yet. What I'm hopin' to achieve, here, is a machanical replica of each member of the team, to work with us durin' battle." He grinned, a little manically. "They'll give us a two-for-one advantage over BLU. Whaddya think?"
Sniper managed a small smile. "I think you're completely berko."
In honesty, he thought it was a brilliant idea. A two-for-one advantage meant the BLU team didn't stand a chance. He just wished he hadn't seen the machines in their partially-built, skeleton-like forms.
Engineer chuckled. "I had a feelin' you'd say that. Here, look; this one's gonna be you!" he motioned towards the tall one with the huge eyes.
Sniper swallowed. The thing didn't look any less unnerving in the light. Its eyes, he could now see, were shaped just like his aviators, and behind the lenses he could see a pair of small cameras. He could see that Engineer had made great lengths to make the machine resemble him; it had a long metal nose in the centre of its face, and the sheets of beaten aluminium around the machine's legs resembled the way his trouser legs hung around his feet. It even slouched the same way he did.
All this made him uneasy.
"Truckie, why did you.. uh..."
"Make it look like you?" Engineer shrugged. "Same's why I did it with the rest of 'em; to help the Team trust 'em. These guys are gonna be a part of the Team, and you can't have no Team without trust."
Sniper nodded. That seemed logical, though the execution of that logic seemed to have worked against it. He kept his mouth shut, though. He figured he would probably have to see them all finished before he could properly make that judgement.
"C'mere, this one's gonna be robot-me." Engineer marched over to the one at the end of the row. This was the one he had obviously spent the most time on. It was nearly completed, with two hands that looked like duplicates of his own robotic hand (which was usually kept hidden underneath his rubber glove). Its wires, which could be seen around its neck and hidden under its carapace, were all tied neatly together in bundles. It had a heavy metal jaw, jutting out similarly to his own, and round eyes that resembled his goggles. It even had a slap-dash coat of paint in the Team colours.
"I've been workin' on givin' this one a sort of brain. Right now he only knows how to obey basic commands, like 'turn on', 'pick this up', etcetera." He patted it on the shoulder- it was the only one he was at eye-level with.
Sniper frowned. "So it... only turns on when you tell it to?"
"Yeah, sad to say. I'm workin' on makin' him autonomous. Then, I can work on duplicating that same computer-brain and putting it in the other robots."

Sniper's heart sank. He knew for a fact that it did turn on by itself. But what could he say?
"I... think you're makin' great progress, Truckie." he said, trying to mask his anxiety. "You, aah, really know what you're doin'." He shoved a hand into his pocket, searching for his box of cigarettes.
Engineer beamed. "You're too kind, Stretch. Ooh, 'fore I forget..." he trotted over to his work desk, behind a row of shelves, and came back with a large gun case. "I figured you wanted this ol' thing back. I patched her up, good as new."
"Oh, thanks." Sniper grinned and took the SMG case from him. "Hopefully I won't have to bring it back anytime soon. Unless Scout has any more bright ideas about batting practice with it."
"I don't think he'll be tryin' that again any time soon." Engineer chuckled.
Sniper gave a polite nod before turning to leave, stopping only to take one more look at the robots. He stood in front of the Sniper-bot, turning some thoughts over in his mind. Yes, there was definitely something about it he didn’t like at all. He didn’t pretend to know anything about how the things were supposed to work, and he trusted Engineer’s judgement, but from the sounds of it, there were things going on that even Engineer didn’t know about. He briefly considered telling him about what he saw last night, but he doffed the thought, thinking it probably wasn’t that big a deal. For all he knew, Engie was simply on the cusp of progress with the autonomous brain thing, and there were just a kink or two in the system that needed working on. Yeah, that must be it. Sniper was getting nervous about nothing.
Just then, Sniper saw something in the corner of his eye. Glowing eyes? He turned his head to look, but the Engineer-bot was off and perfectly lifeless. Must have been his imagination.

He strode out of the workshop and out into the Hyrdo battlefield, and lit his cigarette, taking a long drag. It was a top day, and he found himself looking forward to this afternoon’s battle.

Anything to take his mind off the doppelganger that stood in the workshop.