1 . Name: Dragon @ 2011-10-21 20:53

Welp, let's see how this goes.

I've had an idea for a story about a realistic female Pyro for a while now, and I've voiced it on the afic request thread, but then I just said "fuck it" and decided to write it myself. I don't know how well this'll go, or how often I'll update it, I'm about to get really busy in real-life, but we'll see. I'm posting this hrere 'cause I don't really have anything too mature to post.

I apologize in advance for any typos, and I don't know jack shit about accents, so I didn't even try to write the right. But hopefully this'll still appeal to some of you. Enjoy.

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-Prologue-

The respawn system was a wonder. It had turned war into a game. Not that the players needed to know that. For them, it was just like any other regular war. Sure, a war where you came back when you died, you fought for a set ammount of hours, and there was no apparent victory, but a war nonetheless. Fight and competition was in every human being's DNA, and this was a place where those that didn't fit in the... 'regular' military could let out their murderous tendencies without consequences. The teams were oddly uniform and evenly matched, and who won each round was determined mostly by luck. A flip of the metaphorical coin. And even with all of that, with guns that shot mist capable of healing wounds, with working robotic limbs, with systems capable of recreating life, there were still deaths, and replacements were still required every now and then. The thing is, the respawn system and mediguns only worked during the defined hours of battle. If you died outside that time period, or simply close enough to the cease-fire, you didn't come back. You were dead for good. The very last moments of battle were the most tense ones, those brief seconds during which, if you died, or got a fatal wound, you could say your goodbyes to your team mates.

It was because of this that our Pyro was now being transfered to the RED team, to replace their previous flamethrower user. They had just stuffed the replacement into the remotely-controled train and sent it off, not even an explanation given. She watched through the window as the station disapeared into the distance, and the train entered what seemed to be the beginning of a deserted area. She wondered for a moment why she had been scheduled for a transfer so suddenly, but she didn't mind. As long as she had people to burn, she was happy. With that thought in mind, she looked around the inside of the passenger car, seeing the double benches arranged in two rows, one on each side. At the very last one, she could see the end of a flamethrower sticking out from behind the one in front of it. Interested, she turned and paced towards it.

The eyes examining the enviroment were colored with a lively bright blue, almost unnaturally close to the sky's color. The sand being lifted by the draft of the train outside was a bright reddish, that matched her hair color almost perfectly. Her orange mane was just long enough for it to stick out in all directions, making random small spikes, clean but clearly left to stay on its own, showing that she didn't care enough to comb it. Her silhouette was surprisingly small, with relatively thin arms, and her frame was currently covered by the only clothes she had for now, a tank top and shorts that went down to the line above her knees, along with a pair of beat-up sneakers, all three white and not fitting quite right around her, the clothing looking as if they were meant for someone bigger and she'd stolen them. They all also had several dark scorched spots each, and they didn't do much at all to hide her scarred skin. Her left arm was almost completely covered all the way to the elbow by a large burnt scar, that spread out to the side of her neck and, under the tank top, almost all the way to her waist and center of her back. She had no bra under the white singed top, since her bust was small, and the only real curves she had on her body were on her wider hips and behind, and even those weren't very pronounced. Her face was fairly regular, with nothing too special, a small-ish nose that'd give her a somewhat cute look if it weren't for the left side of her face, where more scars could be seen: a slash going up on her temple, one separating her eyebrow in half, and a third going from the edge of her jaw to her cheek bone. Her skin was pale, but not sickly-so, and she had plenty of freckles bellow her eyes. She was young, on her way to her late twenties. Her look screamed 'tomboy' from a mile away.

"Ah, presents." A raspy croak of a voice came out between her lips when her bright eyes falled upon the gear left on the bench. A flamethrower rested against the side of the car, its muzzle pointing to the ceiling, and on the floor were a regular shotgun and fire axe. On the bench some kind of uniform awaited, folded in a neat pile, and on top of it something that looked like a contract waiting to be read. "But it's not even my birthday." the girl joked to herself, her tone eternally raspy, taking the note. With a lot of flowery euphemisms, and rules she didn't care about, the paper basically told her the items placed there would be her daily uniform and weapons from now on, and some other bullshit about getting better weapons. Shrugging, she pulled a box of matches from her pocket and lit one, setting the paper ablaze on one edge and dropping it on the floor behind her, enjoying the smell of burning while she rummaged through the clothes. The first thing she took was a black gas mask, that'd wrap around her whole head and hide her hair and facial features. Coupled with it was a full-body suit, colored with a bright red, with a zipper at the front, and a few straps for ammo and other things, as well as black boots. The whole suit felt like it had been padded to be fireproof.

Seeing to reason not to, she quickly donned the new uniform, which also included large gloves, only taking off her torn sneakers and emptying her pockets beforehand. Once she was all done, not even an inch of her skin could be seen, and her frame was completely hidden. She looked down at herself, and even when she pressed the suit against herself, it was hard to discern her feminine features. She was, for all it was worth, genderless in this. And she was already loving it, with a smile hidden under the gas mask. Turning her eyes to the weapons again, she stretched out a now gloved hand and took the flamethrower, weighting it. Not too heavy, even with the fuel in the canister. She'd be able to swing it easily. The shotgun was just what it was, a normal shotgun, and so was the fire axe, sharp and simple, but serviceable. Satisfied with her new weapons, she put the flamethrower back down against the wall and stepped over to the door on the back of the car. It was locked.

The hours whiled away as the train cut through the desert, getting closer and closer to the mountainous region ahead, the sun rising in the sky. The newfound Pyro inside spent most of that time learning how to disassemble and reassemble her guns, cleaning every part she found dirty with a flanel, which was just as scorched as her clothes. After that, she even took a nap on one of the benches before she finally saw the BLU base aproaching in the horizon. Her team's base blended with the reddish rocks, so she only noticed it later. Her stomach had been lurching for a while now, and she couldn't wait to get there and get a hopefully decent lunch. "Finally." she muttered to herself when she felt the train slowing down, her voice muffled because of the mask, but still understandable. She stood up from her spot and picked up her weapons, going to the exit and waiting for the train to stop, and as soon as it did, the door slid open and she hoped out into the dust-filled air of the mountain base.

Holding the flamethrower up to her shoulder, to help her get more used to its weight, she walked about the 'neutral' area between the two bases. The place seemed to have been a mine of sorts once, undeground tunnels with wooden planks on the walls, and a few simple buildings. She soon saw the RED base, and directed her steps to it. Before she could reach it, however, she heard sounds of activity in a small shack near the base, and went to it instead. The noise of her boots stomping on the wooden floor warned however was ahead, because the sounds stopped just before she reached the door and looked inside. Before her was a grown man, with a yellow hardhat on his head, googles and a robotic right hand. He seemed to have been dabbling with something that looked like a metal, red-colored night stand, with a screen at the upper half.

"You're our new Pyro, aren'tcha?" the man asked with a southern accent, and she responded with a muffled 'yeah' and a nod, voice muffled by the mask enough to be gender-ambiguous. He stood up from the ground, half-heartedly dusting himself off. "Nice to meet you, pal. C'mon, I'll introduce you to the team, they're all eating lunch now." A slight hissing sound coming from the filter of the mask indicated that she sighed. "Good, I'm hungry. Spent the whole morning stuck on that train coming here." The mechanic chuckled, leading her toward the RED base. "Been there, done that. 's just how they do things, cram you into the damn train and send you out here." As the two aproached the building, stepping over the main control point, he gestured toward the glowing spot and started telling her about how the everyday fighting went, where the enemies would try to get the control points, while they defended, and she listened intently. By the end of his explanation, they had pretty much reached the canteen/kitchen, and entered. Inside, a long table, big enough to easily fit twelve people, sat at the center of the room, enough room for six chairs on each side, and the wall to the right was lined with kitchen counters and cabinets, as well as a somewhat old-looking stove, a fridge with a dent on the side, and a sink that needed cleaning. Along with the furniture, and sprawled about the room in varying degrees of awareness, were most of the team's members, all wearing their respective red-colored uniforms. The one beside her went about introducing each of the others present.

Demoman, Soldier, Medic and Spy played cards at the farther end of the table, and she could hear occasional low-cursing coming from the little group. Scout and Heavy sat closer to the door, and the former was currently busy telling the later one of his many (fake) stories, the short part she caught being something about knocking someone's head off with nothing but a baseball bat. The taller man seemed genuinely interested, and with his attention on the boy he didn't notice his chin getting progressively more and more covered in unchewed bits of food. Engineer introduced himself last, saying that she could just call him Engie, and told her Sniper was "probably off somewhere being a loner again". She nodded, and examined those present while Engineer went off to go throw some snark at Scout about his so called story. Demo had been called 'that black cyclops over there' by the Engineer, and she could hear a scottish accent on his cursing, along with a bit of a drunk slur, explained by the bottle left close to him on the table. Soldier spoke with a relatively absent accent, and a helmet, too big for his head, rested atop the table, letting a shaved scalp and sharp brown eyes show. Spy had only spoken once so far, and it was a curse in french, so she assumed he'd have a french accent while speaking normally. Scout had a typical Bostonian accent, and Heavy spoke with a russian pronounciation. A quite varied group of fighters.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up to find who she assumed was the Sniper looking down at her with a smile. "Welcome to th' team, mate." he greeted aloud with an australian accent, pulling the rest of the team's attention to her. She smiled back under her mask, thanking him and then returning her eyes to the rest of the group, waving to them. "Ah, the new Pyro." Medic said, a german accent on his words, standing up and pacing over to greet her, shaking her hand. "Welcome indeed." he echoed Sniper, going back to his seat at the table again. Spy gestured a half-hearted wave with his cigarette, his eyes already back on his cards. "Bonjour." Demo was much more enthusiastic, gesturing to the seat beside him. "Hey lad, come join us." He turned to Soldier with a surprisingly hateful look. "Y'oughtta be better than this cheating idiot." Soldier, who was about to greet her in a certainly military way, turned to the scottish angrily. "WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT ME, MAGGOT?!" Scout rolled his eyes on the other end of the table. "Those faggots always end up fighting when they play cards." he told her, and Heavy nodded in agreement, making some of the scrapes of food fall from his chin to his chest. "Little Pyro do not worry, Demo and Soldier are good friends." A fighting was heard breaking loose, profanities being shouted both in english and scottish, along with the german speak of Medic, who was trying to get the two men to come back to their senses. "Well, I was about to leave anyway. Just came in t' greet you." Sniper said before turning on his heel and walking off, being shortly followed by Scout. "Yeah, let's leave those fags alone!" She wouldn't have minded going with them, but her stomach was still lurching, and she eyed the leftover food tentatively.

Quickly and unnoticed, since everyone else's attention was on the two wrestlers, she grabbed a plate of food for herself and sat down at an unoccupied chair by the wall, gulping down the food as fast as she could, just pushing the mask up enough to free her mouth. Done, she dumped the late in the sink and left, ignoring the now verbal spar between Demo and Soldier. She traced her steps back to the entrance of the base, and followed the faint footprints on the dusty ground up to a sort of alcove on the stone wall, where Sniper stood, watching something through the scope of his rifle. "Hello again, mate." he said, the rifle moving ever so slightly. "Hey. What're you up to?" she asked, trying to see what he was staring at. "Bun's helping me with my aim." A puzzled silence came from her. "Scout." He fired, and a surprised exclamation was heard coming from the other side of the small valley full of buildings. Sniper lowered his rifle and set it down against the wall, sitting down himself. "So what brings y'here, mate?" he asked her, and she sat down close to him. "Just wanted to check out the map. When are fighting today?" He shook his head, leaning back. "Nah, we're on ceasefire today. Been for a few days now, since our last Pyro bit the dust." She nodded. It only made sense, the BLU team would have an unfair advantage.

Scout showed up again, looking a little angry. "Dude, you could've hit me!" he said, kicking some dust toward Sniper. "I missed on purpose." the australian replied, making Scout huff angrily and walk off, back to the base. Sniper chuckled with her, pulling his hat down over his eyes and leaning his head back, fingers entwining in front of him. He went silent, and she took the chance to look at him better. Aviator glasses hid his eyes, and now the hat as well. He had a small scar on his left cheekbone, and sideburns. "Where did you get that scar?" she asked, pointing to his cheek. "Hm?" he muttered, pushing the hat off his eyes with a thumb. "Oh, this?" His fingers traced the small scar. "Had a bad run-in with th' BLU Spy once. Little bastards can be sneaky." He leaned his head back again, and the hat covered his glasses once more.

The rest of the day wouldn't go much diferently than that. Eventually, Sniper decided to show her the valley where they fought in, leading her through every room of every building there was, and going through the tunnels. Idle chatter acompanied them, and the evening zipped past almost entirely before she thought she had a good grasp of where everything was and all the possible passageways and shortcuts. She set her way back to the base, leaving the australian on his little alcove overlooking the terrain, and found Engie again on her way there, still fiddling with what he told her to be a dispenser. She spent the rest of the time until dusk with the texan, while he explained a few more intrincacies of the fighting system, of the equipment the others carried, and even a little bit about the things he could build to aid in combat, since she was showing so much interest, revealing that he was trying to make the dispenser work outside of battling hours, because he suspected the BLU Engineer had managed to do that. It was then that she learned how the Spies could cloak and disguise themselves, and it'd be her job on the battlefield to fish them out with her flamethrower. When the darkness started settling around them, Engie packed up the dispenser and carried it back to the base, and she intended on returning to the canteen, but ran into Soldier on her way there. He did the usual 'give me your best tomorrow, soldier!' speech, and showed her her room, which she was thankful for. She didn't take any longer than necessary there, however, just dropping off her weapons, keeping only the axe with her, before leaving again, roaming through the base.

Some time later, she'd run into a much more sober Demo, who still had a bottle in his hand, and he immediately drapped an arm over her shoulder. They chatted for a while on their way back to the canteen, and there she offered to cook dinner for everyone. It came up a bit charred, but it was better than some of the stews Soldier, Heavy and Demo cooked up. During dinner there was much talk, and the whole team shared some of their own experiences in the team and prior to it for her. She told some of her own stories as well, and by the end of the meal she already felt like a part of the team, laughing at Demo in his drunken rage, joking with the others, occasionally mocking someone along with Scout. The dinner soon devolved into little groups of banter, and she was left with Sniper, Scout and Demo, playing that same card game from arlier. She was awful at it, but she was having fun, feeling almost at home. The first to leave to bed was Demo. Which meant that he simply fell asleep on the table in the middle of the game, almost spilling what was left in the bottle on the cards. After him, it was Spy's and Medic's turn, followed shortly by Heavy, Scout and Engie. Soldier decided that Pyro and Sniper were taking too long on their talk, and hurried them to their beds ("HURRY UP MAGGOTS, WE HAVE A WAR TO FIGHT!"), going to his own afterward.

Back inside her room, she closed the door behind her, and took off her uniform, happy to finally be able to let her skin breathe. Thankfully the suit wasn't as hot as she'd imagined it'd be, but it'd still take her a while to get fully used to it. She stretched her arms up, flopping down on her bed on top of the sheets, crossing her arms behind her head and looking up at the ceiling, just bothering enough to take off the singed shorts, hair just as messy as it was before she put the mask on. No one had noticed she was a female. They had treated her as an equal for one of the first times in her life. It felt freeing. She'd continue with that, keep her gender a secret. She'd just have to be careful not to shower when someone else was. Smiling, she turned on the bed and tucked herself under the sheets, sighing and drifting off to sleep. She suspected she'd enjoy her stay in the RED team.